Fundamental attitudes and values attributed to diversity in general or to specific diversity dimensions.
Published in Chapter:
Leveraging Age Diversity in Times of Demographic Change: The Crucial Role of Leadership
Katharina Janz (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany), Claudia Buengeler (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany), Robert A. Eckhoff (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany), Astrid C. Homan (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and Sven C. Voelpel (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany & EBS Business School, Germany)
Copyright: © 2012
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-1812-1.ch010
Abstract
With demographic change, organizations today are seeing changes in societal make-up translated to the composition of their workforce. In the future, younger and older employees will have to work together synergistically to achieve good performance. The authors argue that it will be largely up to leaders to prevent the negative effects of age diversity, i.e. social categorization and intergroup bias, and to facilitate the positive effects of age diversity, i.e. the sharing of unique knowledge resources held by young and old. The authors argue that certain leadership behaviors and especially their combinations have great promise in leading diverse teams, and highlight why they should be used in conjunction with positive beliefs about diversity.