Abstract Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this article reports new evidence on the impact of age and experience on work unit performance. Two types of experience that increase with age are “general” and “firm-specific.” The focus here is on the influence of general human capital (which increases with time spent in the workforce) and firm-specific human capital (which increases with tenure with the current employer) on work unit performance. Although age–performance relationships have been investigated extensively in two research literatures, psychology and economics, neither addresses such relationships at the unit-within-organization level of analysis, concentrating instead on age–performance relationships at individual, organizational, or national levels. Using a unique data set comprised of large-sample, long-duration, multivariate studies of unit performance within firms this meta-analysis synthesizes partial effect sizes for the effects of age and tenure. A key finding is that tenure positively affects unit performance whereas age has no effect. Work unit leaders’ tenure but not age was found to positively affect unit performance. The lack of evidence of an age–performance relationship is consistent with psychological research at the individual level but contravenes economics research literature which, at all levels of analysis, generally reports negative relationships between age and performance. Neither the heterogeneity of tenure nor age was related to performance nor was there evidence of nonlinearities in relationships. Practical implications of the findings are discussed regarding ageism and employers’ use of gig or contract workers. Implications for future research and theory focus on interdisciplinary theory development and the scientific contribution of organizationally based research.

中文翻译：

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年龄、经验和业务绩效：工作单元级效应的元分析

摘要 本文采用跨学科视角，报告了年龄和经验对工作单位绩效影响的新证据。两种随着年龄增长而增加的经验是“一般的”和“公司特有的”。这里的重点是一般人力资本（随着在劳动力中花费的时间而增加）和公司特定的人力资本（随着在当前雇主任职而增加）对工作单位绩效的影响。尽管在心理学和经济学这两个研究文献中对年龄-绩效关系进行了广泛的研究，但都没有在组织内部的分析层面解决这种关系，而是专注于个人、组织或国家层面的年龄-绩效关系。使用由大样本、长时间、公司内部单位绩效的多变量研究 这项荟萃分析综合了年龄和任期影响的部分效应大小。一个关键的发现是，任期对单位绩效有积极影响，而年龄没有影响。发现工作单位领导的任期而不是年龄对单位绩效有积极影响。缺乏年龄与绩效关系的证据与个人层面的心理学研究一致，但与经济学研究文献相矛盾，经济学研究文献在所有分析层面都普遍报告了年龄与绩效之间的负相关关系。任期和年龄的异质性都与绩效无关，也没有证据表明关系存在非线性。讨论了有关年龄歧视和雇主使用零工或合同工的研究结果的实际意义。