When Are Teachers Motivated to Work Beyond Retirement Age? The Importance of Support, Change of Work Role and Money

Abstract

This article investigates the factors influencing the motivation to continue working after retirement among a sample of Dutch teachers. Based on previous research, it was proposed that teachers will be motivated to work after their legal retirement age when organizational support, possibilities to change work roles and financial needs are high. Moreover, based on conversation of resources theory, it was expected that these factors would interact with each other, with the strongest effects for combinations of high support, high change of work role and high financial needs. A survey was distributed among 123 teachers working in a high school in the Netherlands. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis showed that organizational support and change of work role were positively related to motivation to continue working. However, contrary to hypothesis, organizational support and change of work role interacted negatively, such that organizational support was only positively related to motivation to continue working for those who wanted to conduct the same kind of work after their retirement. This article shows that organizations should focus on offering support to their teachers in their decisions for working after retirement, and on offering possibilities for changes in the tasks they conduct.