Iästä johtamiseen

Kirjan kuvaus

Moving from concepts of age to management : age management and age diversity in management research. The aim of this doctoral thesis is examine different age groups and age management in organizations. Age management is obviously an important issue in business organizations and in society as a whole, as it is seen as one solution to the problem of an aging workforce. Aging related to workforce will be one of the most important topics in the near future. The situation at least in the EU countries is very challenging in this respect, and Finland is on of the countries heading this challenge very soon. The main argument of this dissertation is that age affects our living in various ways, but one of the most important context of this phenomenon is work. The focus of this research is on age management and its various definitions and interpretations. This dissertation approaches age management by identifying "age" and "aging". It also discusses the relationship between "age" and "management". Age management is used in a wide variety of meanings. Therefore it proved necessary to take a closer look at the relationship between age and management. This research consists of introduction part (part I) and four independent articles (part II). Articles are written in six years period (2005-2011). Articles are connected each other in four ways. Articles has same ontological framework, they has constructionist assumptions of reality, they use qualitative research methods and they all has same conceptual framework. The result of this study emphasizes that people construct aging and age management different ways. Aging is the challenge of leadership, but its more necessary to reflect age in diversity context. The outcomes of the research are theoretical (article 1 and article 2) and empirical (article 3 and article 4). Methods of this study vary from theoretical text analysis (conceptual research, theoretical study) to discourse analysis. The texts under discourse analysis are interviews and other written material.