Reluctance to Retire: A Qualitative Study on Work Identity, Intergenerational Conflict, and Retirement in Academic Medicine

Abstract

Strong work identity and tensions between different generations may confound concerns about retirement in ways that complicate institutional succession planning and that demonstrate how traditional understandings of retirement are out of date. Findings support the need to creatively reconsider the ways we examine relations between work identity, age, and retirement in ways that account for the recent extensions in the working lives of professionals.