Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Applied Research in Business, Management and Economics
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Older Workers’ Work Engagement and Motivation to Continue Working After Retirement: Do Human Resource Attributions Matter?
Norihiko Takeuchi, 2Yuhee Jung, 3Tomokazu Takeuchi
ABSTRACT:
Recently, theorising in the area of human resource management (HRM) has been developing on the effects of employees’ cognitive reasoning (i.e., attribution) about why an organisation is implementing certain HRM practices, rather than just what practices are being implemented. This study applies attribution theory of HRM to the context of older workers’ HRM to examine the mechanisms by which wellbeing HR attributions and cost HR attributions of middle-aged and older employees influence their intention to continue working after retirement age and work engagement. A parallel-serial mediation analysis of time-series survey data collected at four time points confirms that wellbeing HR attribution of middle-aged and older employees first predicts their affective state (i.e., positive psychological wellbeing), which then increases their intention to continue working after retirement and work engagement by ways of extending their occupational future time perspective (i.e., increasing perceptions about their remaining time in working lives). On the other hand, cost HR attribution was found to enhance their negative psychological wellbeing, thus reducing the intention to continue working and work engagement via their decreased occupational future time perspective. The results are confirmed even after controlling for the degree of implementation of HR practices, raising the importance of HR attribution theory in the older worker context.
keywords: ageing workforce; human resource management practices; psychological wellbeing; future time perspective; attribution theory