Age and organization studies: rethinking age as a fluid identity

The renewal of ‘age’ as a workplace identity is long overdue. Age essentialism and agewashing have been pervasive within today’s so-called age-inclusive organisations and labour markets. In this essay, I challenge the entrenched and outdated ways of thinking about and organising age within organisations. Management and organisation studies especially suffer from methodological inertia when studying age in relation to work, employment and its position within organisational hierarchies, systems and structures. The permanence of age in its rigid form jeopardises modern organisations’ diversity and inclusion agendas as well as the prospects of longevity economy. My essay argues that we dismantle the unyielding existing notion of ‘age’ constrained by chronological boundaries, making inroads into more innovative and progressive fluid approaches to age-related organisational thinking. To do so, I propose a paradigm shift inspired by Sartre’s existentialism, rethinking age as a fluid identity.