Examining the impact of demographic characteristics on employees' benefits preferences: The study of a U.S. manufacturing corporation.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examined the relationship between employees' demographic characteristics and their preferences for various employee benefits practices. Drawing on various literatures, the main research questions were driven by the changing demographic composition of the American workforce and what this means for the employment relationship as well as organizational practices. This study was carried out in various locations of a large US manufacturing organization.
As the changing composition of the American working population gets reflected in the demographic composition of organizations, this will create various groupings of employees in organizations based on demographic characteristics. To the extent that having certain personal characteristics, indicative of life cycle stage and household configuration, means different expectations from the organization, employers should be concerned about how to design employment practices that best meet these diverse employee expectations. Hence, if employees' demographic characteristics are related to their preferences for various types of employee benefits practices, then organizations would have to be aware of these expectations and how best to address them.
In order to examine this research question, surveys were administered to a sample of approximately 600 employees at various locations a large US manufacturing organization. Results of the data analysis predominantly indicated that women and employees of various minority racial groups had strong preferences for certain types of employee benefits practices. Additionally, for some benefits practices, tenure and having dependents was also found to be related to preferences. And, contrary to what was hypothesized there were numerous non significant findings as well.
Thus, while limited to interpretations of one organizational setting, the results of this dissertation do indicate some employee differences based on grouping according to personal characteristics. The key implication of this research is that before incurring the costs of complicated benefits practices organizations should clearly understand which practices are most relevant to their employees and whether there is an adequate system in place to ensure employee education and participation in these practices. Finally, this thesis raises numerous theoretical and methodological challenges and directions for future research.