Getting Ready for the Future, Is It Worth It? A Dual Pathway Model of Age and Technology Acceptance at Work

Abstract

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.

Automation and Aging: The Impact on Older Workers in the Workforce

“…In this context, a better understanding of how human resource management practices can support the age-diverse workforce is becoming crucial. Fasbender et al (2022) find that employees' supervisors have an important role by fostering a positive attitude among their employees toward news technologies through age-specific mentoring programs and by giving job autonomy to older employees. Self-reflective interventions among supervisors towards raising awareness of the challenge of reducing aging-and-tech job vulnerability have been effective, and might slow the loss of the intellectual capital and the relational capital experienced employees bring, with their extensive professional networks.…”

Decreasing employability with age? The role of automation risk, lifelong learning and occupational mobility

“…Research shows that older adults typically hold less positive attitudes toward new technology (Fasbender et al, 2023), implying stronger concerns and skepticism regarding the value of various technological advancements at work. Additionally, using the insights from the SOC framework, we predict that technology-induced automation, which potentially makes the accumulated experience and skills obsolete (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014), may interfere with the gradual adaptation facilitated by SOC and disrupt the person-job fit (Kooij et al, 2020).…”