How do older employees achieve successful ageing at work through generativity in the digital workplace? A self-affirmation perspective

Abstract

The necessity of helping older employees achieve career success in the digital workplace has drastically increased. Drawing on self-affirmation theory, we postulate that using enterprise social media (ESM) to conduct intergenerational knowledge sharing (IGKS) is a generativity and self-affirmation behaviour in the digital workplace, and investigate how it would help older employees enhance job performance and thus achieve successful ageing at work. Study 1 (a three-wave time-lagged survey study with 262 older employees over 40 years old) demonstrates that, older employees' IGKS in ESM positively affects their job performance via personal needs-job supplies fit. Perceived younger colleagues' knowledge disseminative capacity can weaken, but perceived younger colleagues' knowledge absorptive capacity can strengthen the above indirect effect. We replicated the first study's findings in Study 2 using a two-wave survey with 161 older employees over 50 years old. Additionally, we found that older employees' IGKS in ESM positively influences their job performance via a serial mediation of organization-based self-esteem and needs-supplies fit. Perceived younger colleagues' knowledge disseminative capacity can weaken, but knowledge absorptive capacity can strengthen the serial mediation relationship. These findings contribute to integrating IGKS and ESM literature to improve the theoretical framework of successful ageing at work.