Managing the Aging Workforce: Challenges and Solutions - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marius Leibold is a Business Consultant in Innovation & Strategy Management, and Professor in Strategy at Stellenbosch University and at the Netherlands Business School. His research focuses on new business models and innovation for global competitiveness, incorporating strategic fitness, systemic innovation and talent management approaches applied in various industries and companies. He is author of several managerial books and various articles on innovation and strategy, and is a Director of the WISE Program, a collaborative research program between academic and business organizations in the USA, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He advises CEO's, directors and executives on innovative business models and responding to technological, societal and economic trends. He can be contacted at: ml@leibold.cc Sven C. Voelpel is the Director of the research group WISE (for Wisdom - Innovation- Strategy - Energy) and Professor of Business Administration at the Jacobs Center for Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development of the International University Bremen (IUB), Germany. His research explores these fields of Wisdom, Innovation, Strategy and Energy and has contributed to these domains, including Change Management and Knowledge Management, with more than 100 publications in books and journals. His most recent book (co-authored with Thomas Davenport and Marius Leibold) is Strategic Management in the Innovation Economy (Wiley 2006). Currently Professor Voelpel is working on business models, strategies for survival and sustainability in the changing workforce arenas with particularly focusing on solutions for Managing the Aging Workforce. He has been serving with various (honorary) professorships around the globe, and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He can be contacted at: s.voelpel@iu-bremen.de

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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 counties. In many of these countries, during three or four decades the average age will grow from about 40 years not to about 50 years. In a lot of companies, this may result in an increase of the workforce's age of between 5 and 10 years in only one decade. Therefore, 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 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.

This book provides an important range of new approaches to reduce the impacts of knowledge loss caused by an aging workforce. the solution steps are outlined in a clear style that will enable managers to take action today."
David DeLong, AgeLab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"The rapidly aging global workforce is regarded as one of the most significant business and social trends for the next several decades. This book is an important milestone in dealing with the managerial challenge of this trend."
Lorrie Foster, The Conference Board

"In the era of the demographic shift, this book makes an important contribution to the retention of organizational knowledge and learning in an integrated and practical way."
Martine Haas, Cornell University

"This ground-braking book will assist leaders, managers and employees to jointly created innovative and sustainable solutions to the critical workforce aging phenomenon, and to eventually achieve demographic fitness of their enterprises."
Klaus J. Jacobs, Chairman, Adecco International

"Historical beliefs about aging have left managers ill-prepared to lead an aging workforce. By confronting the issues thoughtfully, this book will assist managers confronting this new workplace challenge."
Barbara Lawrence, University of California, Los Angeles

"The aging workforce trends and he loss of key knowledge can seriously erode the 'deep smarts' of organizations; this book offers practical suggestions on how best to handle these challenges."
Dorothy Leonard, Harvard Business School

"Marius Leibold and Sven Voelpel have done an excellent job in explaining the phenomenon and proposing the 5V framework to manage the aging workforce. I am confident that this book will gain wide scholarly attention and contribute significantly to the literature on this issue."
Ikujiro Nonaka, Hitotsubashi University, University of California at Berkeley

"Managers should read this book and apply its advice urgently and wisely."
Heinrich von Pierer, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Siemens AG

This important book goes beyond a mere review of the critical problems of managing our aging workforces. It gives us an excellent new strategic framework that opens up new thinking and practice."
JC Spender, Leeds University Business School

This book is the best I have