MBA: Baby Boom managers reinvent retirement

Baby Boomers have been bucking social conventions and defining new market trends since the 1960s. Now they're reinventing retirement as well, a new McGill study shows. The study, based on in-depth interviews with 106 managers and executives from a variety of companies and industries across Canada, sheds light on how Baby Boom managers and corporate leaders are crafting their pathways out of firms and forging new models of retirement.

The research - led by Prof. Mary Dean Lee at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management, with colleagues from McGill and York University in Canada, and Queensland University and the University of Melbourne in Australia - highlights the complexity of how managers are approaching the later stages of life.

"Even among those eager to maintain engagement in some kind of productive activity after formal retirement, there is a strong inclination toward activities that are relaxing and restorative and involve increased engagement with family," says the preliminary report on the findings. "There is considerable evidence that many managers are inspired to find new ways to contribute, but on their own terms, whether through continued full employment or creating new pathways."

Read full article: Financial Post, March 9, 2011

Read Executive Summary Report: Desautels Research