Job satisfaction in aging workforces: an analysis of the USA, Japan and Germany

In light of the dramatically aging workforces in many industrialized countries, age diversity management will become a major challenge in human resource management. To successfully handle an age-diverse workforce, it is crucial to understand how employees of different ages can be motivated. This paper analyzes age's moderating role in the relationship between situational job characteristics and job satisfaction. To control for the potential influence of the cultural and institutional context, we use data from the USA, Japan and Germany. Findings show that older employees' job satisfaction is driven by different factors than younger employees: older employees put more emphasis on good relationships with colleagues, while income, advancement opportunities, job security and having an interesting job are less important. However, these effects are mostly nation-dependent, which underlines the importance of conducting cross-cultural or cross-national aging research.