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Age and work-related motives: Results of a meta-analysis
Kooij, D; de Lange, A.H.; Jansen, P.G.W.; Kanfer, R.; Dikkers, J.S.E.
published in
Journal of Organizational Behavior
2011
DOI (link to publisher)
10.1002/job.665
Link to publication in VU Research Portal
citation for published version (APA)
Kooij, D., de Lange, A. H., Jansen, P. G. W., Kanfer, R., & Dikkers, J. S. E. (2011). Age and work-related
motives: Results of a meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(2), 197-225.
https://doi.org/10.1002/job.665
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Download date: 10. Aug. 2022
Age and work-related motives:
Results of a meta-analysis
DORIEN T. A. M. KOOIJ
1
*
, ANNET H. DE LANGE
2
,
PAUL G. W. JANSEN
1
, RUTH KANFER
3
AND JOSJE S. E. DIKKERS
1
1
Department of Management and Organization, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
2
Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen,
The Netherlands
3
Department of Management and Organization, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia,
Atlanta, U.S.A.
Summary An updated literature review was conducted and a meta-analysis was performed to investigate
the relationship between age and work-related motives. Building on theorizing in life span
psychology, we hypothesized the existence of age-related differences in work-related motives.
Specifically, we proposed an age-related increase in the strength of security and social motives,
and an age-related decrease in the strength of growth motives. To investigate life span
developmental theory predictions about age-related differences in control strategies, we also
examined the relationship between age and intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Consistent with our
predictions, meta-analytic results showed a significant positive relationship between age and
intrinsic motives, and a significant negative relationship between age and strength of growth
and extrinsic motives. The predicted positive relation between age and strength of social and
security motives was only found among certain subgroups. Implications of these findings for
work motivation and life span theories and future research are discussed. Copyright # 2010
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Introduction
As evidence for the aging and dejuvenation of workforces across the developed world grows (OECD,
2005), organizational researchers and practitioners have focused greater attention on the charac-
teristics, expectations, needs, and performance of mature, or older workers (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004;
Peterson & Spiker, 2005; Warr, 2001). Research on the relationship between age and dimensions of
performance (Ng & Feldman , 2008), on age-stereotyping (Barnes-Farrell, 1993; Cleveland & Landy,
1983; Van der Heijden, 2006; Van der Heijden, De Lange, Demerouti, & Van der Heijde, 2009), on the
person and situat ion determinants of older worker decisions on bridge employment (Wang, Zhan, Liu,
& Shultz, 2008), and on successful aging at work (Abraham & Hansson, 1995) represent only a few of the many
Journal of Organizational Behavior
J. Organiz. Behav. (2010)
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.665
* Correspondence to: Dorien T. A. M. Kooij, Department of Management and Organization, VU University Amsterdam, De
Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: tkooij@feweb.vu.nl
Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 30 November 2008
Revised 28 August 2009
Accepted 1 September 2009
approaches that have been taken to understanding the complex effects of adult development on workplace
behaviors (also see, Greller & Stroh, 1995; Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, & Dikkers, 2008; Warr, 2007).
For human resource managers, the influence of aging on employe e motivation represents one of the
most pressing challenges to arise in this decade. In many occupational sectors, ranging from nursing to
engineering, the aging workforce portends a potential perfect workforce storm over the next decade. As
a growing number of senior employees (that form part of the Baby Boomer cohort) retire from their
jobs, organizations face strong challenges in terms of finding sufficient replacement workers and
preventing knowledge loss. Recognizing this problem, several large organizations have implemented
incentive and work redesign plans to discourage retirement -related turnover among older workers (see,
e.g., Dychtwald, Erickson, & Morison, 2006). To date, however, most interventions have been based on
informal surveys and economically-guided assumptions about the primacy of compensation as the key
determinant of work motivation among older workers. Although compensation and health clearly
represent two key influences on the employee decision to remain on the job, scattered survey results and
empirical findings also suggest that other factors, such as motives, play a non-trivial role in retirement-
related turnover (Hansson, DeKoekkoek, Neece, & Patterson, 1997; Rau & Adams, 2005; Zappala
`
,
Depolo, Fraccaroli, Guglielmi, & Sarchielli, 2008). The purpose of this study is to begin to address this
gap in the literature by organizing and empirically evaluating the scientific evidence on the relationship
between age and work-related motives.
Age and Motive-related Factors
Most organizational scientists agree that needs, motives and values are importantly influenced by adult
development and work experiences across the life span. What is less clear, however, is whether and how
these determinants of work behavior differ in strength across the life span. One of the earliest
systematic attempts to address this question in the organizational literature was provided by Rhodes, in
her 1983 review of age-related differences in work attitudes and behavior. Of the 185 studies she
identified that explicitly addressed age, only ten studies directly examined the relationship between age
and needs (e.g., Hall & Mansfield, 1975; Porter, 1963). Based on these studies, Rhodes (1983)
concluded that security and affiliation need strength tends to increase with age, and that there was some
support for a decrease in the strength of self-actualization and growth needs. Rhodes (1983) also
reported four studies investigating the relationship between age and changing work values (e.g., Wright
& Hamilton, 1978). Results of these studies indicated that preferences for extrinsic job characteristics,
such as good pay, and having friendly co-workers and supervisors increased with age, whereas
preferences for opportunities for growth decreased with age. Although Rhodes’ review revealed
important insights about the relation between age, needs, and work values, the few studies conducted
through the 1980s were largely descriptive and difficult to interpret in the absence of an overarching
theoretical framework.
In the 25 years since Rhodes’ (1983) review, significant progress has been made in the psychology of
aging (see, e.g., Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980; Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006). Several prominent
theories of adult development have emerged, includi ng Selection, Optimization, and Compensation
(SOC) theory (Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999), Socio-Emotional Selectivity Theory
(Carstensen, 1995), and the Life Span Theory of Control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). Building upon
these theoretical models, Kanfer and Ackerman (2004) and Warr (2001) have recently proposed
complementary work-specific formulations for how age-related changes in motives influence work
motivation (see also Baltes & Dickson, 2001). In this paper, we employ these work-oriented models to
Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. (2010)
DOI: 10.1002/job
D. T. A. M. KOOIJ ET AL.
organize the empirical literature and conduct an updated, theory-driven meta-analytic review of the
relationship between age and work-related motives.
Aging refers to all possible changes that occur in biological, psychological, social, and even societal
functioning at various points in the life cycle (Baltes et al., 1999; De Lange, Taris, Jansen, Smulders,
Houtman, & Kompier, 2006; Sterns & Doverspike, 1989). Although other important indicators of age
may be useful, most organizational studies of age- related influences on work behavior have used
chronological age. The use of chronological age also facilitates translation of findings to the
organizational environment, where chronological age is the principal indicator of aging in the
workplace. Consequently, we focus our review of the literature on the relationships between work-
related motives and chronological age.
In the following section, we address three issues that provide the foundation for our meta-analytic
review. First, we discuss the conceptual rationale for extending our review to include need and value
measures as well as motive measures. Second, we discuss the rationale for the taxonom ic structure of
motives used in the meta-analysis. Third, we present the theoretical rationale for each of our hypotheses
about the relationship between age and work-related motive class.
The scope and content of work-related motives
The first foundational issue to be confronted in our analysis of age-related differences in motives
pertains to how motives are conceptualized and measured. At the broadest level, motives refer to an
individual’s propensity or preference for a particular class of outcome s, such as high performance, high
pay, and friendly co-workers (Sagie, Elizur, & Koslowsky, 1996). Individual differences in motives are
typically assessed by asking persons to indicate the importance or value they attach to attainment of
specific work outcomes, such as pay, promot ions, and interesting work (Hattrup, Mueller, & Aguirre,
2007). Within individuals, motive structures indicate the relative prominence or salience of different
classes of motives. Age-related changes in motive structures are thus reflected in age-related changes in
salient or preferred work conditions or job characteristics.
In organizational psychology, individual differences in motives have been measured in a number of
ways. Although most motive measures are self-report and thus presume explicit knowledge of preferred
work characteristics and outcomes, motives may also arise from non-conscious sources and influence
preferences without explicit awareness (Baard, Deci, & Ryan, 2004). Early work motivation theories
and research (e.g., Alderfer, 1969; Maslow, 1943) emphasized needs, or the partially non-conscious
drivers of preferences for particular job characteristics and work outcomes. However, the self-report
measures used to assess work-related needs are closely related and often share item content with
measures used to assess consciously-mediated motives and values (e.g., compare the Growth need
strength scale by Hackman and Oldham (1974) and the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire by
Rounds et al. (1981)). As such, work-related measures of needs, motives, and values tend to be used
interchangeably in the work motivation literature.
Nonetheless, as Baard et al. (2004), Dos e (1997), Macnab and Fitzsimmons (1987), Pryor (1982),
and others have noted, work-related needs and values can be distinguished conceptually. In contrast to
needs, work values operate as secondary drivers of action that are determ ined by needs as well as
socialization, cognition, and experience (Kalleberg, 1977; Latham & Pinder, 2005; Ronen, 1994; Steel
& Konig, 2006). As such, work values, representing in part the expression of needs, are closely related
to but not identical to needs (Ronen, 1994). In the organizational psychology literature, the conceptual
distinction between needs as unconscious forces that promote preferences for particular job conditions
and outcomes, and values as secondary drivers of those preferences, is often blurred by the use of need
Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. (2010)
DOI: 10.1002/job
AGE AND WORK-RELATED MOTIVES
and value measures that contain the same items (e.g., Mesner Andolsek & Stebe, 2004 and Phillips &
Bedeian, 1994).
Needs and values have also been studied independently for different purposes. Work values, for
example, may refer to importance of work outcomes (e.g., Super, 1973) or to a system of ethics, which
determines what is good or what ought to be done (e.g., Wollack, Goodale, Witjing, & Smith, 1971).
Dose (1997) proposed that work values be conce ptualized in two dimensions: (1) whether the values are
held personally or socially; and (2) whether the values represent a preference or a moral element. From
a motivational perspective, work values that relate to motives pertain to personally held preferences for
job characteristics or work outcomes (e.g., Loscocco & Kalleberg, 1988; Sagie et al., 1996).
Modern approaches tend to emphasize individual differences in motives that encompass the strength
of unconscious needs, motivational orientations, and conscious values that an individual maintains with
respect to particular job characteristics and work outcomes (e.g., see Latham & Pinder, 2005; Sagie
et al., 1996). Consistent with this perspective, we include all studies in our meta-analysis that asse ss the
relationship between age and work-related needs, personally-held work values,andwork-related motives.
The taxonomy of work-related motives in terms of content
The taxonomic structure of motives has long been a topic of lively controversy in work motivation (see
Campbell & Pritchard, 1976; Kanfer, 1990). Different work motivation theories posit different motive
structures, such as Maslow’s (1943) five motive classes, Alderfer’s (1969) three motive classes, Deci’s
(1975) two motive classes, and Barrick, Stewart, and Piotrowski’s (2002) three motivational orientation
classes. Similarly, Ronen (1994) has found that work values can be grouped to reflect many of these
same motive classes. In their review of the work motivation literature, Campbell and Pritchard (1976)
argued for a basic distinction between lower-order and higher-order motives. Lower order motives refer
to activated conce rns regarding features of the work environment that affect the individual’s welfare,
including for example job security, pay, and safe working conditions. In contrast, higher-order motives
pertain to activated concerns for features of the work environment that affect the individual’s
attainment of psychological needs, such as achievement and affiliation.
Recent conceptualizations of motive organization tend to decompose higher-level motives into two
categories; namely, motives related to opportunities in the workplace for personal growth and motives
related to affiliation and communion with others (e.g., Barrick et al., 2002). Consistent with theories of
aging described below, we organize work-related motive measures into three broad categories: Growth-
related motives, social/affiliative motives, and security/maintenance motives. According to humanistic
work motivation theories and theories of achievement motivation, growth-related motive measures
assess the perceived importance or preference for job characteristics and work outcomes that relate
broadly to achievement and mastery (Dweck, 1999). However, consistent with theories of aging,
growth-related motives in this study are more narrowly defined in terms of measures that assess growth
motives pertaining to the self and attainment of higher levels of functioning. Social motive measures
assess the importance or preference for job characteristics and work outcomes that pertain to affiliation
and collaboration with others in the workplace, including co-workers, subordinates, and clients. The
third motive category, security motives, includes measures that assess the importance or preference for
job features and work outcomes that satisfy material and physiological desires related to one’s general
welfare, such as pay and security.
The taxonomy of work-related motives in terms of locus
A second p rominent organization of motives in the work motivation literature distinguishes between
intrinsic and extrinsic motives (Deci, 1975). Intrinsic motives refer to job characteristics and work
Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. (2010)
DOI: 10.1002/job
D. T. A. M. KOOIJ ET AL.
