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Age-inclusive management practices are crucial for addressing the needs of the older workforce, but there is limited research on these practices. One underexplored area is how workplaces can support older employees dealing with the loss of a loved one. The psychological process of loss differs for older employees and can have adverse effects on their ability to perform in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to explore how workplaces can provide the necessary tools to support their older grieving employees.

This conceptual paper draws on the job-demand resource model and signaling theory to investigate how flexible work arrangements can support older employees after a bereavement and contribute to optimal employee performance.

Flexible work arrangements are theorized to lead to optimal performance via informational support. An ethical climate and stronger cultural competencies are proposed to strengthen this relationship. A theoretical framework is presented for a comprehensive research approach.

This paper advances the current understanding of age-inclusive management and offers a novel perspective on the benefits of flexible working arrangements.

The purpose of this research is to examine the narratives of victims of abusive supervision. We explore the meaning or “lessons” victims derive from those experiences and how they shape the victims’ views of self, work and organization in relation to navigating their subsequent jobs.

We analyzed how appraisals of supervisory abuse transform victims’ narratives and their consequent work attitudes through sensemaking processes. Semi-structured interviews with the past victims of abusive supervision generated a four-stage model of how sensemaking shapes victims’ future work attitudes. Our interpretations were guided through narrative thematic analysis based on the constructionist approach.

Victims’ lessons learned are predominantly framed by their retrospective post-event appraisal of abuse (based on its severity) once individuals are no longer subject to abusive supervision. With greater distance from the abuse, victims can process the abuse and better understand the motivation of the abuser, enabling the process of causal attributions. These attributions further shape victims’ narratives and future work attitudes through a complex interplay of retrospective and prospective sensemaking mechanisms. The victims broadly reported proactive (with higher self-awareness and endurance) and reactive (self-protection, and emotional scars) lessons. A four-stage model was proposed based on our findings.

Abusive supervision remains a persistent issue experienced by many individuals at some point in their working life. However, little is known about how victims make sense of the event post-abuse and how this sense-making guides their future work behaviors. Understanding this phenomenon provides insight into how employees navigate through adversity and construct a more positive future. The contribution of this narrative inquiry is threefold. First, it explores how individual appraisals of supervisory abuse frame their (1) mechanisms of narrative construction; and (2) future work attitudes. Second, our findings demonstrate how narrative construction is a fluid process often informed by the process of retrospective and prospective sensemaking. Finally, our research suggests two broader categories of lessons that victims internalize and carry forward to their subsequent jobs.