Retirement decision processes, and their antecedents and outcomes

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This study addresses older workers' relationship to work with the intention to nuance the understanding of how working conditions, work organisation (including special means implemented in the organisation to prolong older workers' careers) and workplace leadership relates to work ability, health, motivation and early versus late retirement. As older workers represent a wide range of work abilities, this empirical field includes a variety of adaptations ranging from poor health and expulsion (utstøting) f rom work, to self-determined early retirement of employees with excellent work ability. Previous research on ageing and work in Norway has focused on factors influencing older workers' timing of retirement, as well as mapping of different professions' ear ly retirement patterns and tools to prolong older workers working careers. However, there is a lack of research regarding the individual worker's decision process preceding the act of retirement; little is known about factors influencing the decisions and the potential changes in decisions, and whether these decision processes are different for men and women. Knowledge in this area would increase authorities` and employers' insight into possibilities for influencing older workers' retirement decisions, wh ich might be important as even moderate prolongations of average retirement ages will contribute with more man-years than can be realistically achieved by attempting to reduce sick leaves. Hence the objective of this project is to identify the factors inf luencing older workers retirement decisions. A special focus will be on the relationships between organisational, individual, and societal factors. The research will use both quantitative panel data (NorLAG), and qualitative interviews. The two will be c ompared and contrasted to allow mutual enlightenments of findings and conclusions. The design allows for studying the impacts of special means implemented in the organisation to prolong older workers' careers.