Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

from coal heating to gas and oil, raising of the roof so that fumes can escape, improving the
hygienic standard and working conditions in food manufacturing companies).
Another chance to the prolongation of working life is that firms increasingly recognise
the necessity of investing in older workers due to demographic change, corporate social
responsibility, the concern for a positive brand image, and the more and more popularised
knowledge that older workers are efficient if their potential is properly deployed. That
proves the validity of the firm structural approach which made out three objectives with
which personnel management is concerned – maximising performance, maximising the
length of usefulness of labour, and maintaining continuity (Kohli/Rosenow/Wolf 1983: 30).
Other chances apply to singular country contexts. In Poland, workers are not excluded
by force of the work contract to work past standard retirement age, and in fact, some firms
take into consideration their continued employment and even hire retirees or pensioners.
The skills shortages on the Polish labour market – due to mass migration of young, welleducated
Poles to Western EU countries, the closing of vocational schools (reported by
interviewees), in the long term also due to demographic change – currently increase chances
for the recruitment of older workers, notably in the construction and health sectors. These
factors, however, create only temporary opportunities for older workers to find a job. More
sustainable effects can be achieved by including older workers and applicants to a greater
extent in further vocational training and re-training.
What I regard as the most important outcome of my analysis at establishment level is
that older workers are simultaneously regarded as flexibility resource and as potential for
investment depending on the area of personnel policy. Among the 31 studied firms, there
was none which adopted an integrative attitude towards older workers in all studied areas of
personnel policy (although there were a few which adopted an externalising attitude
throughout). That means that even those firms which have recognised the potential of older
workers still pursue a rejuvenation of the workforce in order to achieve the optimum ´agemix´,
and complement the legal retirement age with firm-specific retirement ages
(Kohli/Rosenow/Wolf 1983: 33; Naegele 1992: 398). That proves both the validity of the
firm-structural approach and of the neo-classical labour market theory. It shows that at best,
in the next years, firms will stabilise at a mid-stage on the way to age management by
integrating and promoting older workers already on the job, while keeping out older
´outsiders´.
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