Knowledge workers, managers, and contingent employment relationships
| Date | 26 December 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480910920723 |
| Published date | 26 December 2008 |
| Pages | 74-89 |
| Author | Lindsay Redpath,Deborah Hurst,Kay Devine |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Knowledge workers, managers,
and contingent employment
relationships
Lindsay Redpath, Deborah Hurst and Kay Devine
Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, St Albert, Canada
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare knowledge employees’ perceptions of contingent
work with their managers’ perceptions, highlighting potential differences in their respective
psychological contracts which might produce dissonance in the employment relationship.
Design/methodology/approach – Original research using interviews and scalar data of both
contingent knowledge workers and their managers are reported. The study sample consists of 32
contingent knowledge workers and 33 managers in five industries in Canada: two public sector and
three private sector.
Findings – The results of this study indicate that differences exist between contingent knowledge
workers and their managers with how contingent work affects career goals, promotion opportunities,
and training and development opportunities. Additionally, differences occur in the constructs that
mirror the traditional empirical measurements of the psychological contract. Two major themes are
revealed: coping with uncertainty and integration with the organization on the part of contingent
workers and managers.
Originality/value – This study contributes to research on contingent employment as it compares
manager and contingent knowledge worker responses in terms of the psychological contracts formed
by each.
Keywords Knowledge management, Psychologicalcontracts, Careers, Human resource management,
Canada, Contingentworkers
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Contingent employment practices are gaining prevalence as an accepted means of
staffing in organizations, mainly due to the demands of employers for labour
flexibility, the existence of temporary work agencies to supply labour, and the desire of
some employees for varied work experiences. Early contingent arrangements were
associated with lesser-skilled workers, e.g. manual labourers, clerical staff, janitorial
staff, but today’s workplace includes skilled professional and technical contingent
knowledge workers. While several studies have examined contingent employment
issues related to knowledge workers (e.g. Barker and Christenson, 1998; David, 2005;
Hipple and Stewart, 1996; Mallon and Duberly, 2000; Matusik and Hill, 1998; Hurst and
MacDougall, 2005), few have compared the perspectives and experiences of parties on
both sides of the employment relationship within the same organization, i.e. manager s
and contingent employees. The purpose of this research is to compare knowledge
employees’ perceptions of contingent work with their ma nagers’ perceptions,
highlighting potential differences in their respective psychological contracts, which
might produce dissonance in the employment relationship.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
PR
38,1
74
Received 5 June 2006
Revised May 2007
Accepted 14 November 2007
Personnel Review
Vol. 38 No. 1, 2009
pp. 74-89
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483480910920723
A psychological contract involves:
[...] an individual’s belief in mutual obligations between that person and another party such
as an employer...This belief is predicated on the perception that a promise has been made
(e.g. of employment or career opportunities) and a consideration offered in exchange for it (e.g.
accepting a position, foregoing other job offers), binding the parties to some set of reciprocal
obligations (Rousseau and Tijoriwala, 1998, p. 679).
Since psychological contracts are subjective individual perceptions, each employee’s
beliefs are unique, as are each manager’s beliefs. In an ideal situation, these two sets of
beliefs are congruent, but given their idiosyncratic nature, this scenario is difficult to
obtain. Consequently, this research attempts to determine which aspects of the
psychological contract are most likely to be affected when knowledge workers are
engaged in contingent work. Theoretically, it adds empirical evidence to the growing
body of research into psychological contracts, while practically it may aid both
contingent workers and their managers in the workplace.
Background
Contingent, or non-standard employment is a workforce category that varies across
countries and industries (Burgess and Connell, 2006), but that typically includes
part-time, temporary, seasonal, contract, agency, and self-employed workers. More
specifically, Feldman (2006) classifies contingent work as employment that is:
.Not permanently associated with any one employer or client;
.Less than 35 hours per week with any one employer; and
.Limited in duration either by contract or by the duration of a specific task or
project.
In the UK, 7 percent of all workers were considered to be contingent employees in 2003,
while in Canada, the number has fluctuated around 11 percent (Vosko et al., 2003).
Using the US Bureau of Labor Statistic’s broadest measure of contingency, there were
5.7 million contingent employees in the US, or about 4 percent of the total employment
population in 2005. For Australia, Hall (2006) reported that 2.5 to 3 percent of total
employment consists of temporary agency workers. Although these statistics indicate
that contingent employees constitute a minor portion of the employed population, their
contributions are critical to various companies (David, 2005; Payette, 1998).
Often, contingent work is associated with “bad” jobs, e.g. those getting a lesser deal
in the exchange with minimum security, lower pay, and few, if any, benefits (Kalleberg
et al., 2000; Barker and Christensen, 1998; Spalter-Roth and Hartmann, 1998). As a
result, much of the literature has focused on lesser-skilled workers with little attention
paid to more highly skilled workers, or the contingent knowledge worker, e.g.
information technology contractors or on-call nurses (David, 2005). Using Feldman’s
classification, however, a number of professionals with challenging, high skills-re lated
occupations are technically contingent workers. Little is known about this specific
group. Past empirical studies involving lesser skilled contingent employees have
analyzed job attitudes (Ellingson et al., 1998), job perceptions (Feldman and
Doerpinghaus, 1992), job commitment and trust (De Gilder, 2003), job behaviors
(VanDyne and Ang, 1998), job enlargement (Ang and Slaughter, 2001), psychological
contracts (McLean Parks et al., 1998), wages (Gramm and Schnell, 2001) and turnover
Knowledge
workers
75
To continue reading
Request your trial