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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Reliable and unproductive?
— Stereotypes of older employees in corporate and news media | | Author(s) | Anne C Kroon, Martine van Selm, Claartje L ter Hoeven, Rens Vliegenthart |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 38, no 1, January 2018 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, January 2018 |
| Pages | pp 166-191 |
| Source | http://www.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Employment of older people ; Employees ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Companies ; Communication media ; Newspapers [publications] ; Quantitative studies ; Netherlands. |
| Annotation | Older employees face a severe employability problem, partly because of dominant stereotypes about them. This study investigates stereotypes of older employees in corporate and news media. Drawing on the Stereotype Content Model, the authors conducted content analysis of coverage by newspapers and corporate media of 50 large-scale Dutch organisations, published between 2006 and 2013. The data revealed that stereotypical portrayals of older employees are more common in news media than in corporate media, and are mixed in terms of valency. Specifically, older employees were positively portrayed with regard to warmth stereotypes, such as trustworthiness, but negatively with regard to competence stereotypes, such as technological competence and adaptability. Additionally, stereotypical portrayals that do not clearly belong to warmth or competence dimensions are found, such as the mentoring role stereotype and the costly stereotype. Because competence stereotypes weigh more heavily in employers' productivity perceptions, these media portrayals might contribute to the employability problem of older employees. The authors suggest that older employees could benefit from a more realistic media debate about their skills and capacities. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-180105008 A |
| Classmark | GC: WK: TOB: X2: UD: UE:6H: 3DQ: 76H |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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