Age Management: What Can we Learn from High-End Luxury Fashion Designer with More than 50 Years of Working Experience?

Abstract

Background and Purpose: While the world population is aging, the aim of this study is to bring new knowledge into age management research by investigating the most important factors that encourage older employees to remain in the labour market longer, also after meeting the official retirement age, based on an in-depth qualitative case study of the high-end luxury fashion designer with more than 50 years of working experience. Design/Methodology/Approach: We conducted an inductive case study in fashion industry. Specifically, our case study is build based on the content analysis of secondary data as well as an in-depth interview with the general manager in the fashion and high-end luxury industry in Slovenia. Results: The proposed conceptual model shows key facets, as assigned overarching categories, namely-vitality, intrinsic motivation, adapting, lifelong learning, and positive emotions and therefore contributes to the age manage­ment phenomena. Within the presented case study, we found out that the selected facets are the most important factors for the encouragement to remain in the labor market and to ensure flexible retirement processes in dealing with the challenges of an aging population and workforce. Conclusion: Our study contributes to the theory and practice of age management by narrowing our focus on the best practice from selected high-end luxury fashion industry designer in Slovenia. What can we learn from high-end luxury fashion designer with more than 50 years of working experience? As the presented case study cannot be generalized to population, the presented case contributes to the field of age management and empowers people to rethink and stay active after meeting the official retirement age. Keywords: Adult learning; Older workers; Retirement; Age management; Fashion industry; Intrinsic motivation; Vi­tality; Slovenia