Doing age in institutional interaction

Workforce is changing with our society: it’s the first time that four different generations share the same work environment. This confrontation may influence the perception of age identity in the workplace and foster the creation of conflicts and age-related stereotypes. Ageist practices have been found in previous studies, but an extension beyond cross-sectional surveys is required to achieve a more complex understanding of ageism and how it interacts with other forms of discrimination in an everyday work context. In a social constructivist perspective, age is embodied in our society, related to culture and shared representations in specific settings. This doctoral study analyses how age-related categories are jointly constructed in organizational context through a qualitative analysis of social interactions between employer and employees. A layered analysis of multiple data source will be developed: textual documents (HR polices on age inclusion, website pages, job descriptions, LinkedIn posts), recording of interactions between employee and HR professionals or managers (job interviews, performance report), interviews with employers and employees. This multi-level analysis enrich the explanatory ability of the study and allows practical implications towards specific organizational settings. The findings will enable us to understand how the study of interactions happening in work environment can explain the origin of age-discriminative or, on the other side, age- inclusive processes. In practice, the results will help HR practitioners to develop effective polices that steam from an analysis of interactions really happening in organizations