The need for fresh blood: understanding organizational age inequality through a vampiric lens

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2015Rights
(c) 2015 The Authors. Full-text reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.Peer-Reviewed
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This article argues that older age inequality within and across working life is the result of vampiric forms and structures constitutive of contemporary organizing. Rather than assuming ageism occurs against a backdrop of neutral organizational processes and practices, the article denaturalizes (and in the process super-naturalizes) organizational orientations of ageing through three vampiric aspects: (un)dying, regeneration and neophilia. These dimensions are used to illustrate how workplace narratives and logics normalize and perpetuate the systematic denigration of the ageing organizational subject. Through our analysis it is argued that older workers are positioned as inevitable ‘sacrificial objects’ of the all-consuming immortal organization. To challenge this, the article explicitly draws on the vampire and the vampiric in literature and popular culture to consider the possibility of subverting existing notions of the ‘older worker’ in order to confront and challenge the subtle and persistent monstrous discourses that shape organizational life.Version
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Riach K and Kelly S (2015) The need for fresh blood: understanding organizational age inequality through a vampiric lens. Organization. 22(3): 287-305.Link to Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508413508999Type
Articleae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508413508999