Abstract: Against the backdrop of rapid population aging and the impending wave of retirements among older employees, organizations urgently need to facilitate older employees’ intergenerational knowledge sharing with younger coworkers to prevent knowledge discontinuities. However, age discrimination experienced by older employees may inhibit such knowledge sharing. Prior research has mainly explained the relationship between perceived age discrimination and older employees’ intergenerational knowledge sharing from identity- and capability-based perspectives, while paying insufficient attention to resource constraints. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study proposes emotional exhaustion as a key mechanism through which perceived age discrimination undermines older employees’ intergenerational knowledge sharing. Using three-wave survey data from 376 older employees, the results show that perceived age discrimination positively predicts emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion partially mediates the relationship between perceived age discrimination and intergenerational knowledge sharing, and its indirect effect is stronger than those through organizational identification and occupational self-efficacy. Moreover, older employees’ occupational future time perspective negatively moderates the relationship between perceived age discrimination and emotional exhaustion, and further weakens the indirect effect of emotional exhaustion on the link between perceived age discrimination and intergenerational knowledge sharing. Based on these findings, organizations can promote older employees’ intergenerational knowledge sharing by strengthening anti-age-discrimination systems and inclusive cultures, offering resource-recovery and emotion-management training, and expanding older employees’ occupational future time perspective.

Key words: perceived age discrimination, occupational future time perspective, emotional exhaustion, intergenerational knowledge sharing