Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa

CHAPTER 10
Career development in later working life: implications for career guidance with older workers 193
sense of personal values as he gave a sharp critique of top-down
management that did not allow for respect for individual workers and
awareness of the eventualities of ʻreal lifeʼ. In his case this stretched from
flexible planning of his teamʼs work to cope both with late delivery of
components and with his teamʼs need for social interaction while working –
the need to discuss the big football match of the previous evening.
The research produced a picture of some ordinary workpeople who valued
the learning they had gained from experience, expressed a willingness to be
flexible to meet workplace needs, but held a strong sense of their own values.
But with values come sticking points. Janet described her reasons for leaving
teaching: ʻwhat am I doing if I donʼt see an outcome for children that is valuable
in my eyes?ʼ (Janet, participant in Barhamʼs [2008] study).
People bring existing ideas, or schema (Rousseau, 2001), to a prospective
psychological contract. These schema include beliefs about promises and
obligations, and may include views of the employment contract as a complex
relationship or a more simple transaction (Rousseau, 2001). There was little
evidence of the latter among respondents to our study. Doreen exemplifies
this in her unwillingness to ʻhang aroundʼ despite good pay when the induction
training which she believed to be due to her failed to materialise. Colin
recounted that he had refused the offer of an otherwise attractive job because
the journey to work would be extremely unreliable: ʻIt would be disloyal. If I
take on a job, I should be thereʼ. In both cases, the personal schema extends
well beyond the transaction symbolised by the pay packet, and implies a
mutual rather than a one-sided arrangement (Bal et al., 2010).
Within extensive literature on the psychological contract between employer
and employee, little attention has been paid to age differences (Bal et al.,
2008). Bal et al. (2010) find a difference in views on the psychological contract
between those workers with greater or with more restricted future time
perspectives (though again there are sample limitations, in that their study
was conducted with people beyond conventional retirement age for their
country, the Netherlands). Particularly for people with an expansive prospect
in relation to the opportunity aspect of future time perspective, moving on to
other opportunities may feel possible. Those with a more restricted view of
future time perspective, in either of its aspects, may feel trapped by lack of
alternative opportunity and/or by personal limitations. Bal et al. (2008)
hypothesised that with increasing age and ability to regulate emotions, there
would be a reduction in the emotional impact of a perceived breach of the
psychological contract by their employer. While this held true for feelings of
trust towards their employer, the opposite was found in relation to job