When is age dissimilarity harmful for organisational identification? The moderating role of age stereotypes and perceived age-related treatment

Due to demographic changes the workforce is becoming more age-diverse, which creates a management challenge that organisations must address. Drawing on the relational demography literature and on the social identity approach, we use theories on category salience to develop hypotheses on the way negative age stereotypes (a normative fit mechanism) and psychological age diversity climate (a situational accessibility mechanism) differentially moderate the impact of age dissimilarity on organisational identification. Moreover, we propose that negative age stereotypes and psychological age diversity climate jointly interact to influence the relationship between age dissimilarity and organisational identification. Based on a sample of 443 schoolteachers from 16 secondary schools in Italy, results from multi-level linear modelling analyses supported the hypothesized two-way and three-way interactions. Findings confirmed the moderating role of both negative age stereotypes and psychological age diversity climate in the expected directions. Beyond that, we found that the relationship between age dissimilarity and organisational identification is most negative when individual negative age stereotypes are strong and perceived psychological age diversity climate is low. Implications for research on relational demography and diversity climate are discussed, along with practice implications.