Dual commitment profiles and job satisfaction among temporary agency workers

Abstract

Temporary agency workers (TAWs) are an ever‐increasing type of employees which establish a double work relationship with both the agency and the client organization. Within this context, the concept of dual commitment has received considerable attention in the last years. The present contribution integrates dual commitment line of research with the one adopting a person‐centered approach to the study of commitment configurations, to investigate commitment profiles on a large sample of TAWs. According to Sinclair et al.'s framework, we aimed to identify TAWs' commitment profiles based on their levels of dual affective commitment (to the agency and to the client organization) and on their general continuance commitment and to investigate differences in job satisfaction among profiles. Latent profile analyses on 7225 TAWs revealed 5 distinct profiles, namely Dually Free Agents, Dually Involved, Dually Allied, (Unilaterally) Client Allied and (Unilaterally) Agency Invested. The Dually Involved profile, followed by the Dually Allied profile, had the highest level of job satisfaction, whereas the Dually Free Agent profile and the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested had the lowest. Furthermore, the (Unilaterally) Client Allied group had a higher level of job satisfaction as compared to the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested profile. Implications are discussed.

A relationship between perceived investment in temporary employee development and organizational performance: an empirical study

“…There has been a substantial increase in research on OI and its impact on organizational outcomes (He and Brown, 2013). It has been associated with several employee attitudes and behaviours, including job satisfaction, work motivation, job performance and organizational citizenship behaviour, either conceptually or practically (Menatta et al, 2022;Lythreatis et al, 2021;Callea et al, 2016). Practically, OI happens when employees experience a sense of belonging to and oneness with their employer (Ashforth et al, 2011).…”

“…From a global perspective, Menatta et al (2022) and De Cuyper et al (2018) described temporary employment as a short-term, nonstandard and dependent employment category in which temporary employees are loosely associated with the employing organization. They have varied skills and are masters in flexible employment (Fontinha et al, 2012).…”

Temporary Agency Work and Well-Being—The Mediating Role of Job Insecurity

“…Compared to standard or temporary employment the triangular nature of TAW results in two different employer-relationships for the TA worker. He or she relies on the TA in terms of selection, training, pay or contract duration, whereas with respect to the actual work demands/conditions, resources, social networks etc., the TA worker is confronted with the user company’s working conditions [ 22 ].…”

“…In order to improve working conditions for TA workers both the TA and the user company should take measures to mitigate the potential negative effects of uncertainty and poor working conditions. In this respect, Menatta et al (2021) [ 22 ] recently confirmed that well-being/job satisfaction amongst TA workers was higher if they felt affectively committed to both the TA and the user company. However, if employees were unilaterally committed to only one of the two involved organisations, the commitment with the user company seemed to be of greater importance to well-being.…”

Psychological states of career wellbeing and affective commitment as predictors of dual career agility types

“…Based on the arguments of Menatta, Consiglio, Borgogni and Moschera (2021) and Meyer et al (2021), the notion of dual career agility types is based on the theoretical assumption that individuals simultaneously experience different forms of the three career agility facet motives to varying degrees. Coetzee (2021) argued that the three career agility facets can be combined into three meaningful combinations that denote certain shared motivational commonalities.…”