Date of Award

5-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Applied Psychology

Committee Chair/Advisor

Sinclair, Robert R

Committee Member

Rosopa , Patrick J

Committee Member

Raymark , Patrick

Abstract

Previous research on employee benefits has found that benefits are related to various employee attitudes including job satisfaction, turnover intentions, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, affective organizational commitment, and continuance organizational commitment (Blau et al., 2001; Sinclair, Leo, & Wright, 2005; Williams et al., 2002). The current study examined how health benefit use and health benefit satisfaction influence three types of commitment: affective organizational, continuance organizational and union loyalty. To date, researchers have never examined the differential effects of health benefits use in full and part-time employees. Given that it is uncommon for part-time employees to be offered benefits, part-time employees may view their benefits as a way in which the organization or union demonstrates that they care for their employees or members as individuals. Therefore, I hypothesized that employee work status would moderate the relationship between health benefit use and health benefit satisfaction on affective organizational commitment and union loyalty, such that those who use their benefits, are highly satisfied, and work part-time have the highest commitment levels. Results indicated that benefit satisfaction was a significant predictor of all study outcomes. However, benefit use only predicted continuance commitment. No support was found for any hypothesized interactions, however an unexpected interaction between benefit use and employee work status was found. Possible explanations for the findings are presented, followed by limitations of the study. Lastly, implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.