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Menopause is one of the most distinctive and individualised aspects of health-related gendered ageing at work, which is important as more women than ever before are working through their entire menopause cycle. We turn to the life-span development model of Selection, Optimisation and Compensation (SOC), which has great potential to provide a more nuanced review of adaptive behavioural strategies for potential work-related resource loss owing to menopause. In this article, we provide evidence from two studies: study 1 was an inductive analysis of 21 interviews; study 2 tested a number of hypotheses emergent from study 1 on two survey samples ( N = 381). We found that women with severe menopause symptoms were adversely affected at work; however, the use of SOC alongside supervisory and female peer support, ameliorated the negative impact of physical menopause symptoms on work performance. We also identified that SOC use was actually detrimental to work performance when used to manage psychological menopause symptoms. Our findings advance the understanding of gendered ageing at work, specifically managing menopause at work, through the lens of SOC theory. We show how engaging in agentic adaptive behaviours can be both beneficial and detrimental for differentially managing physical and psychological menopause symptoms at work.

Organizations, particularly those for whom safety and reliability are crucial, develop routines to protect them from failure. But even highly reliable organizations are not immune to disaster and prolonged periods of safe operation are punctuated by occasional catastrophes. Scholars of safety science label this the "paradox of almost totally safe systems," noting that systems that are very safe under normal conditions may be vulnerable under unusual ones. In this paper, we explain, develop, and apply the concept of "organizational limits" to this puzzle through an analysis of the loss of Air France 447. We show that an initial, relatively minor limit violation set in train a cascade of human and technological limit violations, with catastrophic consequences. Focusing on cockpit automation, we argue that the same measures that make a system safe and predictable may introduce restrictions on cognition, which over time, inhibit or erode the disturbance-handling capability of the actors involved. We also note limits to cognition in system design processes that make it difficult to foresee complex interactions. We discuss the implications of our findings for predictability and control in contexts beyond aviation and ways in which these problems might be addressed.

The present study analyzed retirement intentions and behavior as part of a work role withdrawal process. We examined the influences of the organizational and group contexts in the process of work role exit by means of two sources of work role expectations: human resource practices and group norms. Three different types of human resource practices were taken into consideration: performance enhancement practices, retirement enhancement practices, and organizational pressures toward retirement. Furthermore, three types of retirement indicators were analyzed: age considering retirement for the first time, early retirement intentions, and retirement age. Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out on a sample of 270 retirees to test the hypotheses. Results showed that retirement enhancement practices and organizational pressures toward retirement predict all the retirement indicators. Moreover, group norms moderated the relationships between retirement enhancement practices and two out of the three outcomes: age considering retirement for the first time and retirement age. Overall, our findings showed that organizational and group contexts play an important role in the retirement process. Moreover, our results indicate an interaction between organizational and group factors in the work role exit process.