Leadership, follower age, and age-diversity: a systematic review and future directions

Do older workers benefit from different leadership behaviors to younger workers? Should age-diverse workforces be managed differently? Research addressing these and related questions is fragmented, characterized by diverse yet often overlapping leadership constructs as well as varied conceptualizations of age-related constructs. In this article, we provide a comprehensive systematic review of the literature linking leadership, follower age, and age-diversity. First, we show how this literature has evolved in recent decades, describing the theoretical, methodological, geographical, and quality characteristics of the N = 194 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Second, focusing on the findings from a subset of N = 102 empirical studies that used well-defined leadership constructs, we review the links between followers’ age and leadership, and unpack the impact on workplace outcomes to identify emerging trends, gaps, and future research directions. Overall, although the body of research is growing, the literature has a low level of maturity due to poor theoretical integration, methodological weaknesses, and inconsistency in findings within and across subfields. By drawing on an existing model for managing aging and age-diverse workforces, we propose a framework for theoretical integration. We recommend several ways in which future empirical work might move the field forward.