Does age matter in the eye of the beholder?

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Does age matter in the eye of the beholder?

The relationship between age and willingness to change and the

moderating effects of mastery orientation and leader support

Master Thesis, MSc BA, specialization Change Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

Januari , 2014 Wordcount: 9.455 Marjolein Poos Studentnumber: 1736140 E-mail: marjoleinpoos@hotmail.com Supervisor University: Dr. H. Grutterink Second Assessor University:

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Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

By Mark Twain (American humorist, writer and lecturer, 1835-1910)

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ABSTRACT

Research has shown that older employees often encounter negative stereotypes that they are more likely to resist change and have more problems with adopting to technical changes than younger employees. In this study I argue that these perceptions are true at least in the eye of the beholder. In order to examine this, I used both self and leader ratings of employees’ willingness to change and examined their relationship with age. Moreover, I examined two potential moderators in the

relationship between age and willingness to change, mastery orientation and leader support. Results from a survey among total 77 white and blue collar employees working in a manufacturer of metal components and the back office of this manufacturer partly support my hypotheses. The results show that older employees are indeed less willing to change in the eyes of their leader but not in the employees’ perception. A mastery orientation buffered the relationship between age and willingness to change. Older employees with high mastery orientations have been rated similar as younger employees in their willingness to change. In contrast to my expectations leader support did not moderate the relationship, but has a direct positive relationship with willingness to change as reported by the leader. The results will be discussed in the light of the reasons behind the difference in self-report and leader-report, limitations and suggestions for further research.

Keywords: willingness to change, age, mastery orientation, leader support, leader-report vs.

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1. Introduction

Unprecedented demographic changes such as ageing and dejuvenization dramatically influence the age composition of the workforce (Schalk, Veldhoven, De Lange, & De Witte, 2010). In the European Union the number of older people (55+) has grown with 10% between 2005 and 2010, and is expected to grow another 15% between 2010 and 2030. In contrast, the number of young people (25-39) has been decreasing since 2005. For the Netherlands, it is expected that the workforce will have been reduced with 1 million people in 2040 (Adviescommissie Arbeidsparticipatie, 2008). As a result, organizations will increasingly need to rely on older employees to fill the shortages in a tight labor market (Maurer, Weiss, & Barbeite, 2003).

At the same time organizations have to deal more and more with changing demands for their products and services due to globalization and technical changes (Vlasbom, Josten, & De Voogd- Hamelink, 2013). Therefore, organizations are continuously facing the need to change their strategy, structure, process, or culture to find the ideal fit with the dynamic world in which they operate. Researchers as well as practitioners agree that the employees’ willingness to change is a crucial predictor for the failure or success of an intended change (Bernerth, 2004) because the employees are the organization’s “resources” who have to incorporate the changes in the

organization (Cozijnsen & Vrakking, 2003). Because of the importance of employees’ willingness to change for the success of organizational change, this study focuses on willingness to change.

Taking into account the growing group of older employees and the need for organizational changes, makes the willingness to change among older employees increasing important. Alarming are the prevalent negative stereotypes about older employees among managers. Common stereotypes of older workers are that they are more costly, less motivated, less productive, less creative, harder to train, less adaptable to new technology, inflexible, and last but not least more resistance to change than younger workers (Boerlijst & Van der Heijden, 2003; Caldwell, Herold, & Fedor, 2004; Finkelstein, Burke, & Raju, 1995; Posthuma & Campion, 2009). At this time when older employees are more needed in organizational change, we need to understand if these stereotypes are based on actual less favorable behavior during organizational change.

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Therefore I will examine the relationship between age and willingness to change by means of a survey study among 77 employees in an organization, under high external pressure to change. Previous research on employees’ believes and intentions’ regarding organizational change, has been unilateral and have been focused only on the individuals’ self-perception (for example, Armenakis, Bernerth, Pitts, Walker, 2007). However, there is no reliable evidence that self-reports are accurate to predict actual behavior of the individual (Manfredo & Shelby, 1988). Therefore this study has questioned the employees themselves as well their leaders, to report the willingness to change of the employees.

If age matters in the willingness to change, we have to find better functional explanation, why and how older employees are less willing to change, we need to explore factors that account for this negative relationship by testing moderation hypothesis (Baron & Kenny, 1986). If it is more clear what variables can strengthen or weaken the negative relation between age and willingness to change, organizations can modify their change strategy on these factors. To date, only a few studies have investigated whether there are specific factors which influence difference in age (Caldwell et al., 2004). For this study has been selected two possible factors that might increase the willingness to change among older employees, namely mastery orientation and leader support.

First, mastery orientation, the employees’ motivation to learn new things might be a good predictor for successful organizational change, as organizational change has also been described as a learning process (Burnes, 2009). Employees with a high mastery orientation are more pro-active in learning on the job (Jansen & Van Yperen, 2004), what might be key during organizational change. Unfortunately there has been done little research on mastery orientation and organizational change.

Second, leader support has been selected. Leadership support is often mentioned as a precondition for successful organizational change (Bouckenooghe, Devos & Van den Broeck, 2009). Supporting those people who experience troubles with adapting to the organizational change, might help them to cope with the organizational change.

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2. Literature review

2.1 Willingness to change

There are many theories about organizational change but most elaborate on the three phases of Lewin’s change model (Lewin, 1951). According to Lewin, change is a modification of two competing forces, namely a force that is trying to maintain the status quo and a force that attempts to make a change. When both forces are balanced, there is a quasi-stationary equilibrium (Lewin, 1951). According to Lewin (1951) this equilibrium can be changed through three phases; unfreezing, moving and refreezing. The first step, unfreezing, is creating openness in the organization toward something different and releasing the current state. The second step is moving, whereby the behavior of the employees shifts to a new level. The third step is refreezing, whereby the organization stabilizes at a new state of equilibrium.

Especially the second phase, moving, is a difficult step. As the organization becomes less stable and predictable during the period of change, forces reacting against the change are likely to develop (Cozijnsen & Vrakking, 2003). These “opposing forces” could result in resistance among employees. Resistance to change is often seen as a negative result of organizational change. However Metselaar (1997) has succeeded in defining a “positive” model opposed to the “negative” model of change behavior. Metselaar argues that organizations as well as employees will benefit more from a constructive approach in which employees are seen as resources that support change under certain circumstances, instead of as people who are resistant to change. Therefore, he introduced the term “willingness to change” in this positive approach towards change. Employees’

willingness to change is defined as “a positive behavioral intention towards the implementation of modifications in an organization's structure, or work and administrative processes, resulting in efforts from the organization member's side to support or enhance the change process” (Metselaar, 1997; p. 34). Examples of this behavior are sharing information and ideas, talking positively about change or

supporting the change.

With regard to organizational changes, willingness to change can significantly differ between individuals. The amount of willingness might depend on factors such as the kind of initiative

implemented (content), the environment of the implementation (context), the steps taken to implement (process) or individual characteristics (Holt, Armenakis, Field, & Harris, 2007). The focus of this study is mainly on a specific individual characteristic of employees, namely the relationship between age and the willingness to change. The growing group of older employees in our workforce and the continuous need for organizations to adopt organizational development, increased

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change. In particular, a clearer understanding of actual change behavior of older employees in relation to younger employees can be helpful for change practitioners to adopt specific strategies to each age group.

2.2 Age

Stereotypes about older employees suggest that they are unable to change and have more problems with adapting to new technology than younger employees (Caldwell et al., 2004; Sterns & Miklos, 1995; McGregor & Gray, 2002). For example, Dutch research among 886 line managers has shown that these managers hold negative perceptions of older employees (Boerlijst, Van der Heijden, & Van Assen, 1993). First they assumed that an average age of 38.5 year is the ideal age of their department. Second, most managers believed that the ideal structure for a department has a pyramid structure, built up of many youngsters, fewer middle aged workers and just a few older individuals. Underlying reasons for these preferences were: (1) older employees might be inflexible; (2) older employees might have less efficient and creative input for developments; (3) youngsters are more in favor for challenges and innovations (Boerlijst & Van der Heijden, 2003). A more recent study among 600 Dutch employers shows another negative perception of older employees (Van Dalen, Henkens, & Schippers, 2007). An aging workforce in the eye of these employers is equal to increasing costs, without increasing productivity.

In addition, organizational policies are often not focused on increasing the employability of older staff through training or education (De Lange, Taris, Jansen, Kompier, & Houtman, 2005). One of the reasons for this lack of investment in older employees is because it is assumed that they will retire soon, what means reducing returns on investments (Maurer, 2001).

However, studies on different job performance and age show evidence that age stereotypes are often not justified. A meta-analysis of Waldman and Avolio (1986) of different job performance indicators found that the relationship with age varies on the type of performance measure, who did the performance rating and the kind of jobs. Although age was positive related to the workers’ productivity, there were negative relationships between supervisor ratings of job performance and age.

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Concerning changing personality traits during the lifespan, a number of cross-sectional and

longitudinal studies have shown that some characteristics reduce or accentuate across the lifespan (see for a review Soto, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2011). Personality traits such as extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience show decreases with aging, so on average younger

employees can be expected to be more active and open to experience than older employees (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). In the same vein, Warr, Miles, and Platts (2001) have found that older people are significantly more conscientious, but less career-oriented, sociable and change orientated than younger people.

Nonetheless, there are also contrary studies that show development of characteristics among older workers who are in favor of willingness to change, such as better emotion regulation, increase in agreeableness, more focus on positive experience and more realistic expectations than younger workers (Charles, Reynolds, & Gatz, 2001; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999).

So despite of all the negative stereotyping about older workers, empirical research shows overall slight or inconclusive results about the relationship between age and some positive factors which might be linked with willingness to change.

In short, research regarding the influence of age on willingness to change is inconclusive. When age is studied in relationship to willingness to change, it is usually studied as a covariate or confounder in change management research. Numerous studies have found no significant relationship between age and willingness to change (i.e. Madsen, Miller, & John, 2005; Weber & Weber, 2001). But relatively few studies have investigated whether there are specific factors which influence difference in age (Caldwell et al., 2004). Previous research on employees’ believes and intentions’ regarding organizational change, has been unilateral and have been focused only on the individuals’ self-perception.

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Hypothesis 1: According to the leader-report, there is a negative relationship between age and willingness to change, but according to the self-report there is no relationship between age and willingness to change.

2.3 Mastery orientation

Organizational change, planned as well as emergent, has been described as a learning process (Burnes, 2009). Fast changes in business strategies and technology require midlife and older workers to learn new skills in order to be able to continue their jobs (Maurer, 2001). Employees’ motivation to learn new skills, abilities or knowledge might be a good predictor for successful organizational change because they can be expected to have the right attitude regarding the learning process of organizational change.

Kanfer and Ackerman (2000) describe a mastery orientation as an individual’s intrinsic motivation for learning. People with a high mastery orientation prefer work that challenges their skills and abilities. They strive for personal improvement and endure frustration and difficulties in their pursuit for excellence. Individuals with a mastery orientation focus on doing their best and try to meet (or even exceed) the organization’s job performance (Jansen & Van Yperen, 2004). A previous study has indeed found a positive relationship between a mastery orientation and innovative job performance (Jansen & Van Yperen, 2004).

Therefore mastery orientation can be expected to be an important motivational source of striving for excellence in organizational change (Jansen & Van Yperen, 2004). Organizational change could be unfamiliar and complex, but mastery oriented employees might see this as a challenge instead of as a boundary.

This means that a mastery orientation might be a good predictor for employees who enjoy rather than resist organizational change. Those older employees who show high mastery

orientations might be seen as similar in willingness to change as younger employees. The following hypothesis is formulated:

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2.4 Leader support

Research has shown that perceived support from leaders can play an important role in persuading employees to support a change (Edmondson & Woolley, 1999). If employees feel not supported by the leadership, they will find it difficult to deal with organizational changes (Devos, Buelens, Bouckenooghe, 2007). Change recipients need leader or supervisor support during organizational change. According to Bhanthumnavin (2003) supportive supervisors provide their team-members with what they need in order to motivate them to do their work better. Leaders, who show readiness to change, can act as role models for their team members and can support their team-members through the change process (Schyns, 2004).

Thus, when employees perceive leadership support they might become more willing to promote and implement changes, because feeling supported decreases the resistance to change and enhance the intrinsic motivation of the employees to join the organizational changes. Also, feeling supported serves as a buffer against stress. As, unfortunately, organizational change is often associated with stressful feelings, so feeling supported by the leader serves a double function for the employee (Cohen & Wills, 1985). This leads to the formulation of the following hypothesis:

H3: Leader support moderates the negative relationship between age and willingness to change, in the sense that if older employees experience high leader support this weakens the negative

relationship between age and willingness to change.

FIGURE 1. Theoretical model and hypotheses

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3. Methodology

3.1 Data collection procedure

The sample was drawn from employees working in a manufacturer of metal components and the back office of this factory (organization X). In 2012/2013 this organization introduced two types of organizational changes. The first is a change in the type of production, from low-tech to high-tech production. The second is a change in management style, from managing with strict hierarchical control to managing on basis of accountability of employees. Both production employees and back office workers participated in the study. Production employees consisted of welders, packagers, controllers of the machines and shift leaders at the plant. Back office workers consisted of the administrative, finance, HR, management, quality, sales, sourcing and supply team.

Before the survey study was conducted, a management team of 12 individuals was

interviewed to get a deeper understanding of the change, leadership and culture at organization X. From these interviews it became clear that the questionnaire should be short and simple, for a greater understanding of the questions among all employees.

The questionnaire contained a total of 51 Likert-scale questions, some background questions and an open box for making suggestions. The questionnaires with envelop were personally

distributed by the researchers to the office workers and by the supervisors of the plant employees and could be submitted in a box. Questionnaires for supervisors and managers consisted of 7 extra questions for each individual of their team to collect the leader-report of the change behavior of the employee. In order to be able to match the leader-report to the right employee, all employees received a questionnaire with a personal code.

3.2 Sample

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3.3 Measures

Willingness to change (leader-report) was measured with 2 items from the change- related behavior

scale of the DINAMO questionnaire (Metselaar, 1997) and 5 behavioral intentions to resist change from Bovey and Hede (2001). The subjects responded to the question “To what extent... “ after which they judged the following items on a five-point scale ranging from 1, “never” to 5, “always”“

...does this person speak openly about his/ her feelings? “...does this person keep his/her feelings to him/herself? ” (reversed), “...does this person take initiatives?”, “...is this person actively involved in the change?”, “...does this person follow a “wait and see” policy?” (reversed), “...does he/she support the change?” and “...does he/ she oppose the change?” (reversed). (α = .87).

Willingness to change (self-report) was measured with 6 items from the change-related

behavior scale of the DINAMO questionnaire (Metselaar, 1997) and 4 behavioral intentions to resist change from Bovey and Hede (2001). The subjects responded to the question “To what extent... “ after which they judged the following items; “...do you put energy in the change?”, “...do you

support the change”, “...do you feel involved in the change?”, “...do you accept the changes?”, and “...do you take initiative during the change?” The five-point answering scale ranged from 1, “100%

disagree” to 5, “100% agree”. A factor analysis with Oblimin rotation showed high cross loadings of the items “... do you talk negatively about the change in private?”, “...do you talk negatively about

the change to colleagues?” do you “wait and see” until other take the initiative? “…do you cooperate in the change, even though you do not agree?” and “...do you discuss the changes?” on factors

related to resistance to change instead of willingness to change. To improve the validity these questions were deleted; excluding these items increased the Cronbach’s alpha from .72 to .86.

Age was measured with the question: “What’s your age?” In research age is often

categorized in different subgroups, but the categorizations are diverse and an uniform definition of young, middle-aged and older employee is lacking (Peeters, Nauta, De Jonge, & Schalk, 2005). However, because categorization of age seems rather arbitrary, I decided to use age as a continuous variable instead of pre categorizing employees to subgroups.

Mastery orientation was measured with 5 of the 11 items of Jansen and Van Yperen (2004).

To reduce the amount of questions, only the items that loaded higher than .7 in their study were used. The subjects responded to the question “I feel most successful in my job when... “ after which they judged the following items “..I work hard to learn new things”, “...I learn new things that I found

difficult in the past”, “...I learn things that motivate me to do my job”, “...I feel that I am getting better at my job”, and “…I learn things that I want to get a better grasp of”. The response scale

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Leader support was based on the supervisor social support scale of the Job Content

Questionnaire (Karasek et al., 1998). The subjects responded to the question “ To what extent... “ after which they judged the following items; “...is your supervisor concerned about your needs and

problems?”, “...is your supervisor helpful in getting the job done?”, “...does your supervisor pay attention to what you say?” and “...is your supervisor successful in getting people to work together?”

Responses were provided on a five-point scale ranging from 1, “100 disagree” to 5, “100% agree”. (α = .76).

Two control variables were selected that I expected be associated with age and willingness to change. First, tenure (in years) was measured, because previous research has shown that this strongly relates to employees’ age (Sterns & Mikos, 1995). Second, the department of the organization was added as a control variable (0=plant, 1=office). The change might be differently experienced between plant and office workers, as the nature of their work was different.

3.4 Data analysis

In order to test the hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using SPSS 20.0. Prior to the regression analysis, the assumption of normality and the occurrence of outliers were checked. Mastery orientation showed a Kurtosis of 2.08, indicating that the distribution was too sharp (Hair et al., 2006). Nevertheless, a mastery orientation was included in this study, as 2.08 was just a little above the threshold of 1.0. An outlier analysis revealed no outliers.

After these tests the independent variables age and mastery orientation and the control variables were standardized and distributed around a mean of zero with a standard deviation of one (Hair et al., 2006).

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4. Results

4.1 Correlations and descriptive statistics

Table 1 displays the means, standard deviations (SD), and zero-order Pearson correlations.

Employees’ willingness to change (self-report) and employees’ willingness to change (leader-report) were unrelated (r=.24 , n.s.), which suggests that these two constructs are empirically distinct. This indeed suggests that leaders tend to perceive the willingness to change of the employees differently than employees do themselves. As expected in Hypothesis 1, there was a negative relationship between willingness to change (leader-report) and age (r=-.32, p<.05), and no relationship between age and self-reported willingness to change (r=-.05, n.s.). Moreover, willingness to change (leader-report) was positively related with leader support (r=.49, p<.001) and not related with mastery orientation (r=-.16, n.s.). In contrast, willingness to change (self-report) was positively related with mastery orientation (r=.41, p<.001) and not related with leader support (r=.14, n.s.). Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between leader support and mastery orientation (r=.36, p<.001). Age was positively related to tenure (r=.40, p<.001) and negatively with mastery (r=-.26, p<.05). Furthermore there was a negative relationship between department and age(r=-31, p<.05), indicating that plant employees were on average older than the office workers and a positive

relationship between department and mastery (r=.32, p<.001), suggesting that office workers scored on average higher on mastery orientation than the plant workers.

Table 1: Univariate statistics and Pearson correlations

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3,0 4,0 5,0 W ill in gn es s to c h an ge (l ea d er-r e p o rt) Mastery high Mastery low 4.2 Hypotheses testing

Table 2 and 3 show the two hierarchical regression analyses to test the expected relationship between age and willingness to change (leader-report) and the moderating effects of mastery orientation (Table 2) and leader support (Table 3) on this relationship.

Hypothesis 1 predicted that age was negatively related with willingness to change (leader-report). Table 2 shows that after controlling for department and tenure in step 1, step 2 proved significant (ΔR2 = .17, ΔF = 4,71, p < .05). Inspection of the regression weights in step 2 showed that, as predicted, age was negatively related willingness to change as reported by the leader (b=31 , t= -2,54, p<.05). This confirmed Hypothesis 1. In contrast, and as expected, age was not related to willingness to change reported by the employees themselves (b=.04, t=.58, n.s).

Interestingly, further inspection of the regression weights in step 2 showed that, mastery orientation was not significantly related to willingness to change as reported by the leader (b=0.15, t=1.31, n.s.), but strongly related to willingness to change as reported by the employees themselves (b=.28, t=3.99, p<.001). Furthermore was notable, the increased negative impact of control variable department from model 1 (b=-.13, t=-.52 , n.s.) to model 2 (b=-.40, t=-1.93 , n.s.).

In step 3 Hypothesis 2 was tested that predicted that mastery orientation would moderate the expected negative relationship between age and willingness to change. Indeed, the results showed that the two-way interaction between age and mastery contributed significantly to the prediction of leader-reported willingness to change (ΔR2 = .09, ΔF = 5.46, p < .05). To interpret this interaction, two simple slopes were calculated for mastery orientation at one standard deviation below and one standard deviation above the mean of age (Aiken & West, 1991).

Figure 2 shows that for individuals with low mastery orientation, age was negatively related to willingness to change as reported by their leader (b=-.54, t=-3.54, p<.001), whereas for individuals with high levels of mastery orientation, age was unrelated with willingness to change (leader-report) (b=-.23, t=-.14, n.s.), supporting Hypothesis 2.

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Table 2: Hierarchical regression analyses of willingness to change, age and mastery

In order to test Hypothesis 3 that predicted that leader support would moderate the expected negative relationship between age and willingness to change, there was a second set of hierarchical regression analyses conducted (Table 3). After controlling for department and tenure in step 1, step 2 proved significant (ΔR2 = .33, ΔF = 11.46, p< .001). An inspection of the regression weights in step 2 showed, again, that age was negatively related to leaderreported willingness to change (b=.29, t= -2.75, p<.05). In step 3 the two-way interaction between age and leader support was tested. No significant results were found for a moderating effect of leader-support (ΔR2 = .01, ΔF = .37, n.s.). So Hypothesis 3 was not supported.

In contrast with mastery orientation, further inspection of the regression weights in step 2 showed that, leader support was strongly related to willingness to change as reported by the leader (b=.47, t=3.65, p<.001), but not significantly related to willingness to change as reported by the employees themselves (b=.17, t=1.63, n.s.).

Furthermore was surprising, that contrary relationships existed between the control variable department and willingness to change reported by the leader and reported by the employees themselves. Department was negatively related to leader-report (b= -.23, t=, n.s.) and positively related to self-report (b=.26, t= 1.41, n.s.). Willingness to change self-report Willingness to change leader-report Step variable 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 Tenure .01 -.00 -.00 -.10 -.06 -.13 Department¹ .17 -.00 -.01 -.13 -.40 -49 2 Age .04 .05 -.31 * -.28 * Mastery orientation .28 ** .28 ** .24 .11 3 Age * Mastery .04 .26 * R² .02 .20 * .21 * .01 .18 * .27 * ΔR² .02 .19 ** .00 .01 .17 * .09 * ΔF .56 7.97 ** .22 .31 4.71 * 5.46 *

Unstandardized regression coefficients. N= 72 (self-report), N=49 (leader-report)

¹ 0= plant/ 1 = office

* p < .05

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Table 3: Hierarchical regression analyses of willingness to change, age and leader support Willingness to change self-report Willingness to change leader-report Step Variable 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 Tenure .06 .05 .05 -.09 -.05 -07 Department .24 .26 .25 -.13 -.23 -27 2 Age .02 .03 -.29 * -26 * Leader support .17 .17 .47 ** .45 **

3 Age * Leader support .02 .03

R² .03 .06 .06 .01 .35 ** .35 **

ΔR² .03 .04 .00 .01 .33 ** .01

ΔF .90 1.32 .08 .31 11.46 ** .37

Unstandardized regression coefficients. N= 71 (Self-report), N=49 (Leader-report)

¹0= plant/ 1 = office

* p < .05

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5. Discussion and conclusion

The aim of this study was to examine whether age matters for the willingness of employees to change, whereby willingness to change is measured with self-report and leader-report. Moreover, I examined two potential moderators in the relationship between age and willingness to change, mastery orientation and leader support.

A negative relationship between age and willingness to change (leader-report) was proposed and also supported by the results of this study. This implies that leaders observe less willingness to change among older workers than younger workers. In contrast the results show no relationship between age and self-report of willingness to change. This is equivalent with earlier research which has investigated a relationship between age and employees self-reported willingness to change (Madsen et al., 2005; Weber & Weber, 2001).

In addition, a buffering effect of a mastery orientation between age and willingness to change (leader-report) has been revealed. More specifically, as figure 1 show, leaders appear to report lower willingness to change to those older employees who have a lower mastery orientation, and those older employees with high mastery orientation are reported as youngster with high mastery orientation. Apparently older employees with high mastery orientation seem to be similar to younger employees in their willingness to change in the eye of the leader.

Moreover, mastery orientation, the univariate statistics showed that there is a strong negative relationship between age and mastery orientation. This might implicate that a mastery orientation is an individual characteristic that decreases during the career. So future research might study mastery orientation as a mediator variable between age and willingness to change (leader-report).

Furthermore a buffering effect of leader support between age and willingness to change (leader-report) was proposed, but not supported. Remarkable is the direct relationship between leader support and willingness to change (leader-report), while no relationship between leader supports with willingness to change (self-report) existed. A possible explanation for this outcome is a spin-off effect between leader-report and leader-support. Those employees who are reported as more willing to change by their leader, might perceive more leader support, and vice versa, employees reported as less willing to change by their leader, might perceive less leader support.

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between tenure than age with the willingness to change of the employees, self-reported as well leader-reported.

Finally, relevant for this study were the possible differences between the plant and office employees regarding their willingness to change. Surprisingly were the contrary relationships between department and willingness to change reported by the leader and reported by the employees themselves. Willingness to change reported by the plant workers was higher than willingness to change reported by the back-office workers. While leader-reported willingness to change was higher among back-office workers than plant employees. Possible explanation for this contrary relationship is that plant workers were more likely to social desirable responding (SDR), than back-office workers. In case of SDR, respondents give a more positive impression of themselves regarding the social norms and standards in the organization (Zerbe & Paulhus, 1987).In some cases SDR can even suppress or hide certain relationships between variables (Ganster, Hennessey, & Luthans, 1983). Furthermore, plant workers were on average older than the office workers, which might explain the negative relationship between department and willingness to change as reported by the leader.

5.1 Empirical implications

How to interpret the difference in self- and leader-report of willingness to change? Is the negative relationship between age and willingness to change reported by the leader indeed a consequences of actual less favorable behavior of older employees regarding organizational change or not?

On the one hand the negative relationship between age and willingness to change reported by the leaders, might be a consequence of actor-observer bias (Malle, 2006). The observers, in this case the leader, might generalize the personalities of the people they have rated with a negative stereotype of older employees in mind. Various studies have discovered that stereotypes about older workers do exist in organizational settings (Boerlijst et al., 1993; Van Dalen et al., 2006).

On the other hand, previous research has shown that self-reports were accurate to predict attitudes and behavioural intentions of individuals, but was not related to the actual behaviour of the individual (Manfredo & Shelby, 1988). Behaviour should be measured separately from self-reports for gaining objective self-reports (Manfredo & Shelby, 1988).

So in this research the leader-reported willingness to change might be a more objective and reliable measure than the self-reported willingness to change. Employees’ self-reported willingness to change is more sensitive for social desirable responding what may have led to a hidden

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5.2 Practical implications

Although much work still needs to be done, the results of the present research may have practical implications. Leaders report less willingness to change among older workers, what means that the group of older workers during organizational changes needs extra attention to get involved in the change. The results of this study show that the differences between young and older employees diminish as older employees have high mastery orientations. However, older people seem to have lower mastery levels. For organizations it would be beneficial to implement specific interventions to increase the mastery level of the older employers because this could lead to higher willingness to change. Previous research shows that participation in education or training could increase the mastery level of individuals (Maurer, 2001). Courses and training might trigger and inspire older people to improve themselves again in their job during organizational change. Thereby it is

important to note, that research has shown that investments in training for older employees, often do not often give lower returns than for younger employees (Hedge, Borman, & Lammhein, 2008). Because older employees are often less likely to leave an organization than younger employees and the returns of investments in training tends to come in a short term.

Besides training for leaders with many older workers in their team might be valuable. This training should include information about positive characteristics of older employees, such as certain soft skills, like commitment to the organization, reliability, and social skills (Van Dalen, Henkens, & Schippers, 2010). These positive characteristics might be converted to willingness to change among older workers.

5.3 Strengths, limitations and suggestions for further research

This research took some exploratory steps into clarifying the relationship between age and willingness to change from two perspectives and studying a buffering effect of mastery and leader support.

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as a continuous variable. Fourth, the sample had a reasonable wide age range from 26-64 year, what means that the study consisted of almost all ages which are active on the Dutch labor market.

Naturally, no study is without limitations. Probably more questions arise from this study than the study answers. This is why different limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed below.

First, there are some constraints with the generalizability of the results. The matter of age has been studied in just one organization with a small sample size. The meaning of “young” and “old” employees depends to some extent on the age composition of organization X. For a better understanding of age in relation to willingness to change, study in organizations with different age compositions is needed. Previous research has shown that the demographic structure matters in determining attitudes, performance, and career related opportunities (Shore et al., 2003). Based on the similarity-attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1997), it is arguable that the greater the similarity in demographic characteristics, such as age, the more attracted the individual is to their colleagues. Future research should reveal if the relation between age and willingness to change reported by the leader might be more positive with a greater representation of “older” employees in the

organization.

Second, furthermore on the willingness to change reported by the leaders and employees themselves, future research should investigate the leaders profile in relation to the employees’ profile. Both reports might be influenced by in-group bias. According to the in-group bias hypothesis, individuals tend to favor people from their own group. For example previous research shows that younger employees tended to give less favorable rating to older workers than employees from the same age group (Finkelstein et al., 1995).

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Fourth, this study has used a “between person” approach to study a relationship between age and willingness to change. For a better understanding of the effects of aging on work attitudes of older employees, a “within person” approach would be a great benefit (Ng & Feldman, 2008, Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999). With a longitudinal research design (within person), could be tracked if employees willingness to change decrease during specific moments in their career. Furthermore could be studied if differences in willingness to change are related to

generational cohort differences on the labor market. Different generations, such as baby boomers, generation X and generation Y, grew up in different economic and political conditions, what may contribute to different work motivation (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004). New generations, such as generation Y, grew up with technology and the knowledge, that continuing organizational development is necessary to survive as organization. Adapting to a continuing changing environment might be a second nature for generation Y, now and in the future.

5.4 Conclusion

To conclude, this study identifies that age matters in organizational change. In the eyes of the leaders, older employees are less willing to change than younger employees. However, in the self-reported willingness to change there is no significant negative relationship found between age and willingness to change. Argued is that employees self-reported willingness to change, is more sensitive for social desirable responding what may has led to a hidden relationship with age.

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Appendix: Factor analyses

Factor analyses (Oblimin rotation- Pattern Matrix) of age, mastery orientation, leader support and willingness to change (self-perception) - after step for step deletion

Factor 1 2 3 4

Age

1 Wat is uw leeftijd? ,848

Mastery: Ik voel mij succesvol in mijn werk als…

1 ik door hard te werken nieuwe dingen leer ,446 -,381

2 ik nieuwe dingen leer die ik in het verleden lastig vond ,803

3 ik dingen leer die mij motiveren om mijn werk te doen ,849

4 ik het idee heb dat ik beter word in mijn werk ,692

5 ik dingen leer die ik beter onder de knie wil krijgen ,781

Leader support: In hoeverre...

1 heeft uw leidinggevende oog voor uw behoeften en

problemen? ,846

2 helpt uw leidinggevende u om het werk af te krijgen? ,733

3 heeft uw leidinggevende aandacht voor wat u te zeggen

heeft? ,779

4 slaagt uw leidinggevende er in om mensen te laten

samenwerken? ,739

,351

Willingness to change (Self-perception): In hoeverre...

1 stopt u veel energie in de veranderingen? ,470 ,594

2 steunt u de veranderingen? ,818

3 voelt u zich betrokken bij de veranderingen? ,814

4 accepteert u de veranderingen? ,829

7 neemt u het initiatief tijdens een verandering? ,746

Eigenwaarde 3,83 1,76 1,20 0,67

Percentage verklaardevariantie 38,33 17,62 12,00 6,78

Only factorloadings>.3 are shown

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Deleted questions: Willingness to change (self-perception) 5 * praat u negatief over de veranderingen in privégesprekken? 6 *praat u openlijk negatief over de veranderingen tegen collega’s? 8 *wacht u tot anderen het initiatief nemen?

9 werkt u mee met de veranderingen ook al bent u het er niet mee eens? 10 gaat u de discussie aan over de verandering?

* reversed item

Factor analyses (Component Matrix) of dependent variable willingness to change (leader-report)

Factor 1 2

Willingness to change (leader-report) In hoeverre...

1 spreekt deze persoon zijn/haar gevoelens openlijk uit?

,626 ,664

2 *houdt deze persoon zijn/haar gevoelens voor zichzelf?

,698 ,606

3 neemt hij/zij initiatief?

,835 4 is hij/zij actief betrokken bij de veranderingen?

,778 5 *houdt hij/zij zich op de achtergrond?

,887 6 steunt hij/zij de veranderingen?

,739 -,503

7 *werkt hij/zij de veranderingen tegen?

,646

Eigenwaarde 3.93 1.27

Percentage verklaardevariantie 56.16 18.12

* reversed item, only factorloadings>.3 are shown KMO=.76, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity: .00

Does age matter in the eye of the beholder?