Managing the Aging Workforce: Challenges and Solutions

Managing the Aging Workforce is one of the crucial topics for many of the world?s enterprises. The increasing average age of populations does not only affect social systems, countries and communities, but also has a strong impact on the work of businesses and companies.
The decline in demographic fitness will not only hit countries like the U.S., the Western European countries, or Japan, but also the upcoming societies in China or in the Eastern European countries. In many of these countries, during three or four decades the average age will grow from about 40 years now to about 50 years. Where experts are needed, this may result in an increase of the workforce's age of between 5 and 10 years in only one decade.
For companies thus, a number of challenges arise that have to be overcome fast and continuously. The main topics in this field will be new strategies in leadership, new concepts in health management, new ways in knowledge management and learning, as well as new models how to drive ideas for diversity and innovation.
On the one hand, enterprises therefore will have to invest in their aging employees for supporting their talents, helping them to learn and keeping them in the company. On the other, they will have to increase productivity, keep on searching for new products, and integrate experts from abroad. This has to be combined with new ways of strategies and HR management.
This book presents an analysis of the present and upcoming situation, and an introduction into the strategic concepts enterprises will need to survive in aging societies.

MARIUS LEIBOLD
is Professor in Strategy at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and visiting professor at various universities in Europe and the USA. His research focuses on new business models and innovation for global competitiveness, incorporating strategic fitness, systemic innovation and paradoxical management approaches applied in various industries and companies. He has authored a number of articles and books in strategic management, and is a Director of the WISE program, a collaborative research program between academic and business organizations in the USA, Europe, Africa and Asia.

NITIN NOHRIA
is Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean and Director of Faculty Development at the Harvard Business School. His research centers on leadership, corporate accountability, and organizational change. Professor Nohria has served as an advisor and consultant to several large and small companies in different parts of the world. He has been interviewed by ABC, CNN, and NPR, and cited in Business Week, Economist, Financial Times, Fortune, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

SVEN C. VOELPEL
is a Director of the research group WISE (Wisdom - Innovation - Strategy - Energy) and Professor of Business Administration at the Jacobs Center for Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development, International University Bremen (IUB), Germany. Besides various professorships around the world he is also a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University since 2001.