Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

This cross-sectional study examines the role of work centrality and emotional organizational commitment in predicting two retirement outcomes, retirement adjustment, which includes three dimensions–positive retirement experience, negative retirement experience, and sense of missing work, and life satisfaction. It also examines the difference between an earlier stage of retirement (less than or equal to five years) and a later stage of retirement (more than five years). Survey data were collected from 482 retirees of state-owned enterprises in China (aged fifty to eighty-six years, M=64.05, SD=6.646). Participants completed questionnaires about retirement adjustment and life satisfaction currently, as well as the pre-retirement work centrality and emotional organizational commitment by way of retrospective. Results suggest that the more work-centered retirees reported more negative retirement experiences (B=0.821, Beta=0.336，t=3.388), and stronger sense of missing work experience (B=0.689, Beta=0.232，t=2.470*) in the early stage of retirement. In the late retirement stage, work centrality only showed significant positive correlation with sense of missing work (B=0.943, Beta=0.300，t=4.626). With respect to emotional commitment, participants with higher emotional commitment to the enterprise reported more positive retirement experience, sense of missing work, and life satisfaction, no matter in early or late stage of retirement. These findings offer some implications to understand the adaptation process of retirement among older people who retired from state-owned enterprises. Compared with work centrality, emotional commitment to the enterprise tends to play a more consistent protective role in retirement outcomes.