Late Career Intentions: The Role of Work Values

Over the past decades the importance of post-retirement work has increased. Individuals’ participation in labor force and society help to fulfill their interests, capabilities, and needs to maintain quality of life. In order to differentiate individuals’ late career decision making, work values might be proximal predictors. In the current study we focus on the effects of work values on post-retirement work intentions within the universal structure of human values elaborated by Schwartz and colleagues (e.g., Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987; Schwartz et al. 2012).
Data collection took place in a German logistics company via paper or web-based questionnaires (N = 1,071). We differentiated five types of post-retirement work intentions (e.g., voluntary work, general paid work, same-employer work, other-employer work, and self-employed work intention). Work values were assessed with Work Value Survey (Cable & Edwards, 2004), which was specifically developed for the work context. The specified eight work values represent the four higher order values of Schwartz’ universal model (e.g., self-transcendence, self-enhancement, conservation, and openness to change). We applied path analysis to identify relations between work values and post-retirement work intentions.
Results indicated that work values were differentially related to the five types of post-retirement work intentions. Self-transcendence was positively related to all types of work intentions. Self-enhancement was positively related to general paid work and other-employer work intentions. Conservation was negatively related to general paid work, other-employer work and self-employed work intentions. Openness to change was positively related to voluntary work; but negatively related to same-employer work intentions.
The study results add to the literature on work values and post-retirement work. Practically, the findings can contribute to retirement counseling and to organizations’ work force planning. However, there are also limitations to this study. First, the cross-sectional design does not allow causal inferences. Second, we examined post-retirement intentions rather than the actual behavior to work post-retirement. Third, the generalizability might be limited due to data inclusion from only one company. Future studies should investigate the process of post-retirement work using a longitudinal design and taking actual behavior into account.
Keywords: paid work, post-retirement work intentions, work values, voluntary work