Images of older workers Content, causes, and consequences

Older workers experience unequal treatment in the workplace, a problem that has been ascribed to an image problem faced by this group. The central aim of this dissertation is to provide an in-depth understanding of media’s role in reinforcing beliefs of older workers and trace its consequences. More specifically, the dissertation investigates (1) how older workers are portrayed in Dutch national newspaper coverage and corporate communication by the largest Dutch organizations by means of a content analysis, (2) how this portrayal is influencing perceptions and the experience of age discrimination using an experimental and longitudinal design, and (3) managers’ communication barriers to accommodate older workers’ employability by means of a qualitative and quantitative interview study. The results show that the debate about older workers in news coverage and corporate communication is complex and highly contested, and contains a wide variety of positive and negative stereotypes. Most of these stereotypes indicate low levels of competence and high levels of warmth, the core dimensions of the Stereotype Content Model. Both on the individual and aggregate level, the dissertation finds that the effects of negative media stereotypes outweigh the effects of positive media stereotypes. Last, it is concluded that a lack of constructive managerial communication reinforces the spiral of decreased access to employability-development opportunities among older workers. The dissertation contributes to our insights in the origins of widely held images of older workers, but also in ways to challenge those images and contribute to one of the key problems of current labor markets.