Preferences for family-friendly benefits: Anticipated regret, work centrality, and decoy options

• Main Authors: REB, Jochen, LI, Andrew, BAGGER, Jessica
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Human Resources Management; Organizational Behavior and Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6918
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Organizations increasingly offer family-friendly benefits to attract and retain talent. We investigated inherent and constructed preferences for two types of family-friendly benefits: flexible work arrangements (FWA) and dependent care support (DCS). In two experimental studies we found that work centrality predicted preferences such that the more central work was to a participant’s identity, the stronger the preference for a job offering with attractive FWA benefits over a job offering with attractive DCS benefits. Further, preferences were significantly influenced by the presence of a decoy option such that they shifted towards the FWA option when the decoy targeted this option and to the DCS option when the decoy targeted that option. In addition, Study 2 showed that anticipated regret significantly mediated the effects of work centrality and decoy options on preferences. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.