Date of Conferral

2018

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Godwin Igein

Abstract

Diversity practitioners in the United States have taken steps to implement programs for integration of people in organizations from across the socioeconomic and demographic spectrum. Despite changes in U.S. discrimination laws and work by diversity practitioners, maintaining equitable workplace diversity continues to be a problem in U.S. corporations. This correlational study was conducted to examine differences in life-guiding principles, urban identification, and person-organization fit between urban and suburban residents. A purposive sample of 180 adults was drawn in a voluntary online survey from industries in two U.S. representative counties with a mix of urban and suburban sprawl. This study was also conducted to further examine planned behavior, expectancy, normative social influence, and social impact theories by comparing how the independent variable of participant residence location affected the dependent variables of life-guiding principles, urban identification, and person-organization fit. T-test statistics were used to test mean differences in normally distributed data sets, and the Mann-Whitney U test was used for testing differences in non-normally distributed data sets. Test results revealed that there were differences in the dependent variables with a significant difference in urban identification for urban and suburban residents, confirming the hypothesis. Findings from this study may help diversity practitioners and organizational leaders understand the differences among urban and suburban residents. Study findings may also support organizations' social agenda toward addressing diversity issues and for narrowing career achievement gaps between urban and suburban residents through a better understanding of variations in culture.

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