THE FACTORS AFFECTING THE ELDERLY EMPLOYEES ADAPTING TO CHANGES: STUDY ON SOES OF CHINA

Abstract

This study aims to examine how the resistance to change of elderly employees and decision-making impact the organizations based in the Mainland of China, and how the personalities, education level and organizational culture as factors affect the elderly employees’ decision making on adapting to changes and learning the new skills. Based on the published literature, there is a research gap in studies of the behavior of elderly employees in China. Therefore, this study intends to provide empirical evidence towards the selected variables, where a questionnaire was used as the instrument for collecting the needed data. There were 312 participants aged over 55 years, both female and male working in government-owned organizations, who had filled up the questionnaire. The findings indicate that elderly employees are still beneficial for the organizations, whereas personalities and education were found to have little impact on adapting to changes and learning abilities. Meanwhile, the organizational culture has a positive effect on encouraging employees adapting changes and learn new skills. This study might have several limitations, e.g., the sample size only covered a small number of elderly employees in State Owned Enterprises (SOE). Furthermore, this study only covered three variables as the factors affecting the elderly employees on adapting to changes and learning new skills. Further work might consider more variables such as motivation, employees’ engagement as variables as well.