Is Generational Diversity Good for Engagement? Generational Diversity's Moderation of the Relationship Between An Employee's Perception of Leadership Effectiveness and Their Own Engagement

Authors

Matthew J. Baumann, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Business Administration

Major/Program

<--Please Select Department-->

First Advisor's Name

George Marakas

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Hemang Subramanian

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Arijit Sengupta

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Robert Rodriguez

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Employee Engagement, Generational Diversity, Age Diversity, Leadership Effectiveness

Date of Defense

6-7-2022

Abstract

This dissertation manuscript is rooted in the notion that an employee’s perception of their immediate supervisor’s leadership effectiveness, and the associated social exchange, are significant contributors to their engagement. Engagement, when consistently elevated, results in positive organizational outcomes. While perceived leadership effectiveness and engagement present a relatively intuitive connection, other less clearly defined factors might moderate this relationship. These factors include a myriad of supervisor and employee traits and behaviors, many of which represent levels and dimensions of diversity. Diversity, when misunderstood and subsequently over or underestimated, can result in unforeseen impact to organizational outcomes. One critical diversity construct is age diversity, also known as generational diversity, or the difference in generational belonging, identification and generational manifestations, between an employee and their supervisor. Generational diversity might challenge the assumption that diversity has a generally positive impact on the workplace, namely because of the severity in differences found between the values of working generations (James et al., 2011). This research is concerned with answering the following questions: How does generational diversity in the employee-supervisor hierarchy, affect the relationship between positive perceptions of leader effectiveness and employee engagement? Of particular interest, is whether generational diversity moderates this relationship? In an effort to avoid missing a critical engagement moderator, this study also explores employee personality as a moderator to this relationship.

Identifier

FIDC010726

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Baumann, Matthew J., "Is Generational Diversity Good for Engagement? Generational Diversity's Moderation of the Relationship Between An Employee's Perception of Leadership Effectiveness and Their Own Engagement" (2022). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5071.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5071