The greying of the workforce is a globally discussed phenomenon. It gained importance for organizations, policy-makers and scholars alike. This article offers an overview of applied theories and fields of research pertaining to the discussion on senior employees in the workforce. It presents current managerial practices for senior employees and assesses factors for the employability of senior employees in an organization. Design/methodology: The paper is based on a review of recent academic articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Keywords and elimination criteria are explained in the corresponding section. Findings: The article incorporates studies on senior employees from various disciplines in the field of organizational research. It portrays leading streams of thought on the employability of senior workers (e.g. depreciation/conservation model, standard economic theory and human capital theory). Moreover, it elaborates organizational factors which affect the employability of this cohort (e.g. motivators and demotivators for senior employees) Research limitations/implications: The article discusses the field of organizational research and related factors. Therefore, it is limited to studies concerning the field of organizational research. Economic, social or individual influences also constitute an important topic which should be investigated and discussed. Originality/value: The article presents the first review of theories and fields of research on senior employees in organizations and connects job and organizational factors which influence the employment situation of senior employees in an organization. The review encourages a dialogue regarding senior employees from various disciplines.

Purpose:The article critically reflects on the issue of age in workforces in human resource manage ment and related fields. Age is widely used by scholars to denote the entire workforce of a company. The vast remit of this concept has resulted in many ongoing debates, such as young vs. old employees, mature employees, the aging workforce, as well as various stereotypes pertaining to age in academic research. Methodology: The paper reviews recent academic literature: articles from peerreviewed journals, written in English, and published in 2000-2018. Keywords and elimination criteria are explained in the corresponding section. Findings: Research in this field shows the use of inhomogeneous groups in accordance to their age, which ultimately threatens to hinder the comparability of undertaken studies in this domain. Research implications: There exists no clear consensus regarding the agemarkers or barriers used to distinguish the workforce of an organization or to form groups of employees of a given agecluster. Originality: This text is the first review of studies in the field, in which age has been the main criterion to distinguish workforce. The review encourages dialog among scholars from various disciplines as a way to lessen discrepant categorizations.

No abstract