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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce new measures of stereotypical beliefs about older workers' ability and desire for learning and development and test relationships with key antecedents and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – In a sample of workers over 40 years of age from across the US workforce, a two‐wave survey study was unique in that it examined stereotypes held by aging workers themselves in relation to their own behavior. Findings – The psychometric qualities of the scales were positive and findings tied the stereotype measures to important outcome constructs involving retirement, interest in development, and self‐efficacy/concept for development. Relationships of the stereotype measures also existed with antecedent variables, including experience with the stereotyped behavior and general beliefs about changes with aging. Research limitations/implications – These are critical constructs for managerial psychology in the coming decades, and the findings and measures presented here can contribute to future research, not only on older workers themselves but also on younger workers' stereotypes and behavior toward older workers, which were not addressed here. Practical implications – The measures can be used as diagnostic tools and the findings offer potential ideas for organizational policy or interventions to target stereotypes. Originality/value – Because employee development is increasingly important and the workforce is rapidly aging, there is a need to understand development behavior by aging workers. While stereotypes can be a problem in this area, there is a lack of measures of these stereotypes and there is no research on the stereotypes by aging workers themselves.

PurposeA prevailing notion in the management development literature is that support for employee development by organizations is positively associated with organizational commitment by employees. This paper aims to examine whether learning and performance goal orientations of employees act as moderators of this effect. The authors hypothesized that support for development would have differential effects on commitment depending on the goal orientations of employees.Design/methodology/approachThe data were obtained in a sample of 651 employees from across the US workforce using a two‐wave internet survey sampling method.FindingsThe authors found that perceived support for development is positively related to commitment for some workers; however, individual learning and performance orientations act as moderators. For some individuals, support for development by an organization will not be associated with greater commitment and might even be negatively associated with commitment.Research limitations/implicationsThe data are self‐reported; however, methodological steps were taken to reduce risk of a negative impact on results.Practical implicationsThe notion that support for employee development enhances organizational commitment is widely accepted, and significant resources are sometimes devoted to leveraging development as a source of competitive advantage in recruiting and employee retention. The findings show the importance of understanding individual differences in this context because they may make a difference in how development affects commitment. Options are discussed for organizations in which learning and development are required and not all people are oriented toward learning.Originality/valueThis paper illustrates that it is important to understand psychological differences in employees to effectively understand and manage an employee development initiative to have optimal impact.

We integrated ideas from literature on error management culture, leadership motivation, and career development to create several contributions for the research literature. First, we examined two situational factorserror management/aversion culture perceptionsthat affect employees' leadership-relevant motivations. Second, we distinguish between two types of leader motivations, motivation to lead (MTL) and motivation to develop leadership skills (MTDL). We offer evidence of discriminant and predictive validity of the two leadership motivations on key leadership processes and outcomes. Third, we tested a linkage model in which error management/aversion perceptions influenced leadership motivations (MTL and MTDL) and these motivations predicted leadership capacity and leader career success (i.e., promotions, increased leadership responsibility, and pay increases). Based upon multisource data collected from 151 employees and their supervisors from diverse occupations and organizations over a period of 1 year, we found that error management perceptions were positively associated with social-normative MTL (the motive to lead out of a sense of duty and obligation) and with MTDL whereas perceptions of error aversion were negatively related with affective-identity and noncalculative MTL. MTDL was distinguishable from MTL and demonstrated better predictive validity on leadership capacity and career success than MTL. We discuss a number of implications for both theory and practice. Practitioner PointsCreating a culture in which errors are constructively managed enhances leadership motivations, leadership capacity (leader behaviour, development, and potential), and career success. In managing leadership development and performance, distinguishing between motivation to be a leader and motivation to develop leadership skills is important, both in terms of how these motivations are influenced by error management and aversion and in terms of the how the motivations influence leadership capacity and success. Motive to lead out of a sense of duty is key.

SummaryCoaching interviewees to perform in employment interviews can influence the interview scores. We describe different types of coaching, emphasizing interventions designed to focus interviewees on core, interview-relevant content and to help them convey the content accurately (as opposed to interventions designed to teach interviewees to manipulate their scores using peripheral means). We then study the effects of the former type of intervention in relation to the criterion-related validity of a structured employment interview. In a combined sample of 146 public safety job incumbents, a predictive validation study was conducted using scores from a situational panel interview. Predictive validity and reliability was observed to be higher in a sample of coached interviewees compared to a sample of uncoached interviewees. Implications for future research and practice in organizational behavior are discussed.