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CHAPTER 6
Intergenerational learning

in organisations – A research

framework

Donald C. Ropes

The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for a large-scale design-
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based research ( ) programme on how intergenerational learning can help
mitigate some problems associated with an ageing workforce by capitalising
on the abilities of older employees, especially those working in knowledge-
intensive organisations. To remain competitive, organisations need to improve
continually and build their capacity, but threats from changing demographics
might impede these processes. The project started in late 2010 and will run
for at least four years. It includes several different types of organisations as
research partners, both in the public and private sector. In the private sector
research will focus especially on SMEs; one research stream will look at how
family businesses deal with knowledge transfer and learning in general and
during succession between family generations in particular. In the public
sector, secondary and tertiary educational sectors will be participating in the
research. Preliminary results should be available by autumn 2012. Insights
gained from ongoing research may require revisions or extensions to the
framework. An introductory review of literature on ageing in organisations
showed that there are three emergent themes; one dealing with how to retain
critical skills by stemming (early) retirements, one concerned with retaining
critical organisational knowledge and one looking at how generations within
organisations learn together to increase organisational capacity. This chapter
serves to give some insight into these themes to start developing a more
comprehensive research framework based on the third theme, which is termed
intergenerational learning. This research is original in that it approaches
intergenerational learning as a two-way relationship between older and

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( ) Design-based research is a prescriptive approach to management research that concurrently
produces new knowledge for research and new insights for practice (van Aken, 2004).