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This dissertation examines how different United States Department of the Interior (USDOI) employees’ perceive fairness and support for diversity. The USDOI is an agency with numerous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) employees who have the opportunity to influence future generations through their STEM internship. Specifically, this dissertation examines the relationship between: (1) the perceived fairness of performance appraisals and the empowerment index, demographic characteristics, satisfaction, accountability and recognition; and (2) the perceived support (or lack thereof) of departmental programs and supervisors to foster diversity in the workforce and the empowerment index and demographic characteristics. This dissertation accomplishes several things. First, it provides a review of literature relating to gender diversity. Second, it provides a brief history of organizations that were created and acts/executive orders that were passed in order to support women in their fight against gender discrimination. Fourth, it provides a review of the USDOI’s recruitment, promotion, and employment policies. Finally, it presents an analysis of how USDOI employees’ perceptions of diversity differ by gender. This inquiry utilizes a theoretical framework based on Thomas and Ely’s (1996) and Selden and Selden’s (2001) four diversity paradigms; “discrimination and fairness,” “access and legitimacy,” “learning and effectiveness,” and “valuing and integrating.” These paradigms suggest that the true benefits of diversity can only be realized in the valuing and integrating paradigm where employees’ individual differences are used for the betterment of the organization. It is found that women tend not to perceive that their organization supports diversity. It is also found that the empowerment index, federal tenure, pay category, satisfaction, accountability and recognition are important in explaining employees’ perceptions of fairness and that the empowerment index, federal tenure, supervisory status, gender, and minority status are important in explaining employees’ perceptions of support for diversity. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Work engagement is an increasingly popular construct in organizational and occupational health psychology. However, despite substantial advances in our understanding of work engagement at the between-person level, scholars have argued for increased investigation into what drives engagement on a daily level for individual employees. In the current study, a within-person, day-level design was employed to examine the relationships between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors, and daily work engagement. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (Hobfoll, 1989) theory, nonwork mastery experiences and job crafting were operationalized as employee-driven, resource-building strategies that assist employees in generating important psychological and job resources that can be drawn upon in order to maintain high levels of work engagement during the day. Moreover, a reciprocal relationship between work engagement during the day and nonwork mastery experiences the same evening was tested. Employees from a U.S. technology firm provided responses in the morning, at lunchtime, and after work each day for five working days. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses in the current study. Findings revealed no support for the hypothesized model at the within-person level of analysis; however, ancillary analyses suggested support for an indirect relationship between job crafting and work engagement via increased positive affect. Moreover, nearly all the proposed relationships emerged at the between-person level of analysis providing some insight into the effects of resource building strategies and work engagement across participants. Finally, seeking structural resources was identified as a person-level factor that explained variance in employees' initial levels of work engagement at the start of the week, as well as the trajectory of engagement over the course of the week. The current findings contribute to our understanding of bottom-up, employee-driven behaviors that help to sustain engagement over time. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.