Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Another result of my studies, which can be read from Table 19, is that there are no firms
which have a thoroughly internalising personnel policy towards older workers, and no firms
which have a thoroughly externalising policy. Thus, I can confirm the statement of
Naschold et al. (1994b: 142) about an „homogeneous age-selective externalisation
strategy“ only with regard to employee exit policies (which was the only realm of company
policy taken into account by Naschold et al.), but not when assessing the overall shape of
HRM.
Other evidence partly shows a perpetuation of mechanisms revealed by Naschold et al.
(1994b) in the 1980s, and partly a break with those mechanisms. One similarity is the fact
that firms still do not primarily pursue a “productivity logic” in their use of early retirement
and do not aim at rejuvenation but rather at stabilising the employment shares of ´50 pluses´
(ibid: 148-9, 153). Another similarity is the continuing cooperation of the management and
the works council on issues of early retirement in such a way as to make the externalisation
acceptable to the workers concerned both in terms of secured income and adherence to the
norm of “employment stability” (ibid: 151, 153), and the “constrained choice” nature of
early retirement options for employees (no integrative option like in Japan, the USA or
Sweden is available; ibid: 153).
The difference to evidence presented by Naschold et al. (1994b) lies therein that not all
older workers nowadays directly enter retirement after ceasing work but rather go through
stages of unemployment cushioned with severance payments, disability pension receipt, or
the ´free-time phase´ of the early retirement scheme (ibid: 144). Moreover, the use of early
retirement does not lead to a levelling off of age structures across different branches as
apparently was the case in the 1980s and early 1990s (ibid: 145). Last but not least, the
assessment of Naschold et al. (1994b: 142) that German firms view older workers as a
´flexibility potential´ and not as a vital human resource, and that they do not attempt to
develop a systematic policy aimed at their integration has to be qualified. My firm case
studies have shown that there is – admittedly a low – number of firms which take into
account the ageing of the workforce and develop holistic HRM strategies as a response, and
a somewhat larger number of firms which address the demographic challenge in singular
policy fields like health management or further training. Moreover, the firm-specific knowhow
of older workers is being increasingly recognised as a resource – firms develop
methods for know-how transfer, and seek to retain singular older know-how carriers or to
re-integrate them as retirees via a consultancy contract.
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