An exploration of female employees' pension engagement as an ecosystem set within a large organisation
Abstract
This thesis explores female employees’ pension engagement, which is conceptualised as
their active involvement in decision making. This is important because the shift from
final salary towards defined contributions pension products moves responsibility for
decision making and investment risk from employer to employee, while at the same
time while automatic enrolment has led to inertia. Furthermore, women are consistently
reported as less engaged and achieving poorer pension outcomes than men.
Taking an ecosystem perspective, the thesis explores engagement of the individual set
within the meso-level of the Employer and macro-level of pension regulation and
applies the theoretical framework of structure, culture and agency. A case study was
conducted within a large financial services organisation, applying Practice Theory as a
lens to understand pension engagement in the context of workplace marketing practice.
This involved 47 interviews with female employees and those managing the pension,
documentary analysis, observations of meetings, and a communications audit.
The thesis contributes to the theorisation of pension engagement by developing and
modelling an engagement ecosystem which identifies the interaction of structural and
cultural influences across the macro, meso and micro-levels of the ecosystem which
female employees encounter, shaping their pension narratives and influencing variations
in engagement. The employer/employee relationship is identified as critical as the
pension engagement interface encompassing specific affective mechanisms. The thesis
contributes to the marketing discipline by providing an empirically derived model of
engagement; improving understanding of workplace marketing and the influence of the
workplace as a consumption context; and categorising a new system of market practices
for pension engagement. Recommendations are made for policy developments at the
macro-level and for improvements to workplace pension marketing to enable more
female employees achieve better retirement outcomes.