Employee Age and Perceptions of Work in Self-Managing and Traditional Work Groups

Abstract

Self-managing work groups are a form of work design in which employees take responsibility for the group's tasks and have discretion over decisions which impact group performance. To explore the impact of age and work teams on job attitudes, data from 477 employees suggested that self-managed work group members differed from traditional job holders regarding perceived general job satisfaction, perceived control by supervisors, as well as a number of specific dimensions of the work environment. Moreover, while there was evidence of an age effect on attitudes toward supervisory control, there was no joint effect of age by work design on job attitudes, i.e., one's perceived general job satisfaction. Older employees who were members of self-managed work groups were however, more impacted by this form of work design in reporting more positive perceptions of their access to information essential to the performance of their work. These findings suggest that an “older” work force should not be considered a barrier to implementing a work teams approach to job design.