When age does not harm innovative behavior and perceptions of competence: Testing interdepartmental collaboration as a social buffer

• Author: Florian Kunze,Laura Guillén
• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21953

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

When age does not harm innovative behavior and perceptions

of competence: Testing interdepartmental collaboration as a

social buffer

Laura Guillén

1

| Florian Kunze

2

1

ESMT Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2

University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Correspondence

Laura Guillén, ESMT Berlin, Schlossplatz

1, Berlin 10178, Germany.

Email: laura.guillen@esmt.org

Can older managers overcome stereotypes relating age to low competence? We integrate the

literature on age and cognitive ability with research on innovation to explore whether—and if

so, when—employees' age harms performance and promotability appraisals made by their super-

visors. Multisource, time-lag data from 305 project managers indicate that the negative stereo-

types can be explained through decreased innovative behavior. However, older employees are

not always seen as poorer performers with less potential to be promoted due to their reduced

innovative behavior. Rather, interdepartmental collaboration moderates these effects. Specifi-

cally, older employees with low interdepartmental collaboration are less innovative and receive

worse performance and promotability appraisals than younger employees, but the “age handi-

cap”vanishes when older employees collaborate with members of other departments. Organiza-

tions should foster formal or informal collaboration among units to prevent negative

consequences of an aging workforce.

KEYWORDS

age, age stereotypes, innovative behavior, interdepartmental collaboration, performance

appraisal, promotability

1|INTRODUCTION

The world population is aging at unprecedented speed (The World

Bank, 2015), and age discrimination seems to be a serious concern in

corporate life (Farrell, 2017). For example, two out of three workers

above 40 years of age say they have seen or experienced age discrim-

ination at work (American Association of Retired Persons, 2017). In

the United States, age-related legal claims increased by more than

44% from 1997 to 2014 (American Association of Retired Persons,

2014). One explanation is that age stereotypes depict older

employees as poorer performers (Cuddy, Norton, & Fiske, 2005) and

less promotable (Hansson, DeKoekkoek, Neece, & Patterson, 1997;

Rosen & Jerdee, 1976; Shore & Goldberg, 2005) than younger ones.

Although information is gradually accumulating on older employees'

higher likelihood of receiving unfavorable personnel decisions com-

pared to younger employees, such as getting fewer training opportu-

nities and reduced callback rates in hiring processes (Neumark,

Burn, & Button, 2017; Van der Heijden, 2006; Van Veldhoven &

Dorenbosch, 2008), research on what drives age stereotypes is rather

limited. Not surprisingly, scholars have called for work on this topic in

order to help organizations understand and manage age biases in the

workplace (Kulik, Ryan, Harper, & George, 2014; Kunze, Boehm, &

Bruch, 2013; Posthuma & Campion, 2009). This paper aims to shed

light on this intriguing issue by identifying not only whether but why

and when age is associated with negative age stereotypical percep-

tions of low competence—that is, low performance and promotability

appraisals made by supervisors.

One of the reasons often adduced why older workers are per-

ceived as less competent than their younger counterparts is that they

are less open to new experiences (Jones & Meredith, 1996), more

concerned with realizable pragmatic achievement (Mumford & Gustaf-

son, 1988), and more resistant to change (Morris & Venkatesh, 2000).

All of this ultimately harms their innovative behavior (Rosen & Jerdee,

1976; Van Dalen, Henkens, & Schippers, 2009), defined as the pro-

duction or adoption and implementation of useful novel ideas (Kanter,

1988; Van de Ven, 1986). When individuals are perceived as lacking

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21953

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:301–316. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 301

innovative skills, judgments of personal agency—or competence—drop

(Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). However, is it true that older employees

are less innovative in the first place? Results seem to suggest so, but

there are plenty of examples of older employees who are successful

innovators. In this paper, we use cognitive ability theory to explore

whether and when the negative relationship between age and percep-

tions of being competent at work can be explained through decreased

innovative behavior. We incorporate a social innovation angle to

obtain a more nuanced view of these relationships. In particular, we

suggest that knowledge-sharing mechanisms, such as collaborating

with other employees across different business units and departments

(Ancona & Caldwell, 1992a, 1992b), reduce the negative effects of

the decline in cognitive ability of older workers on innovative behavior

and on performance and promotability evaluations.

Cognitive ability theory (Cattell, 1943) distinguishes between fluid

intelligence (Gf ), which is related to abstract reasoning, memory, and

processing of novel information, and crystallized intelligence (Gc),

which is defined as domain knowledge acquired through education

and experience. Because cognitive ability (Gf ) is related to innovation

(Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011), and because cognitive ability declines with

age (Schaie, 1996), one might expect age to reduce innovative behav-

ior. However, research on this relationship has found inconsistent

results (Eder & Sawyer, 2007; Ng & Feldman, 2008, 2010). We pro-

pose that both age-related decline in Gf and age-related increase in

Gc have effects on innovative behavior, which are channeled into per-

formance and promotability appraisals. In particular, we expect that

the decline in Gf may be partially or fully offset by older adults'

enhanced experience-based knowledge, which refers to the level of

sophistication and complexity of knowledge in a given and specific

job. Experience-based knowledge is required for innovative behavior,

not only as a basis for recombination of ideas but also for the capacity

to understand what is novel, appropriate, and useful (Amabile, 1983).

Yet there is no guarantee that individuals will use their experience-

based knowledge in ways that ignite innovative behavior (Cirillo,

Brusoni, & Valentini, 2013; Dane, 2010; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006).

Contrarily, studies of professional employees have shown that deep

and specialized knowledge can lead to routine contributions, inertia,

and conformity (March, 1991).

Spanning intraorganizational boundaries, reaching out, and collab-

orating with employees from outside the focal groups in which they

usually operate (Ancona & Caldwell, 1988, 1992a; Perry-Smith &

Mannucci, 2015; Taylor & Greve, 2006) are key to overcoming inertia

and promoting innovation (Tortoriello & Krackhardt, 2010). When

individuals span intraorganizational boundaries and collaborate with

others across distinct business areas or departments—that is, high

interdepartmental collaboration,

1

they gain a broader knowledge on

work-related issues and access to diverse ideas and perspectives that

equip them to apply their deep experience-based job knowledge in

innovative ways (Allen & Cohen, 1969; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992a;

Taylor & Greve, 2006). We therefore predict that older workers who

strongly engage in interdepartmental collaboration will be able to cap-

italize on their enhanced experience-based knowledge to compensate

for the effect of the loss of cognitive ability (Gf ) on their innovative

behavior. Figure 1 depicts our overall conceptual model.

We enrich the literature on age and innovation in the workplace

in at least three ways. First, we contribute to the literature on age ste-

reotypes and discrimination in the workplace (Ng & Feldman, 2012;

Posthuma & Campion, 2009) by identifying the innovative behavior of

employees as a core mediator between age and organizational promo-

tion and performance appraisal. Companies might benefit from our

research by gaining information on how to tailor the work environ-

ment to avoid the negative consequences of an aging workforce. Sec-

ond, we aim to clarify the theoretical and empirical inconsistencies in

the literature regarding the relationship between age and innovation-

related behaviors in the workplace. For this purpose, we formulate

and test a hypothesis using arguments from cognitive psychology

(Horn & Cattell, 1967) to explain the potential innovation deficits of

older employees. Finally, we match research on age in the workplace

with ideas from the literature on social networks and intergroup inno-

vation (Alexander & Van Knippenberg, 2014; Ancona & Caldwell,

1992a; Tortoriello & Krackhardt, 2010). In particular, we investigate

interdepartmental collaboration as a social buffering mechanism that

reduces the innovation deficits of older employees. In doing so, we

hope to help build a better conceptual and empirical base for the

thus-far limited and scattered literature on age and innovativeness in

the workplace (Ng & Feldman, 2008, 2012; Warr & Fay, 2001).

2|THEORY DEVELOPMENT

2.1 |Innovative behavior

Individuals' innovative behavior (Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996)

can be conceived as a search process (Campbell, 1960; Romer, 1993)

that includes at least three stages (Singh & Fleming, 2010): “variation”

or generating new ideas; “selection”or evaluating ideas to reject poor

outcomes and identify the most promising novelties; and “retention”

or implementing and adopting ideas. Because innovative behavior

involves not only generating ideas (what is traditionally seen as crea-

tivity; see, e.g., Amabile, 1988) but also discussing and selecting viable

ideas, championing them within the organization, and getting things

done, it is inseparable from social processes (Brown & Duguid, 1991;

Grosser, Venkataramani, & Labianca, 2017; Perry-Smith & Man-

nucci, 2015).

2.2 |Age and innovative behavior in organizations

Cattell's (1943, 1987) distinction between fluid (Gf ) and crystallized

(Gc) forms of intelligence has been widely used to explain age-related

gains and losses in cognitive functioning associated with creativity

(i.e., the idea generation component of innovative behavior).

2.2.1 |Losses

Gf, which is related to abstract reasoning, memory, and processing of

novel information, peaks in an individual's early 20s and then declines

over the life course (Craik & Bialystok, 2006; Schaie, 1994). Because

idea generation involves substantial Gf effort and less Gc, the decline

in cognitive ability primarily affects the “variation”component of inno-

vative behavior. Recent psychological research has compellingly

302 GUILLÉN AND KUNZE