Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

1012

Date

2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Concentration

Experimental Psychology

Committee Chair

William Dwyer

Committee Member

Frank Andrasik

Committee Member

Robert Cohen

Abstract

Drawing hypotheses from a theory of lifespan development called selective optimization with compensation (SOC, Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999), the study explored the degree to which employee age moderates the relationship between employee affective commitment and satisfaction with various high commitment human resource practices (HCHRPs; e.g., providing training, opportunity for advancement, work/life balance). In addition, as exploratory hypotheses, the study also tested whether other employee-level variables such as gender, job tenure, and job type also serve as moderators of the HCHRP-affective commitment relationship. Customer-facing employees (N = 6,360) representing three job types (O*NET titles: Shipping, Receiving, and Traffic Clerks; Truck and Delivery Services Drivers; Couriers and Messengers) from an international transportation company completed an eight-item version of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ, Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979) and a questionnaire assessing their satisfaction with various HCHRPs offered by their organization. Path analyses assessed the significance of two-way interactions concerning age (i.e., age-by-HCHRP) and job tenure (i.e., tenure-by- HCHRP), as well as three way interactions concerning gender (i.e., gender-by-age-by- HCHRP) and job type (i.e., job type-by-age-by-HCHRP). Results show that, although there was a strong overall correlation between affective commitment and satisfaction with HCHRPs (r = .66), employee age was a significant moderator of only the relationships between affective commitment and maintenance-related HCHRPs (e.g., life/work balance, job security) and not of development-related HCHRPS (e.g., training opportunities, opportunities for advancement). More importantly, although the moderation effects were statistically significant, the effect size of every moderation was small, suggesting from a practical perspective that employee age is not a characteristic that organizations need to consider when making strategic decisions about HCHRPs.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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