Work-related decision-making among older workers in the Irish civil service

Abstract

This thesis is an exploratory study of work-related decision-making among mid-life to older workers in the Irish Civil Service. The issue of older workers is under-researched generally and is of significant policy interest given the increasing presence of older workers in the Irish workforce, and wider concerns over age-discrimination. As well as providing an empirical study of older workers, this thesis also engages with the muchcontested debate surrounding Catherine Hakim's "preference theory" (Hakim, 2000). It investigates the degree to which decision-making is the result of a worker's own individual preferences (as preference theory suggests) and to what degree it is influenced by external factors such as legislation and policy, gendered social norms, the economy and organisational structures, as advocated by critics of Hakim's approach (e.g., Crompton and Harris, 1998). It also explores to what degree preferences can be considered to be "fixed" over time.