Society, organizations, and individuals in many countries are exposed to major challenges due to demographic change. One possibility to face these challenges is to keep employees in the workforce longer – even beyond official retirement ages. Therefore, it will be important to know determining factors of the individuals’ planning of engagement in bridge employment. We therefore examine the applicability of two well-established psychological planning theories, i. e. the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), to the context of career-related activities in retirement. Survey results from 120 working individuals in Germany aged 49 to 65 years reveal that both theories are useful to explain intentions to engage in career-related activities in retirement to some extent. Specifically
the theories’ variables attitude, social pressure, and outcome expectations were strongly related to this intention. These results indicate valuable starting points for organizations to strengthen their employees’ intentions to stay in the workforce longer.

Vortrag im Rahmen einer Roundtable-Diskussion zum Thema "Life beyond the workplace"