Frank Walter

Given an unprecedented increase in human longevity, issues surrounding the management of an aging workforce have taken center-stage in organizational research. The academic leadership literature has only recently turned towards considering age as a substantive concept, however, such that important unresolved questions remain about the role of leaders’ as well as employees’ age for leadership processes and outcomes. In an ongoing research project, we examine age-related influences on the management of conflicts between leaders and their employees. The presentation focuses on the project’s initial two phases, in which we aim to better understand how leaders’ age shapes (a) their strategies for managing such conflicts and (b) the consequences associated with these strategies. Phase 1 is in a relatively advanced stage. It draws from socioemotional selectivity theory to examine the role of leaders’ age for their use of two distinct strategies of avoidant conflict management. Across two independent field studies, we find that conflict type (i.e., task vs. relationship conflict) moderates the linkage between leaders’ age and pretending conflict management (i.e., avoiding the conflict while maintaining the interpersonal interaction), but not the linkage between leaders’ age and passive domination (i.e., avoiding interpersonal interaction while enforcing one’s own position). Despite some ambiguity, these findings illustrate that older (vs. younger) leaders may be more adept at tailoring their conflict management strategies to the requirements of the conflict situation at hand. Phase 2 is in an earlier stage, and it moves towards an outcome-oriented perspective. We draw from theory on age stereotypes to examine how the same conflict management strategies may be more or less effective among leaders of different ages. In an initial, exploratory field study, we find that leader age moderates the relationship between distinct constructive (i.e., problem-solving) and destructive (i.e., forcing) conflict management strategies on the one hand, and employees’ counterproductive reactions on the other. Broadly, it appears that employees react more favorably to older (vs. younger) leaders’ respective behaviors. We currently develop follow-up studies to replicate these findings, extend them towards other outcomes, and uncover underlying mechanisms. Taken together, the project aims to promote a novel, more comprehensive understanding of age-related implications for the management of leader-employee conflicts and, in doing so, it strives to advance theory on leadership in modern organizations.