Blended Work and Employment Participation of Older Workers: A Further Discussion

TY - JOUR

T1 - Blended Work and Employment Participation of Older Workers: A Further Discussion

AU - Damman, M.

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - In the context of population aging and related policy aims to prolong working lives, it is highly important to get a better understanding of factors that may stimulate or rather inhibit prolonged employment. Dropkin and colleagues (Dropkin, J., Moline, J., Kim, H., & Gold, J. E. (2016). Blended work as a bridge between traditional workplace employment and retirement: A conceptual review. Work, Aging and Retirement. doi:10.1093/workar/waw017) present blended work as a form of work that may help to extend the working lives of older workers, particularly among knowledge workers. Although the article provides a description of the literature on blended work and older workers, limited connection is made to the retirement literature. In this article, I describe theory and empirical findings on antecedents of retirement timing and link it to the notion of blended work. Furthermore, I argue that both characteristics of blended work and characteristics of older workers should be taken into account when formulating concrete predictions about its impact on the timing of retirement. I conclude this article by discussing potentially fruitful directions for future research.

AB - In the context of population aging and related policy aims to prolong working lives, it is highly important to get a better understanding of factors that may stimulate or rather inhibit prolonged employment. Dropkin and colleagues (Dropkin, J., Moline, J., Kim, H., & Gold, J. E. (2016). Blended work as a bridge between traditional workplace employment and retirement: A conceptual review. Work, Aging and Retirement. doi:10.1093/workar/waw017) present blended work as a form of work that may help to extend the working lives of older workers, particularly among knowledge workers. Although the article provides a description of the literature on blended work and older workers, limited connection is made to the retirement literature. In this article, I describe theory and empirical findings on antecedents of retirement timing and link it to the notion of blended work. Furthermore, I argue that both characteristics of blended work and characteristics of older workers should be taken into account when formulating concrete predictions about its impact on the timing of retirement. I conclude this article by discussing potentially fruitful directions for future research.

KW - work and employment participation

KW - older workers

KW - SSCI

U2 - 10.1093/workar/waw022

DO - 10.1093/workar/waw022

M3 - Article

VL - 2

SP - 384

EP - 389

JO - Work, Aging and Retirement

JF - Work, Aging and Retirement

SN - 2054-4642

IS - 4

ER -