Purpose -Drawing on social exchange theory, prior research suggests that the adoption of human resources (HR) practices in the areas of training and development helps to maximize employees' positive work attitudes. However, while research has generally assumed that HR practices influence all employees in the same way, there is much evidence that employees' motives and needs change with age, suggesting that older workers may react differently to the same HR practices as compared to younger colleagues. This study seeks to shed light on this important and under-explored issue, analyzing whether the effect of HR development practices on job satisfaction ( JS) and affective commitment is moderated by age in a sample of 37 companies located in Italy, involving a total of 6,182 employees. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -Applying a multilevel approach, the results confirm a positive influence of HR development practices in increasing JS and affective commitment and show that this positive relationship weakens with age. Findings -Indeed, HR development practices were associated with lower JS and affective commitment for the oldest employees. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed suggesting the need to attribute greater consideration to age diversity when tailoring HR practices to improve their effect on employees' positive work attitudes. Originality/value -At the theoretical level, the paper contributes to the HRM literature debate, as the role of intervening variables -such as age -in the relationship between HR practices and employees' attitudes is still an open issue. At the methodological level, the paper tested the hypotheses using a multilevel regression model. The paper combined data at individual and the organizational levels and adopted a multilevel approach in order to provide a better understanding of the way age can moderate the HRM-employee attitudes relationship.

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Due to demographic changes, age diversity is growing in the workplace, creating a potential challenge to social integration. However, who is most affected by working with colleagues of different ages and when is being dissimilar in age from others more likely to hinder organisational identification? Drawing on relational demography and on the social identity approach, we suggest that certain individual and contextual conditions can lead employees to react to greater age dissimilarity by reducing their psychological attachment to the organisation. We propose that negative age stereotypes and perceived age-related treatment affect the salience of age as a social category for employees and threaten their age group identity, thereby creating conditions in which age dissimilarity might hinder organisational identification. We therefore examine the moderating effects of negative age stereotypes and perceived age-related treatment on the relationship between age dissimilarity and organisational identification in a sample of 434 schoolteachers from 16 schools in Italy. Findings show that age dissimilarity per se is not sufficient to hamper employees’ identification with the organisation. However, it has detrimental effects when employees hold negative age stereotypes and/or perceive an unfair organisational treatment towards their own age group. Implications for research are discussed along with practice implications.

The emphasis on the notion of boundaryless careers has stimulated a growing research interest in the relationship between inter-organizational mobility and career success. The present study explores the effect of external and internal careers on salary attainments of managerial and professional employees. The research has been conducted in a sample of highly educated employees in Italy and proposes an original approach to the modelling of career paths based on the respondents' retrospective career history. We found that inter-organizational mobility only has a positive impact on objective success for workers engaged in professional careers. Theoretical implications for career research as well as applied implications are discussed.

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