Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

At establishment level, two surprising results emerged. Firstly, the age structure of the
workforce seems not to influence the externalisation and internalisation decisions of Polish
and German firms, contrary to Mares´ (2001) findings. Secondly, firms apply a different
logic with regard to the treatment of older workers depending on the field of personnel
policy – while they tend to treat them differently from younger workers or applicants in the
field of recruitment or the termination of the work contract, they apply a rather uniform
policy in the field of health and integration management and further training.
The fact that older workers are regarded as a problem group and flexibility resource in
exit and recruitment policy confirms the validity of the push thesis. It also demonstrates that
assumptions of neo-classical labour market theory are still shared by a large part of the
management and reflected in actual policies at firm level. Moreover, the concept of
alternative roles is confirmed – the alternative roles of retiree or grandparent justify the
externalisation of older workers and bring about a collusion of interests between employee
representatives, the management and the employees themselves. That connection is
especially vivid in the Polish case.
The next sections (5.1. till 5.3.) will summarise the most important results of my study.
The focus will be on the conducive and detrimental factors which have an impact on the
prolongation of working life. I will recur to explanatory variables depicted in the first
theoretical sections (2.1. till 2.4.) of that study, and link my results with findings from
literature.
5.1. Determinants at Institutional Level
In sum, there exist more institutional chances than barriers to a prolongation of working
life in Germany, while the opposite is true for Poland (see section 3.4.).
When starting with barriers to the prolongation of working life located at the
institutional level (encompassing both statutory and collective bargaining regulations), the
inconsistent mode of policy-making in both Germany and Poland has to be mentioned. First
attempts at stopping the early exit trend were conducted in both countries in mid-1990s. In
the case of Germany, long phasing-in periods of malus rules for claiming early retirement
pensions limited their impact on the actual behaviour of individuals. More strict reforms
introduced at the turn of the century were first stopped by the subsequent government. In
the case of Poland, the ´big bang´ reformers of 1999 also backed off from some attempts to
stop the early exit trend (inter al. the gender-differentiated retirement age). Those ´stop and
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