Age diversity and its performance implications - Analysing a major future workforce trend

Demographic change, increased retirement age, and efforts to shorten the duration of education will lead to a more age-diverse workforce in future. Age diversity’s successful management will therefore become an important business issue for company practitioners. Unfortunately, knowledge concerning the outcomes of diversity in general and age diversity in particular lacks consistency. On the basis of the similarity-attraction paradigm, social identity and self-categorisation theory, token status, and inequality, some scholars argue that diversity has negative effects. On the basis of the information/decision-making perspective, other scholars predict that diversity has positive outcomes.