This document discusses the concept of "successful aging" and its implications for older workers. It analyzes how successful aging frames aging as an individual responsibility achieved through continued work and activity. Some job search websites aim to position older workers as "successful" founders and experts, while others frame them as victims in need of help due to ageism. The document examines the discursive strategies used to legitimize these differing constructions of older worker identity.

1. Work, Age and Retirement Research Network
Business School
University of Huddersfield
27 February 2013

2. • Successful ageing: Scope and critical analysis
• Implications for older workers
• Discourse of successful ageing
• Research study
• Successful older workers: Founders and experts
• Unsuccessful older workers: Victims with special needs
• Conclusions

3.  Rowe & Kahn (1987, 1998) distinguished their
concept of ‘Successful Ageing’ from ‘usual’ ageing by
◦ Low risk of disease and disability
◦ High physical and mental functioning
◦ Active engagement with life including productive
activity
 Models of ‘successful’, ‘positive’, ‘active’ and
‘productive’ ageing feature widely
◦ in society
◦ in organizational settings
 The ability to do paid work has been a key feature

5. Individual responsibility
Behaviourally determined
Self-efficacy
Productivity through work
Physical and mental activity
Available as a lifestyle choice
Economic and social
independence

6. Applies neo-liberal principles to manage
an ageing population
Attempts to ‘fix’ politically acceptable
versions of older age
Commodifies later life
Privileges individualistic values of the
‘success ethic’
Reinforces individual responsibility for the
outcomes of our life ‘choices’

7.  ‘New orthodoxy of  Seen as the ‘older worker
problem’ (Samorodov, 1999)
ageing subjectivity is
identified, restricting  ‘Unhealthy, less mentally astute,
and as resisting change or
the social education’ (Buyens et al, 2009:
contribution of older 104)
adults to work and Positioned as marginal and
work-like activities

disadvantaged
(Moulaert & Biggs, ◦ as likely victims of corporate
2013) downsizing (Arrowsmith &
McGoldrick, 1997)
◦ as choice of last resort in
BUT recruitment (Lahey, 2008; Van
Dalen et al, 2009)
 Can older workers access a
‘successful’ self ?

9.  Successful ageing vision ‘a series of
individual or entrepreneurial choices’
(Tretheway, 2001: 187)
 But enterprise discourse is reproduced
through constructions of older workers
denying them access to the identity of
‘enterprising self’ (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2008)
 A key resource in asserting entrepreneurial
identity is juxtaposition against ‘old farts’
with their old-fashioned work practices,
values and priorities (Down & Reveley, 2004)

10.  Data
◦ 19 job search websites predominantly targeting older
workers
◦ Listed on UK Government website (Age Positive)
 Theoretical framework
◦ Social constructionism and discourse
 Methodology
◦ Discourse analysis (Wetherell & Potter, 1992) and Vaara
et al (2006)
 Research questions
◦ How do age and success intersect to construct particular
versions of older worker identity, how are these
legitimated and what are their implications?

11.  Legitimation strategies  Examples
◦ Narrativization e.g. ‘[Individual name] set up [recruitment
company] in 1996. She has over forty years
employment history experience in the recruitment industry working
for some of the top agencies in senior
and event focusing positions’ [Recruitment company website]
founders’ attention ‘Discussing what they were going to do in the
future they jokingly referred to themselves as
on older worker being a pair of Dinosaurs and considered that
issues it must be difficult for older people to find
work - due to the apparent ageist culture that
◦ Rationalization e.g. seemed to exist in larger companies’
[recruitment website]
explanation of their ‘Seeking no government grants or subsidies and
rationale towards age no special favours from employers, she challenged
traditional recruitment practices and won over her
and work 'employer customers' with her unique methods’
[job search website]
◦ Authorization e.g. [individual]s achievements were recognised
externally endorsed early in 2005 when she was a finalist in the
Leicestershire Business Woman of the Year
business success Awards. In addition [job search company]
won a Government Age Positive Award in
2004 and 2006.’
[Job search website]

12.  Legitimation strategies:
 Example
[Individual name](OBE),
◦ Narrativization e.g. inventor.
work / life history [name] was born in Kilburn,
London, in 1937 and one of
◦ Authorization e.g. his main passions in life has
externally recognised been inventing, especially
inventing products that might
success (OBE and help the physically
design award) handicapped. In 1993 he
famously invented the
◦ Normalization e.g. of clockwork radio and in 1996
his activities through this 'Freeplay' radio won the
BBC Design Award for Best
exceptionalization Product and Best Design.
[Name]continues his tireless
◦ Moralization e.g. work to promote the concept
helping others of 'personal power', as well as
his campaign to establish a
Royal Academy of Inventors.
New Deal 50 Plus

13.  Strategies of positive self-presentation, and
negative other-presentation
 Use of discourses of successful ageing and
enterprise that :
◦ Positions success as an outcome determined by individual
choice
◦ Promotes the notion of successful ageing as a matter of
individual agency
◦ Legitimizes the authority and prerogative of these
‘successful’ older workers to dispense advice to others who
are unable to access this identity

14.  Examples
 Legitimation strategies ‘Due to mergers, downsizing, business
◦ Rationalization e.g. of failure or simply the ageism practiced
by some large multi-national
victim status as due to companies, many senior and middle
managers over the age of 45 find
ageism in the UK themselves out of work through no fault
labour market of their own’
[recruitment company website]
◦ Narrativization e.g.
story of older workers ‘We understand the frustration of not
as victims being given an opportunity to utilise your
skills, expertise and life experiences
◦ Moralization e.g. because too many employers and
recruitment organisations adopt ageist
discursive device of recruitment policies’
empathy but also [job search website]
(limited) responsibility
to organizations

15.  Legitimation Strategies
 Examples
‘If you have been finding it difficult getting a
◦ Normalization e.g. job, or work that pays a decent wage, then this
dedicated programme of help may be just what
decline with age, you need.
Perhaps you would just like some help and
difficulty finding work advice, or perhaps you feel slightly lost or
lacking in confidence. Maybe you feel like you
◦ Authorization e.g. don't have the right skills and need some help to
get them. Whatever your reason, New Deal is
reference to labour here to help you’
[Government website for unemployed]
market
◦ Narrativization e.g. it's a tough world out there, and to get that position
hypothetical you will have to compete against applicants from all
ages. The skills and tricks to land a position that you
construction of job take for granted, are possibly not quite as potent
and useful as they could be. They are skills that
search scenario to once that new position is yours might not be needed
again.
support the There comes a time when some dynamic tools and
new ideas could be a positive move forward -
construction The tools we have on offer can be used as a vital
part of your back to work strategy and campaign...
[job search website]

16.  Older workers as victims draws on external factor
i.e. ageism in labour market discourse
 But older workers as having ‘special needs’ draws
on the individual and the interpersonal at the
expense of the institutional and structural
 Discursive resource that founders draw on to
establish themselves as both paternalistic
protectors and experts
 Individual and interpersonal are converted into
needs that can be met
 Enterprise to sell services but also to manage job
expectations in line with limited job opportunities

17. Successful Unsuccessful
Older worker older worker
Founders Victims
Special
Experts
Needs

18. http://ageatwork.wordpress.com/