Retirement intention of older workers: The influences of high‐involvement work practices, individual characteristics, and economic environment

Abstract Research on retirement decisions has invited studies to examine how personal, work‐related, and environmental factors interplay to affect older workers’ retirement decisions. Drawing upon the person‐environment fit framework, we proposed a negative relationship between high‐involvement work practices (HIWPs) and older workers’ retirement intention. We further developed hypotheses regarding the moderating effects of gender, age, educational level, managerial status, and external economic environment on the relationship between HIWPs and retirement intention. We tested the hypotheses using a sample of 754,856 employees aged 50 and over from 360 U.S. government agencies participating in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey from 2006 to 2015. The results, based on mixed effect logit regressions and cross‐classified modeling, indicated that older workers’ experience of HIWPs had a negative relationship with their retirement intention, and the negative relationship was stronger for older male workers, older workers aged 50–59 years, older workers without a bachelor's degree, and non‐managerial older workers than for older female workers, those aged 60 years or over, those with a bachelor's degree, and those with managerial responsibilities, respectively. Moreover, the results showed that the negative HIWPs‐retirement intention relationship has become stronger since the Great Recession of 2008. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of older workers’ retirement decisions by considering the interactions between human resource management practices and personal and environmental factors.