Rapid technological advancements and global workforce aging shape the future of work. Drawing on the technology acceptance model, our study aims to connect the literature on aging with the research on technology use in organizations. At its heart, the technology acceptance model suggests that the two core components, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, predict the attitude toward a new technology. We connect these components with two age-related processes: first, we suggest a motivational pathway via future time perspective, including one’s perceived future opportunities and remaining time at work. Second, we propose a capability pathway via cognitive constraints, including one’s perceived struggle to process new information (i.e., perceived processing speed difficulties) and the perceived struggle to organize one’s work (i.e., perceived organization difficulties). Moreover, we explore digital leadership as a potential buffer to the detrimental relations between age and technology acceptance. We preregistered our hypotheses and tested them using three-wave data from 643 employees. Our findings support our hypotheses for the motivational pathway, showing that age is negatively linked to attitude toward new technology via future time perspective and subsequent perceived usefulness as well as perceived ease of use. Digital leadership buffered the negative indirect relations between age and attitude toward new technology. For the capability pathway, the results were the opposite of what we expected. Together, our findings put the link between age and technology acceptance into a more positive light than previous research and suggest that motivational and capability-related forces are interwoven in predicting attitude toward new technology.

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Friendship may help to bridge differences between people, such as between age-diverse employees. Oftentimes, age diversity in employee interactions cultivates interpersonal tensions. Age-diverse workplace friendship—a relationship between coworkers of different ages, who like each other and who are engaged in a balanced social exchange—may help to overcome these interpersonal tensions because having something in common can de-escalate age-related difficulties and reduce negative feelings between diverse individuals. Despite the relevance of the topic, literature focusing on age-diverse workplace friendship is rare. To address this gap and direct future research, we aim to integrate research on related topics such as workplace friendship and (age) diversity at work into a systematic literature review. Concentrating primarily on the formation and maintenance of age-diverse workplace friendship, we identified similarity-attraction theory, social identity theory, and socioemotional selectivity theory as the three dominant theories referenced in the literature and utilize them to embed and connect our findings into existing theory. More specifically, we review and summarize the findings of our systematic literature review into an integrated framework depicting the antecedents, formation and maintenance processes, and outcomes of age-diverse workplace friendship. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and point out directions for future research.

Rapid technological advancements and global workforce aging shape the future of work. Drawing on the technology acceptance model, our study aims to connect the literature on aging with the research on technology use in organizations. At its heart, the technology acceptance model suggests that the two core components perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use predict the attitude toward a new technology. We connect these components with two age-related processes: first, we suggest a motivational pathway via future time perspective, including one’s perceived future opportunities and remaining time at work. Second, we propose a capability pathway via cognitive constraints, including one’s perceived struggle to process new information (i.e., perceived processing speed difficulties) and the perceived struggle to organize one’s work (i.e., perceived organization difficulties). Moreover, we explore digital leadership as a potential buffer to the detrimental relations between age and technology acceptance. We pre-registered our hypotheses and tested them using three-wave data of 643 employees. Our findings support our hypotheses for the motivational pathway, showing that age is negatively linked to attitude toward new technology via future time perspective and subsequent perceived usefulness as well as perceived ease of use. Digital leadership buffered the negative indirect relations between age and attitude toward new technology. For the capability pathway, the results were opposite to what we expected. Together, our findings put the link between age and technology acceptance into a more positive light than previous research and suggest that motivational and capability-related forces are interwoven in predicting attitude toward new technology.