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Working and ageing
116 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

groups in a specific context, have also been shown to be effective knowledge
management instruments for knowledge transfer and retention (such as
learning and innovation) between generations (Ropes, 2010).
Intergenerational learning is also important for building social capital (Kerka,
2003), a main driver for innovation and learning in organisations (Akdere and
Roberts, 2008) and a contributor to a positive learning climate – needed for
continual renewal and development, especially for knowledge-intensive
organisations.
Thus, although learning between generations might be an age-old, naturally
occurring phenomenon, there needs to be more research on intergenerational
learning within organisations and especially on how it can be implemented in
the service of learning, innovation and knowledge retention to improve
organisational capacity.

6.4.3. Research possibilities
The research framework aims to explore further and expand the concept of
intergenerational learning within organisational contexts to achieve two goals.
The first is to build knowledge and understanding of how intergenerational
learning relationships resulting in innovation, learning and knowledge retention
can contribute to organisational capacity development. This is important for
both research and practice because it gives insight into how strategies and
policies can be developed for implementing intergenerational programmes,
which is the second and main goal of the research.
For the research proposed in this chapter, it is important to understand fully
crucial differences of how and why older workers learn compared to younger
colleagues. For example, we know that older workers have different
motivations for learning (Carré, 2000; Knowles, 1974) and that their learning
styles and abilities are also different (Ackerman, 1996; Korchin and Basowitz,
1957; Nauta et al., 2005). Once the aspects of individual learning within the
organisation are understood, a start can be made to look at how different
generations interact and consequently learn together. Approaching
intergenerational learning as an interactive process in which learning goes both
ways between generations has rarely been done (Baily, 2009; Tempest, 2003).
This leads to the following specific possibilities for research on this theme:
(a) explore learning relationships between generations: most research looks
at how the young learn from the old. A possibility exists to look at how the
opposite might take shape, as well as how the relationship between
different generations might lead to improved learning, innovation and
knowledge retention;