The Relationships between Attitudes, Subjective Norm and Hiring Intention - Does Age Make a Difference?

Objective: Malaysia is currently facing a phenomenon where a growing portion of its older population experiencing a decline in their employment participation rate. Simultaneously, most job vacancies are filled by foreign workers as a result of a labour shortage.& One of the ways to substitute foreign workers is to utilise skilfully and experienced older workers. However, such requires the willingness of business organizations to hire these workers. Therefore, the main objective of the present study is to predict the relationship of managers’ attitudes and subjective norm with their intention to hire older workers, with age as a moderating variable.Methodology: The Theory of Planned Behaviour was identified to include the age of respondents as the moderator on the relationships between attitudes and hiring intention. Cross-sectional data were collected from managers of business organizations via personal administered quantitative surveys questionnaire. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM-PLS).Results: The response rate was 78% (n=468). The research model accounted for a moderate portion of the variance in overall hiring intention (R2=0.377) and future hiring intention (R2=0.392). The findings suggested that: (1) attitudes and subjective norm are related to overall hiring intention and future hiring intention; (2) age has a moderating effect on the relationship between attitudes and overall hiring intention, but there is no moderating effect on the relationship between attitudes and future hiring intention.Implication: The empirical result has important implications for human resource strategists, academic researchers and public policymakers as it serves as an additional fuel to combat the nation's acute labour shortage by hiring able and willing older workers.