Page 245 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

9. AGE DISCRIMINATION
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age stereotypes, but many questions remain as to when such stereotypes
play a role in evaluations of older workers (Landy et al., 1995).
Avolio (1992) points out that most research on age and performance
has not described contextual issues, such as opportunities for retraining,
which may influence this relationship. Other aspects of the social context,
including age norms (Lawrence, 1988), the manager's age (Shore et al., 2003;
Tsui et al., 2002), and ages of workgroup members (Cleveland & Shore,
1992; Ferris et al., 1991; Perry et al., 1999) have been studied. This research
provides some evidence that performance ratings may be influenced by
the social context, such that older employees are less likely to be evaluated
highly when compared with younger referents.
Another contextual factor is the availability of objective information for
evaluating performance. Liden et al. (1996) found that for a sample of sales
representatives, employee age was positively related to both objective and
supervisor-rated performance. They suggested that when objective perfor­
mance data are available, any supplemental subjective performance ratings
will not be unfairly biased against older workers. However, meta-analytic
evidence of the moderating impact of rating type on the age-performance
relationship has been mixed (McEvoy & Cascio, 1989; Waldman & Avolio,
1986). A final contextual factor that may be important for influencing the
link between age and performance is the actual job requirements (Avolio
& Waldman, 1989).
Older employees may behave differently toward their managers than
do younger employees, in ways that affect how their manager evaluates
performance. Research on influence tactics suggests that employees use in­
fluence tactics to build relationships with the manager, and the manager in
turn rates the employee more highly (Wayne & Liden, 1995). Interestingly,
Ferris and King (1992) found that older nurses were less likely to engage in
ingratiation, which was associated with less liking by the supervisor and
subsequently lower performance ratings. In short, although there is little
evidence of a significant relationship between age and actual work perfor­
mance, there is evidence that nonwork factors, such as managers' stereo­
types and employees' use of impression management may result in man­
agers providing lower ratings to older workers than to younger workers.

Absenteeism

Recent information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2001) shows very
little actual difference between older and younger workers in terms of total
absence rate. Although the link between age and absenteeism has been
well studied, it is rather poorly understood. It appears that differences in
findings across studies may be attributable to two major factors; raters'