Motivations to Continue Working Past Retirement Age

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The motivation to continue working is receiving more and more scientific attention . Reasons for this include an increasing life expectancy and health of workers which allows them to keep working after retirement age. It is important for organizations to motivate employees to continue working because the changing demographics result in a declining workforce in western countries (OECD, 2005). Another related problem might be people who retire before the official retirement age as the workforce will dwindle even further. Decreasing workforce makes it harder for organizations to fill positions and harder for society to pay for social security. Building on this trend, this study focusses on what organizations can do to keep employees longer in their organization and how this mechanism works.
Recent work by Templer, Armstrong-Stassen and Cattaneo (2010) provided a framework that looks at antecedents of continuing to work after retirement. They found three main factors that affect the decision to continue working. The first and most important factor is the financial motive; evidence for this is well documented (Humphrey et al, 2003; Parkinson, 2002).The second factor mentioned by Templer et al.(2010) is work fulfillment. Both the studies by Humphrey et al (2003)and Parkinson (2002) indicated that the second most important reason to continue to work after retirement was work fulfillment. A third factor was also mentioned by Templer et al. (2010), generativity. Generativity deals with older worker transferring their knowledge and skills to (younger) co-workers. Research shows that transferring knowledge may be important to older workers (Mor-Barak, 1995). Therefore generativity may also be an important reason to continue to work after...

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...ople with low job satisfaction may want to retire (desire) but because it is not feasible do not have the intention to retire.
A more recent meta-analysis provides a more definite answer. They looked at 341 samples with a total of 188,222 participants and found that job satisfaction negatively related to the decision to retire This means that when people experience more job satisfaction, they will retire later. This is in line with the theoretical framework that is provided.
Therefore, based on the more positive wording of motivation to work as opposed retirement intentions (ie motivation to continue working), the predictions of the signaling theory and the social exchange theory and the empirical evidence. The second hypothesis is: H2. The positive relationship between HR commitment practices and motivation to continue to work is mediated by job satisfaction.

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