Work and Leisure

224 John T. Haworth and A. J. Vealemployees. In many cases job performance may be better in older workersthrough greater experience, though learning and development initiativesshould be available to older workers and not just younger workers. Personalitytraits have been found to differ by age; one possibility is that olderindividuals will tend to outperform younger ones in roles requiring goodinterpersonal relationships and dependable attention to detail and deadlines.Modifications of working conditions may also serve to harness older persons’motives. Older people may be less interested in a high level of job demandsand higher salary. Some may be particularly effective if they were permittedto work on a part-time or intermittent basis. Warr (2001) notes that in orderto reduce unfair discrimination against older individuals the focus should beon job-relevant attributes rather than stereotyped judgements about olderpeople as a whole.In ‘A Positive Approach to Older Workers’ in the What is? series producedby the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield University, Peter Warr statesthat ‘Without changes in the culture of an organization explicitly valuingpeople irrespective of their age, improvements will not be sustained’. He alsoadvocates that it is important for individuals to review their own approach topositive ageing, which would include a concern for employability as circumstanceschange, and the maintenance of learning motivation and confidence,which may not always be easy as workers become increasingly divorced fromnew learning as they grow older.Processes of changeIndividuals make lifestyle choices within constraints imposed by the widersocial system. The question arises as to the extent to which the social systemis open to change by conscious collective action.Issues of participation in society are now on the research agenda in theUnited Kingdom and Europe in relation to issues of governance. Ian Gibson(2002), Chair of the UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science andTechnology, considers that many controversies about new technologies,health risks and democracy reduce to questions of good governance. Hestresses that we need to design processes, institutions and rules in a way thatallows concerns to be voiced, heard and acted upon, and thus contribute tothe creation of trust. Onora O’Neil (2002), in the BBC Reith Lectures 2002 AQuestion of Trust, considers that some of the regimes of accountability andtransparency, developed in the United Kingdom since the mid-1980s or so,may damage rather than reinforce trust. She considers that we need intelligentaccountability; to focus less on grandiose ideals of transparancy and rathermore on limiting deception; and to provide assessable reasons for trustingand mistrusting, particularly in the mass media. The ESRC Democracy andParticipation Programme includes research into civic participation, trust andsocial capital (e.g. Halpern et al. 2002). The new European Commission