Age heterogeneity in Western workforces is increasing, generating potential informational benefits as well as harmful age-based social categorizations. When can firms benefit from age heterogeneity? Building on the categorization-elaboration model, we propose the average age distance between employees as a fundamental contingency. Using a longitudinal archival sample of 3,336 Belgian firms (2012–2015), we find that firms with a high level of age heterogeneity are less productive when employees' average distance is great (Study 1). Through an online experiment with 260 US participants, we show that employees in age-heterogeneous workforces are less willing to engage in inter-age cooperative contact and knowledge exchange under a great level of average age distance (Study 2). Our findings support that great distances foster age-based social categorizations that undermine the productive information elaborations between employees of different ages. This broadens our knowledge on the implications of workforce age diversity and helps organizations understand when they can(not) reap the productivity benefits of their age-diverse workforce. Moreover, this study's theory and implications are relevant to other types of diversity for which both heterogeneity and distance are meaningful constructs. We also discuss the practical implications of this study.

中文翻译：

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距离很重要！员工年龄距离对员工年龄异质性对企业绩效影响的作用

西方劳动力的年龄异质性正在增加，产生潜在的信息效益以及有害的基于年龄的社会分类。企业何时可以从年龄异质性中受益？在分类-细化模型的基础上，我们建议将员工之间的平均年龄距离作为基本权变。使用 3,336 家比利时公司（2012 年至 2015 年）的纵向档案样本，我们发现，当员工的平均距离很远时，年龄异质性高的公司生产力较低（研究 1）。通过对 260 名美国参与者进行的在线实验，我们表明，在平均年龄距离较大的情况下，年龄异质劳动力中的员工不太愿意进行跨年龄合作接触和知识交流（研究 2）。我们的研究结果支持远距离促进基于年龄的社会分类，破坏了不同年龄员工之间的生产性信息阐述。这拓宽了我们对劳动力年龄多样性影响的认识，并帮助组织了解当他们可以（不能）从不同年龄的劳动力中获得生产力优势时。此外，本研究的理论和意义与其他类型的多样性相关，异质性和距离都是有意义的构造。我们还讨论了这项研究的实际意义。