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Job crafting and organizational resources support impact on older workers’ bridge employment intentions: the role of psychological contract types

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Abstract

Enhancing older workers’ bridge employment intentions is critical in the current context of an aging workplace. Based on psychological contract and social exchange theories, this study explores the person-context transactions process in increasing bridge employment intentions. We conducted two sub-studies, Study 1 (N = 231) used two-wave time-lagged survey data to explore the mediating role of psychological contract types in the effect of three job crafting strategies on bridge employment intentions; Study 2 (N = 156) used a two-by-two (high emotional support/baseline × high/low compensation support) between-subjects experimental design to further explore the differences in the moderation of organizational resource support in the effect of psychological contract types on bridge employment intentions. Results in Study 1 found that accommodative and utilization crafting enhanced bridge employment intentions through shaping relational contract, and developmental crafting enhanced bridge employment intentions through shaping transactional contract. Results in Study 2 found that emotional support (perceived inclusive experience) boosted relationship-oriented older workers’ intention to bridge employment, but compensation support (perceived) boosted transaction-oriented older workers’ intention, and reduced relationship-oriented older workers’ intention. The findings provide a new perspective on psychological contract types for research related to enhancing older workers’ intention to bridge employment, and offers important implications for aging workforce management of organizations in China and elsewhere.

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Data Availability

The questionnaire data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Northwest University. This university has no role in the design and implementation of this study. The authors wish to thank Northwest University for its support. They are also grateful to the insightful comments suggested by the editor and the anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Applied Psychology, School of Public Management, Northwest University, 710127, Shaanxi, China

    DongYang Wang, Jie Zhao, Yimeng Cui & XiaoCai Gao

  2. School of Nursing, Henan University of Chinese Medicine, 450046, Henan, China

    Qingsen He

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Contributions

DongYang Wang is responsible for data processing and writing. Jie Zhao is responsible for data collection. Yimeng Cui is responsible for data collection. Qingsen He is responsible for data collection. XiaoCai Gao put forward important views and ideas for this paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to DongYang Wang or XiaoCai Gao.

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Ethical Statement

For each study, ethics approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Northwest University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wang, D., Zhao, J., Cui, Y. et al. Job crafting and organizational resources support impact on older workers’ bridge employment intentions: the role of psychological contract types. Curr Psychol 43, 8931–8946 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05061-7

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