Older workers' knowledge seeking from younger coworkers: Disentangling countervailing pathways to successful aging at work

Abstract

Increasing age diversity in the workplace has led to growing research attention to the knowledge transfer between older and younger employees. The existing literature on age-diverse knowledge exchange has mostly focused on knowledge transfer from older to younger employees as a means of knowledge retention. In this study, we change perspectives by aiming to understand how and when older employees' knowledge seeking from younger coworkers is related to their successful aging at work (i.e., the motivation and ability to continue working). Grounded in the self-regulatory process model of successful aging at work, we predict two countervailing pathways: a positive self-enhancing path via perceived learning and a negative self-protective path via embarrassment. In a time-lagged study with 764 older employees, we found that their knowledge seeking from younger coworkers was positively related to motivation to continue working and workability via perceived learning and negatively related to workability via embarrassment. We further examined older employees' positive intergenerational affect as a boundary condition and found a buffering effect on the negative path to workability. This research shows that knowledge transfer from younger to older employees is a net contributor to successful aging at work and embarrassment can be mitigated by positive intergenerational affect.