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Social Dialogue as a Sustainable Career Development Practice to Combat (Meta)Stereotyping

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Shaping Inclusive Workplaces Through Social Dialogue

Abstract

Sustainable Human Resource Management (HRM) implies individuals and organizations to share responsibility for workers’ employability, including vulnerable workers, such as older workers (> 50 years). Witnessing the emerging scholarly and societal attention for sustainable career development (SCD), this chapter outlines how the concepts of social dialogue, employability, and (meta)stereotyping may be conceptualized and interrelated, and how they can play a role in HR-processes and, ultimately, affect workers’ career development. The (meta)stereotyping process is illustrated by a short summary of preliminary results from a study of supermarket workers in the Netherlands, particularly focusing on workers engaging in negative age-based (meta)stereotyping. In view of several interrelated trends, older workers (among others) have become an increasingly vulnerable labor market category. The chapter concludes by suggesting organizations to implement HR practices to combat negative (meta)stereotyping in general, and older workers in particular, enabling them to shape more inclusive workplaces, for example, through social dialogue.

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Correspondence to Pascale Peters .

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Peters, P., Van der Heijden, B., Spurk, D., de Vos, A., Klaassen, R. (2017). Social Dialogue as a Sustainable Career Development Practice to Combat (Meta)Stereotyping. In: Arenas, A., Di Marco, D., Munduate, L., Euwema, M. (eds) Shaping Inclusive Workplaces Through Social Dialogue. Industrial Relations & Conflict Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66393-7_14

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