Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

scientists as means to retain the efficiency of older workers – are rejected with the argument
that the investment costs would not be regained because of the early exit risk of older
workers and because of their assumed drop in performance. The result is what for
Ebbinghaus (2002: 40) constructs catch-22: “[F]irms foster early retirement due to the
“outdated skill” argument and then, with the expectation of even shorter remaining
durations, stop investing in skill updating even earlier.”
The basic assumptions of neo-classical economics were criticised by other economic
theories and other scholarly disciplines. Naegele (1992: 380, 386) criticises its view on work
incapacity of older persons as given and lack of interest in neither its origins nor ways of
prevention. Rosenow/Naschold (1994: 218) found out in firm case studies that firms
externalise older workers not for reasons of diminished productivity but in order to enhance
flexibility of staff deployment. Nevertheless, neo-classical assumptions could still be shared
by policy-makers in German and Polish companies and influence their behaviour.
Therefore, I will derive a hypothesis based on neo-classic labour market theory (see below)
and investigate whether the behaviour of management and employee representatives in
analysed companies is in line with the neo-classical or the firm-structural approach.
The concept of ´alternative roles´ developed by Offe and Hinrichs (1984) argues that
the unemployment in Germany is structured and constitutes several ´problem groups´ which
are disadvantaged not because of their personal characteristics (as neo-classical theory
would argue), but because certain negative values are ascribed to them on grounds of age,
sex, disability or ethnicity (ibid: 46). They postulate a failure of the welfare state as it
opened up for those groups of workers the opportunity to earn one´s living by social
transfers, e.g. early retirement pensions, and made them thus vulnerable to being treated as
flexibility resource of the labour market. E.g., for older workers, there exists the ´alternative
role´ of retiree (ibid: 73, 75). That institutional mechanism is perpetuated by the works
council, employers and state actors. Employers appoint those problem groups predominantly
to marginal workplaces characterised by low pay, low qualification requirements and related
lack of further qualification, low prospects of promotion, restrictive working conditions,
high subordination and control and high risk of early exit (ibid: 74).
Based on the neo-classical labour market theory and the concept of alternative roles, I
develop hypothesis 2A: Firms apply a differential personnel policy with regard to older
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