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CHAPTER 4
Individual and organisational predictors influencing ageing workersʼ employability 71

individualsʼ social exchange relationship with their supervisors, referred to as
leader-member exchange (LMX) (Liden et al., 1997), has not been frequently
studied in the context of HRD. LMX theory proposes that superiors do not use
a general leadership style for all their subordinates, but rather develop
individual exchange relationships with each of them. High quality exchange
relations were found to have a positive effect on turnover, commitment,
performance and many other variables of organisational interest (Liden et al.,
1997). Support for training and development is also expected to depend on
the quality of the leader-member exchange relationship (Collinset al., 2009;
Rousseau, 1995). According to relational demography theory (Riordan and
Shore, 1997; Tsui and OʼReilly, 1989), an increased degree of similarity
between subordinate and supervisor, with regard to one or more demographic
characteristics, leads to an increased level of interpersonal attraction and, in
turn, to a relationship of higher quality. With regard to differences in age, this
relation is moderated by existing social and organisational norms. Dissimilar
dyads where the supervisor is younger than the subordinate, or the other way
around, tend to yield less favourable relational outcomes than similar dyads.
Meanwhile, dyads with older supervisors and younger subordinates mostly
result in more favourable outcomes compared to the opposite age distribution
(Tsui et al. 1995). These findings are also in line with career timetable theory
(Lawrence, 1988) which states that objective norms exist where employees
should be at a given point in their careers. Subordinatesʼ ages, relative to the
age of their supervisors, contains important information about their pace of
promotion relative to existing norms.

4.4. Ageing employees

An important way to improve employability is through participation in human
resource development (HRD) activities (Van der Heijden et al., 2009). Within
this domain, a general distinction between formal and informal forms of
learning can be made. The prototype of a formal HRD activity is a planned
and structured activity in an external location in which some sort of certificate
or diploma is attained. Informal learning takes place in the work context, as a
by-product of another activity, without involvement of the organisation and
without an identifiable learning outcome (Malcolm et al., 2003). In older
publications, formal and informal learning were considered two distinct
categories. In more recent studies, however, researchers agree that informal
and formal learning should not be seen as two distinctive categories, but rather