Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

eacted to pension reforms which sought to incite postponed retirement (see sections 4.2.8.
and4.3.8.). Moreover, the majority of firms in both countries apply a reactive 60 type of
personnel policy; a long-term strategic orientation can be found only in a few firms (Fig.
14). Older workers are not yet taken into account as valuable human resource in recruitment
(section 4.2.3. and 4.3.3.). An orientation of in-service training to the needs and previous
knowledge of older workers is missing, and no endeavours are made to overcome their
lower learning willingness which is one of the causes of their low training participation
(section 4.2.4. and 4.3.4.). The personnel policy in the field of health and integration
management has adapted to a larger extent to the specificity of an ageing workforce,
although only in German firms that focus is present. In both countries, firms have a nonuniform
policy with regard to impaired workers, but existing externalisation strategies are
not directed at older workers as such, but at employees with work incapacities (section
4.2.5. and 4.3.5.). Last, with regard to exit policy, older workers with pension entitlements
are treated as flexibility resource in order to carry through personnel adjustments (section
4.2.6. and 4.3.6.). Thus, it can be concluded that a general commitment of German and
Polish firms to the prolongation of working life is missing.
In the medium term, I suppose that German firms will be more successful in creating the
prerequisites for the prolongation of working life. This assumption is grounded on several
facts. Firstly, there are already some outstanding cases of age management practice in
German firms, both in my sample and at national level (see e.g. Frerichs/Sporket 2007;
Bertelsmann Stiftung/BDA 2003), while firms in Poland still exhibit a short-term orientated
and not innovative HRM policy. Secondly, there is more support for firms in Germany
which want to adopt age management practices, both in terms of cultural capital and
institutional support (long tradition of debate on age management in the media, topic
regarded as relevant by political actors, social partners and NGOs, networks of business
partners for the exchange of good practice, public and scholarly support for firms in the
form of pilot studies or training on age management issues). Thirdly, the transformation
from plan to market economy has not yet been completed in Poland; firms are shedding
personnel and conducting internal restructuring and are on overall more dependent on
exogenous, structural factors. Fourthly, a negative assessment of older workers based on the
deficit model of old age, and the perception of the ageing of the workforce as a threat are
60 ´Reactive´ not in the meaning of a (long-term) adaptation to institutional changes, but a short-term reaction
to current internal demand or market pressures, or incremental policy without frame shifts and without
adopting new policy orientations (on the latter: Wiesenthal 2003: 60ff).
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