Despite the obvious importance of retirement to employees, their employing organizations, and the larger society, the last comprehensive review of employee retirement in the field of organizational science was published more than 20 years ago. As such, the first purpose of this review is to provide a summary of key theoretical and empirical developments in employee retirement research since Beehr in 1986. A second purpose of this review is to highlight inconsistent findings revealed by studies that were designed to answer the same research questions. By identifying and scrutinizing those inconsistent findings, this study expects to provide suggestions and recommendations to further the theoretical development in the field of retirement research to address these research gaps. As a result, this proposed review would be of interest to scholars in a wide variety of areas within the organizational sciences, including human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational theory, and research methods.

Bridge employment is the labor force participation pattern increasingly observed in older workers between their career jobs and their complete labor force withdrawal. It serves as a transition process from career employment to full retirement. Typical bridge employment decisions include full retirement, career bridge employment, and bridge employment in a different field. In the current study, 3 dominant theories (i.e., role theory, continuity theory, and life course perspective) on retirement processes were reviewed. On the basis of these theories, the authors proposed 4 categories of antecedents (i.e., individual attributes, job-related psychological variables, family-related variables, and a retirement-planning-related variable) of different types of bridge employment decisions. The authors used longitudinal data of a large, nationally representative sample from the Health and Retirement Study (F. Juster & R. Suzman, 1995) to test the current hypotheses. These data were analyzed with multinomial logistic regression, and most of the hypotheses were supported by the results. The implications of this study are discussed at both theoretical and practical levels.

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The concept and the process of retirement are rapidly evolving. As a result, psychologists are in a unique position to understand and explain the dynamics behind the changing face of retirement. We begin this article with a brief overview of the history of retirement and then note the various definitions used when studying retirement. We then propose that taking a temporal view of studying retirement would be most advantageous for psychologists. Psychological conceptualizations of retirement are then discussed, and we link these conceptualizations to studying the changing nature of retirement. Finally, we conclude with some suggestions for future research in the area of retirement that would be particularly relevant for psychologists to consider.

The present study examined the relationship between bridge employment and retirees' health outcomes (i.e., major diseases, functional limitations, and mental health). We used a nationally representative sample of 12,189 retirees from the first 4 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that compared with full retirement, engaging in bridge employment either in a career field or in a different field was associated with fewer major diseases and functional limitations, whereas engaging in career bridge employment was associated with better mental health. The findings highlight the health benefits of engaging in bridge employment for retirees. The practical implications of this study are discussed at both the individual and policy levels. Limitations of the current findings are also noted in conjunction with future research directions.