Emerging Trends in Contingent Work Research 2004

Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983
Emerging Trends in Contingent Work Research

Catherine E. Connelly∗
McMaster University, Michael G. DeGroote School of Business, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4M4
Daniel G. Gallagher
James Madison University, College of Business, MSC 0205, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA
Received 1 March 2004; received in revised form 11 June 2004; accepted 16 June 2004
Available online 14 July 2004
In the past decade there has been growing internationally-based evidence towards a trend
in organizational staffing strategies which have placed emphasis upon the direct or brokered
hiring of workers on temporary, fixed-term or “contingent” employment contracts in lieu of
contracts with the implication of an ongoing relationship. Concurrently, there has been an
emergence of research activity concerning individual and organizational-level consequences
associated with the increased organizational reliance on fixed-term contracts in the workplace.
This paper provides an overview of the contingent work literature and identifies topical themes
and research questions which have been the primary focus of attention, as well as the possible
causal interrelationships among the diverse constructs which have been examined. The paper
highlights aspects of the existing research that may benefit from further exploration, as well as
consideration of a number of theoretical and methodological issues which have also emerged.
© 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Emerging Trends in Contingent Work Research
The “normal” or “standard” work arrangement for most workers during the twentieth cen-
tury was employment that (a) was performed full-time, (b) would continue indefinitely, and
(c) was performed at the “employer’s” place of business under the employer’s supervision
(Kalleberg, 2000, p. 341). Almost all of our existing behavioral theories and frameworks, for
the study of work and employment relationships, are implicitly grounded in the dominant
paradigm of “standard” work (Pfeffer & Baron, 1988). However, there has been a gradual
but accelerating growth of “alternative,” or “non-standard” arrangements in Canada, the
United States, Europe, and many parts of Asia (Quinlan & Bohle, 2004). One such form of
“non-standard” employment, which has gained popularity among employers, is the hiring
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 905 525 9140x23954; fax: +1 905 521 8995.
E-mail address: connell@mcmaster.ca (C.E. Connelly).
0149-2063/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jm.2004.06.008
960 C.E. Connelly, D.G. Gallagher / Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983
of workers on “contingent” or “fixed-term contracts” (Zeytinoğlu, 1999). Within the Euro-

pean Union, this growth of “contingent” work is also descriptively referred to as “precarious
work” (Isaksson & Bellagh, 2002). Corresponding to the increased visibility of contingent
work arrangements in the workplace and popular press, there has also been a phenome-
nal growth in behavioral and economic research studies investigating the consequences of
“fixed-term” contracts at the organizational and worker levels.
The objective of this paper is to provide an overview and a constructive commentary on the
growing body of literature pertaining to the study of contingent work arrangements that has
emerged over the past decade. Attention will first be directed to a consideration of the defi-
nition or meaning of “contingent” work, as well as to the identification of various forms of
contractual arrangements under which contingent workers may be employed. Subsequently,
this paper will identify the topical themes and research questions that have been the focus of
this research. An effort will also be made to identify studies, that are representative not only
of different topical areas, but also of the type of contingent work under examination. Where
appropriate, a commentary will be offered concerning aspects of existing research that may
benefit from further exploration. A number of theoretical and methodological issues that
have emerged from the existing research will also be examined. The paper will close with
some additional comments concerning future research on the study of contingent work.
Defining Contingent Work
In considering many of the studies which were published under the title or theme of con-
tingent work, it is important to separate “contingent” work from both Kalleberg’s (2000)
definition of standard work, as well as other forms of “alternative” or “non-standard” em-
ployment. One of the more commonly used definitions of contingent work rests in the
approach used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which characterizes it as “any job in
which an individual does not have an explicit or implicit contract for long-term employment
or one in which the minimum hours worked can vary in a nonsystematic manner” (Polivka
& Nardone, 1989: 11). However, as with other forms of alternative work arrangements
(Feldman, 1990), contingent workers are not a homogenous group. In fact, there appear
to be four broad groupings of work arrangements that readily fit Polivka and Nardone’s
definition.
Perhaps the most visible form of contingent work can be found in the case of “temporary-
help service firms” or “temporary staffing agencies” (e.g., Adecco, Manpower, Accutemps,
etc.). Among temporary-help service firms, there is an almost universally explicit under-
standing between all three parties (service firm–worker–client) that the assignment is of
a fixed duration. In most countries, there are also legal limitations on how long a worker
may be assigned to a particular client organization. A variation on this theme, which would
remove temporary-help service workers from the realm of contingent work, would be those
rare circumstances found in a few countries (e.g., Sweden) where some temporary workers
are actually ongoing “employees” of the temporary firm, and receive compensation whether
or not they are on assignment at any given time.
A second type of contingent work, which has become increasingly visible in practice
and research, is the hiring of workers with “independent contractor” or “contract” status.
C.E. Connelly, D.G. Gallagher / Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983 961
Independent contractors or “freelance” workers are often also defined as self-employed

individuals who sell their services to client organizations on a fixed-term or a project basis.
As noted by Ang and Slaughter (2001), the use of independent contractors has become very
visible in information technology (IT) and other knowledge-based occupations. It is also
interesting to note that the objective of increased “flexibilization” occasionally results in
permanent employees with “standard” employment contracts being terminated only to be
rehired as fixed-term contractors (Ho, Ang & Straub, 2003).
A third, and expanding, category of contingent workers is comprised of individuals who
are hired through “direct-hire” or “in-house” arrangements with the immediate employer
organization (Gallagher, 2002). Direct-hire temporary arrangements are most often found
in large organizations where irregular staffing requirements result in the frequent use of
workers for short-term assignments and where the organization hires temporary workers
directly rather than exclusively using the services of a temporary-help service firm. In prac-
tice, many direct-hire temporary workers may have an implicit or explicit understanding
of an ongoing relationship with the same employer (e.g., future temporary assignments).
However, direct-hire temporary employment assignments can be characterized as “contin-
gent” for the primary reason that they meet the second defining characteristic of contingent
work which is that “... the minimum hours worked can vary in a nonsystematic manner”
(Polivka & Nardone, 1989: 11). In some European countries, a variation of the direct-hire
arrangement is referred to as “zero-hour” contracts, where working hours are only made
available when a definite demand exists for such labor (Sparrow, 1998). A further and often
overlooked variation of direct-hire contingent contracts would be hiring hall arrangements
in unionized sectors of the construction and entertainment industries. Although the union
may operate as an intermediary, the resulting employment relationship is directly between
the employee and the employer.
A fourth category of contingent workers may conceivably include workers directly hired
by an organization but working on a seasonal contract (e.g., resorts, tourism, etc.). Since
the number of assigned or contracted weeks of employment suggests the absence of a long-
term contractual arrangement, many types of seasonal work can be viewed as fitting the
aforementioned definition of contingent work. However, in some industries, as noted by
McDonald and Makin (2000), seasonal work may be viewed as an opportunity for future
fixed-term contracts (next season) or as the port of entry for long-term employment. In
reality, most seasonal contracts are short-term in duration and thus within the realm of
contingent work (Aronsson, Gustafsson & Dallner, 2002).
In examining the existing literature on contingent work arrangements, a disproportionate
share of the research, particularly among studies conducted at the organizational level, has
focused on workers hired through temporary-help service firms and independent contrac-
tors. To some extent, the incidence of behaviorally-based empirical studies of direct-hire
temporaries has been more limited. This may be due in part to constraints in gaining access
to direct-hire workers within a single organization, or to the fact that a sizeable number
of studies do not make a clear distinction between “temporaries” who are hired directly
or through intermediary staffing firms. Finally, with a few exceptions (e.g., Davis-Blake &
Uzzi, 1993; McDonald & Makin, 2000), seasonal workers are rarely ever clearly identified
as the subjects of empirical investigations under the banner of “contingent work.” This may
reflect a lack of research interest, or some researchers may be considering seasonal workers
to be “direct-hire” contingent workers, or perhaps the research on seasonal work is being

captured under the rubric of “part-time” employment (Barling & Gallagher, 1996).
Past and Emerging Research Topics
The topical focus of research pertaining to the study of contingent work, in many respects,
parallels trends in the study of part-time employment, which emerged in the late 1980s and
remained very visible throughout most of the 1990s. One of the most striking similarities
between the part-time and contingent work research is the way in which well-established
and popular research topics, that had been examined in the context of “standard” employ-
ment contracts, were re-tested in the context of “non-standard” work (e.g., part-time and
contingent work) (Feldman, 1990).
Presented in Table 1 is a summary of the topics that have, to varying degrees, been a
focus or major component of empirical studies examining contingent work arrangements.
Table 1 is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all research studies addressing any
specific topic, but rather a selection of studies that cover a broad spectrum of investigations
pertaining to the constructs of interest. The table also categorizes studies on the basis of the
type of contingent employment arrangement from which the research sample was drawn.
On the basis of a review of the literature, the frequency or relative amount of attention that
the topical area has received in the past ten to fifteen years is also noted.
Commitment
Not surprisingly, one of the most frequently researched topics in the study of contingent
work is “commitment.” Commitment is a popular topic, a self-report based measurement
of the construct is meaningful, and it is intuitively interesting to inquire as to whether or not
contingent workers are more or less “committed” than their permanent counterparts in the
same organization. As is the case with research on standard employees, most of the studies
of contingent workers’ commitment focus upon the issue of “organizational” commitment.
Among the studies that have investigated the potential differences in organizational com-
mitment levels between permanent and contingent workers in the same organization, the
findings have been mixed. In some studies, the commitment of contingent workers to their
employing organization was found to be significantly lower than that of permanent employ-
ees (e.g., Van Dyne & Ang, 1998). Some other studies suggest the opposite (e.g., McDonald
& Makin, 2000), while in other studies regular and contingent workers had equal levels of
organizational commitment (e.g., Pearce, 1993).
These seemingly contradictory findings appear to be fairly common in the realm of con-
tingent work research. This may be partly because results, as seen here and elsewhere, may
vary depending upon the type of contingent workers being examined. There is an additional
underlying concern relating to the applicability of certain constructs (e.g., commitment) to
different forms of contingent work (Gallagher & McLean Parks, 2001). The complexity of
commitment measurement has been demonstrated in a number of studies that have looked
at organizational commitment in the case of temporary workers who are affiliated with a
temporary staffing firm (e.g., Connelly, Gallagher & Gilley, 2003; Feldman, Doerpinghaus
Table 1
Examples of behavioral research on contingent work: by topical area and work arrangement
Topic Ratea Workers affiliated with Independent contractors Direct-hires Otherb
temporary-help service firms
Commitment H McClurg (1999) Ang and Slaughter (2001) McDonald and Makin Van Dyne and Ang (1998)
(2000)
C.E. Connelly, D.G. Gallagher / Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983

Liden et al. (2003) Pearce (1993)
Connelly et al. (2003)
Job satisfaction H Krausz et al. (1995) MacNamara (2003) Bergman (2002) De Witte and Näswall (2003)
Marler et al. (2002) Lowry et al. (2002)
Feldman et al. (1995)
Role conflict/role M Krausz et al. (1995) Ho et al. (2003) Parker et al. (2002) Sverke et al. (2000)
ambiguity
Volition M Krausz et al. (1995) Bernasek and Kinnear (1999)
Ellingson et al. (1998) DiNatale (2001)
Perceived organizational L Liden et al. (2003) Geber (1999) Levesque and Rousseau
support (1999)
McClurg (1999)
Justice/unfair treatment M Feldman et al. (1994) Geber (1999) Lowry et al. (2002) George et al. (2003)
Rogers and Henson (1997) Collinson (1999)
Organizational M Kidder (1995) Pearce (1993) Van Dyne and Ang (1998)
citizenship behaviors
Liden et al. (2003)
Well-being M Isaksson and Bellagh (2002) Kochan et al. (1994) Virtanen et al. (2003) Sverke et al. (2000)
Klein Hesselink and van
Vuuren (1999)
Work–family conflict L Gallagher et al. (2001) Houseman (2001)
Performance L Ellingson et al. (1998) Ang and Slaughter (2001) George et al. (2003)
Bauer and Truxillo (2000)
Psychological contract M Ho et al. (2003) McDonald and Makin Van Dyne and Ang (1998)
(2000)
Levesque and Rousseau
(1999)
Integration/trust M Chattopadhyay and George (2001) Ang and Slaughter (2001) Morishima and Feuille (2000)
Lautsch (2003) Pearce (1993) Twiname et al. (2003)
Davis-Blake et al. (2003)
Knowledge sharing L Galup et al. (1997) Matusik and Hill (1998) Castaneda (2003)
Sias et al. (1997)
a The frequencies noted are simply indications of the relative amount of empirical studies in each topic category, and are not meant to suggest that any topics have
received an exhaustive treatment. H, high; M, moderate; and L, limited.

b Category information was not available, or more than one type of contingent worker was studied.
963
& Turnley, 1995; Liden, Wayne, Kraimer & Sparrowe, 2003; McClurg, 1999). Most notably,
“organizational” commitment within the context of the temporary-help industry requires
consideration of both the client and the temporary firms as parts of the contingent worker’s
organizational environment (Connelly & Gallagher, 2004). This broader issue of construct
meaning will be subsequently addressed in further detail. However, it is worth noting that a
number of studies support the notion of “dual commitment,” and have found significant cor-
relations between workers’ self-reports of commitment to their client and temporary firms
(Connelly et al., 2003; Liden et al., 2003; McClurg, 1999). Liden et al. also point to the
interesting irony that workers’ self-assessments of their commitment to their staffing agen-
cies were negatively related to how the managers in the client firms viewed these workers’
commitment to their client organizations.
Job Satisfaction, Role Conflict and Ambiguity
Other attitudes that have received a high level of research attention from contingent work
researchers include job/work satisfaction, role conflict, and role ambiguity. As with the
commitment research, most of the research on these topics contrasts contingent and non-
contingent workers and reveals mixed findings. For example, Bergman (2002) suggests that
contingent workers are less satisfied than permanent employees, but notes that psychological
contingency is a better predictor of work attitudes than employment status alone. In contrast,
Galup, Saunders, Nelson and Cerveny (1997), as well as McDonald and Makin (2000),
contend that temporary workers are actually more satisfied than permanent employees.
Interestingly, research by De Witte and Näswall (2003) and MacNamara (2003) suggests
that job satisfaction may be greatly affected by perceived levels of job security. Within the
context of contingent work arrangements, research on satisfaction as well as other attitudinal
and behavioral measures has also been closely linked to the issue of volition. Simply stated,
positive worker responses to their jobs are closely tied to the extent to which they feel that
their choice to work as a contingent was voluntary rather than from the lack of an alternative
(e.g., Krausz, Brandwein & Fox 1995; Ellingson, Gruys & Sackett, 1998).
On the topic of role ambiguity and role conflict, most empirical research shows virtually
no evidence of a strong or systematic relationship with status as a contingent worker (e.g.,
Krausz et al., 1995; Sverke, Gallagher & Hellgren, 2000). However, some research on
direct-hire temporary workers in the manufacturing sector suggests that contingent workers
actually have lower levels of role overload and role conflict in comparison to the permanent
employees (Parker, Griffin Sprigg & Wall, 2002). These contradictory findings may reflect
the fact that, among some forms of contingent work arrangements, there may be a clearer
written or implied contractual agreement concerning the task-related duties and goals.
Volition
As previously suggested, one of the most central findings in contingent employment

research is the impact which voluntary choice or “volition” has upon the work-related at-
titudes and behaviors of contingent workers (DiNatale, 2001; Feldman et al., 1995; Hardy
& Walker, 2003; Isaksson & Bellagh, 2002; Krausz, Sagie & Biderman, 2000). Parallel to
previous research findings in the area of part-time employment, individuals who voluntarily
choose or prefer contingent employment contracts often have more positive organizational
experiences than those who are performing contingent work because they cannot find per-
manent employment. Although it would appear that “voluntary” and “involuntary” status
represent opposite ends of a single continuum, research by Ellingson et al. (1998) suggests
that voluntariness and involuntariness may actually be two separate constructs. For example,
they found that individuals who involuntarily pursued temporary work were less satisfied
with different aspects of their jobs, while voluntary choice was unrelated to satisfaction.
However, the measurement distinction drawn by Ellingson et al. (1998) has not been widely
employed in subsequent research.
The extent to which workers voluntarily choose contingent work arrangements differs
considerably by the type of arrangement. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that
a sizeable majority of contingents working through temporary-staff firms or direct-hire
arrangements would prefer permanent employment (Hardy & Walker, 2003; Isaksson &
Bellagh, 2002; Polivka & Nardone, 1989). In contrast, it is estimated that only a small mi-
nority of all independent contractors are interested in securing more permanent contractual
arrangements (DiNatale, 2001).
Closely tied to the issue of volition, but perhaps under-explored in the existing research,
is the question of motivation (i.e., why work in a contingent capacity?). Among workers
assigned to jobs through the services of temporary-staffing firms or direct-hire arrangements,
the choice of temporary work may vary by such reasons as skill development (Marler,
Barringer & Milkovich, 2002), supplemental income (Bernasek & Kinnear, 1999), or a
desire to use temporary assignments as a transition to permanent work (Feldman et al., 1995;
Hardy & Walker, 2003). Among independent contractors, there is little evidence examining
how their motivation for engaging in contracting work impacts their attitudes toward the
work they perform. For example, some workers may become independent contractors as
a result of a unilateral decision by an employer to change the terms of the contractual
arrangement (Ho et al., 2003) or the worker may be unable to find a more “standard” job
after a previous job loss. Still others may have entered into self-employment as a part of
a deliberate career plan. To date, there appears to be very limited attention focused on
examining the work choice motivations of contingent workers other than those employed
through temporary-help service firms.
Perceived Organizational Support and Justice
A further group of constructs, which has received some marginal attention in the con-
tingent work literature, relates to the impact that the organization’s treatment of contingent
workers may have upon many of the above-noted attitudes. Of particular interest are the
roles that both perceived organizational support (POS) and unfair treatment or perceived
injustice may have on how contingent workers view their assignments. Again, many of
the underlying hypotheses, which drive these inquires, represent a reapplication of simi-
lar questions, models, and measures which were developed in the context of “standard”
employment arrangements but are now being applied to contingent workers.
The available research affirms the importance of POS and justice perceptions for con-
tingent workers in the shaping of their commitment to the organization(s). Research on
direct-hire temporary workers and independent contractors (Levesque & Rousseau, 1999)
suggests that socio-emotional support from other organizational members is positively re-
lated to contingent workers’ organizational commitment. The case of intermediated tem-
porary workers, who are assigned to client organizations by temporary firms, is somewhat
more complicated, given the potential availability of two separate sources of organiza-
tional support: the client organization and the temporary firm. Both Liden et al. (2003) and
McClurg (1999) have confirmed the fact that the levels of POS from the temporary firm pre-
dict commitment to the temporary firm, while POS associated with the client organization
predicts commitment to the client firm. Connelly et al. (2003) further complicate the issue
by suggesting that POS from the client organization also predicts affective and continuance
commitment towards the temporary firm, in an unexpected “spillover” effect.
The Liden et al. (2003) study also ties in the importance of justice by demonstrating that
POS within each organization is itself strongly influenced by perceptions of procedural jus-
tice from the same organization. Other studies which have directly or indirectly addressed
the issues of procedural justice (e.g., Feldman, Doerpinghaus & Turnley, 1994; McAllister,
1998), interpersonal justice (e.g., Rogers & Henson, 1997) and informational justice (e.g.,
Collinson, 1999; Geber, 1999) have focused on how these issues are of relevance to contin-
gent employment arrangements. However, there appears to be a limited amount of research
to date that establishes an empirical link between justice or fair treatment and specific
attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
As noted in Table 1, OCB is another topic that has received only a moderate amount of
research attention in the context of contingent work arrangements. Similar to previously
discussed findings concerning the relationship between contingent work and organizational
commitment, empirical research on OCB has also suggested some contradictory findings.
For example, Kidder (1995) suggests that temporary and permanent staff nurses engage in
the same level of citizenship behavior. In Pearce’s (1993) study of contract workers in the
aerospace industry, contractors actually reported higher levels of citizenship behavior than
permanent workers, but according to Van Dyne and Ang (1998), contingent workers have
lower levels of reported OCB than permanent workers in the same organization. However,
Van Dyne and Ang’s findings also indicate that the relationship between organizational com-
mitment and citizenship behavior may be stronger for contingent workers, which suggests
that an effort to build commitment can result in positive participatory behaviors.
As with the relationship between contingent employment and commitment, the rationale
for such divergent findings may rest, once again, in the variety of types of contingent work
arrangements that are being compared. Furthermore, much of the descriptive literature
suggests that contingent workers may have more clearly defined assignments and less fluid
(perhaps less relational) contracts compared to permanent or standard workers (e.g., Uzzi
& Barsness, 1998). As a result, for contingent workers, a larger proportion of routine work
behaviors may be considered to be organizational citizenship, simply because they are
not specifically required. In addition, due to the fixed-term nature of contingent contracts,
some individuals may refrain from engaging in extra-role behaviors, although Wheeler and
Buckley (2000) note that contingent workers may behave differently in an attempt to secure
permanent employment. Once again, this may be a function of a worker’s motivation for
assuming contingent work and/or the desire to maintain a series of fixed-term contracts into
the future (Feldman et al., 1995; Gallagher, 2002).
While the topic of contingent workers’ organizational citizenship behaviors has received
a moderate amount of attention from the literature, the same cannot be said for the opposite
end of the behavioral spectrum. While some qualitative studies suggest that contingent
workers do engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors (Rogers, 2000), neither the
prevalence of such behavior nor the factors that might precipitate it have been specifically
investigated. Such findings would be of particular interest to the firms that engage the
services of contingent workers, but such findings might also result in improvements in
how contingent workers are treated, if it is revealed that certain variables (e.g., injustice,
over-control, etc.) can be linked to tangibly negative outcomes. Future research on this
topic should consider that some contingent workers may have multiple targets for their
counterproductive behaviors (e.g., multiple clients and temporary-help firms).
Well-being: Safety
A review of the literature also indicates that the relationship between contingent em-
ployment and worker well-being has become very visible. However, it also appears that
well-being has been primarily viewed from the perspective of the impact of contingent
employment practices upon overall workplace “safety.” In particular, a number of studies
place a great deal of emphasis on the fact that the organizational practice of relying upon
poorly trained “contract” labor to perform high risk assignments is responsible for a num-
ber of major industrial accidents (e.g., Kochan, Smith, Wells & Rebitzer, 1994; Rousseau
& Libuser, 1997). Recent studies by Clarke (2003) as well as Quinlan and Bohle (2004)
also consider, from an international perspective, the need to more effectively integrate con-
tingent workers into the “safety culture” of the organization. Organizations also need to
recognize and correct for the lower levels of safety training that are afforded to contingent
workers in comparison to permanent employees (Virtanen, Kivimaki, Virtanen, Elovainio
& Vahtera, 2003). One limitation of a number of the earlier studies on contingent work (e.g.,
Kochan et al., 1994) is the absence of a clear distinction between “contract” workers who
are hired on an individual basis (i.e., direct-hires), and workers who are actually employees
of a “contractor” or “subcontractor” firm. In these cases, the worker–contractor relationship
may have been more standard than contingent in nature.
Well-being: Health
While the issue of safety has been extensively explored (Quinlan & Bohle, 2004), con-
tingent employment has not been, until more recently, examined from the perspective of
personal psychological and physical health. On the surface, there once again appears to be
some contradictory research findings. Research by Gallie, White, Cheng and Tomlinson
(1998), which examines levels of psychological stress among British workers and suggests
that psychological stress is significantly related to temporary and contract employment sta-
tus. Among a sample of Belgian workers, Martens, Nijhuis, Van Boxtel and Knottnerus
(1999) found that temporary workers have significantly higher levels of subjective heath
problems than workers in standard jobs with fixed work schedules. Klein Hesselink and
van Vuuren (1999) also report that self-employed workers (akin to independent contrac-
tors) experience lower levels of health complaints than temporary and permanent part-time
workers. In contrast, Sverke et al. (2000) found that among professional healthcare workers,
contingent workers actually experienced no difference in medical distress and actually had
lower levels of somatic complaints compared to non-contingent healthcare workers. How-
ever, these authors did find that perceptions of job insecurity and somatic complaints were
significantly higher among female contingent workers relative to their male counterparts.
Again, the task of disentangling these findings may rest in part upon the nature of the
research samples, the operational definitions of contingent workers, and the extent to which
the research is based within single or multiple organizations. However, a recent study by
Isaksson and Bellagh (2002) found that among a large sample of women with temporary
jobs, psychological distress and somatic complaints were more pronounced among those
who were involuntarily performing temporary jobs, compared to those workers who pre-
ferred temporary work. This study is also informative in that it suggests that the relationship
between contract preference and health-related outcomes is mediated by perceptions of so-
cial support in the work place. Such a finding is important for the study of contingent
work, since it suggests that social and organizational support are relevant to psychological
and physical health. This link has been previously associated with other types of boundary
spanning jobs (Stamper & Johlke, 2003).
Work–Family Conflict
Some organizations may engage the services of temporary workers in an attempt to resolve
the work–family conflicts of their permanent employees (e.g., maternity leave, eldercare
leave, etc.). These opportunities may be embraced by contingent workers who have chosen
temporary work in order to resolve their own work–family conflict (e.g., by not working
during the summer or other school holidays). In fact, women who require but cannot afford
reliable or organized childcare may particularly be likely to pursue non-standard (e.g.,
temporary or part-time) work (Zeytinoğlu & Muteshi, 2000).
Unfortunately, the temporary status of these workers also poses some challenges. While
women with part-time jobs may avoid work-to-family interference, and have higher life
satisfaction than full-time workers, it is not clear that these results would generalize to
women with temporary jobs instead of permanent employment (Higgins, Duxbury &
Johnson, 2000). Aside from the fact that these individuals typically receive fewer or no
benefits (e.g., no medical or dental care for their children) (Kalleberg, Reskin & Hudson,
2000), they may also receive less flexibility than they anticipate. For example, temporary
workers may feel that they cannot refuse assignments, even if they conflict with their child-
care responsibilities, because they will then not be offered opportunities to work in the future
(Henson, 1996; Rogers, 2000). Temporary workers’ situations may be further complicated
by the fact that being offered new assignments at short notice can make the acquisition of
suitable child-care particularly difficult.
Volition, the extent to which these workers are voluntarily choosing their tempo-
rary worker status, may also play an important role. While Gallagher, Gilley, Nelson,
Connelly and Michie (2001) suggest that work–family conflict predicts distress (e.g., ability
to concentrate, sleep, feel confident), they also suggest that an individual’s lack of voluntary
contingent worker status interacts with work–family conflict to significantly predict distress.
Future research pertaining to the health-related effects of contingent work may well
benefit from further consideration of the extent and process thorough which organizations
provide a supportive environment, which can positively affect workers’ health. Attention
should also be given to individual worker characteristics, most notably the degree to which
personality traits such as risk taking and tolerance for ambiguity may mediate the relation-
ship between the type of contingent work and health-related outcomes.
Performance
Contingent workers’ performance is also an issue that organizations need to consider. One
factor that is known to affect permanent employees’ performance are their job attitudes, but it
is not clear if this attitude–performance relationship is as strong for contingent workers as it
is for “standard” employees. For example, Ang and Slaughter (2001) suggest that contingent
workers exhibit lower in-role performance than their permanent colleagues, despite their
higher levels of perceived organizational support. Similarly, Ellingson et al. (1998) argues
that there is no direct link between contingent workers’ volition and their performance. In
contrast, Marler et al. (2002) suggests that “traditional” temporary workers’ performance
is particularly sensitive to attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment, but that their
task performance is higher than that of “boundaryless” temporary workers who enjoy their
contingent status and expect to frequently change jobs. Considering these mixed findings,
more research should be conducted in this area.
It is also possible that the quality as well as the quantity of these workers’ contributions
may be more directly affected by the design of the jobs to which they are assigned. When
contingent workers are hired, supervisors may shift interdependent tasks to permanent em-
ployees (Pearce, 1993). Supervisors essentially narrow the scope of the tasks that contingent
workers are allowed to do, which effectively limits their job behaviors and performance,
even though it may positively affect their job attitudes (Ang & Slaughter, 2001). The alloca-
tion of discrete, easily evaluated tasks to contingent workers appears to be fairly common,
and the availability of such tasks may actually be a predictor of a firm’s use of contingent
workers (Uzzi & Barsness, 1998).
Another issue that may also affect contingent workers’ job performance is their access to
training. Unfortunately, contingent workers, by virtue of their indeterminate status, may not
be given access to the in-house training programs that are offered to permanent employees
(Hanratty, 2000; Kidder, 1995). This is a serious issue, as a lack of training may affect
contingent workers’ performance (Virtanen et al., 2003). The relationship between training
and performance may further be complicated by the possibility that contingent workers’
attitudes, such as their job satisfaction and commitment, may be affected by whether or
not they receive training from the organization (Lowry, Simon & Kimberley, 2002). Thus,
an organization’s decision to engage contingent workers in order to avoid training costs
may have unanticipated negative consequences in terms of these workers’ performance
levels.
Given the obvious implications of contingent workers’ performance on organizational-
level outcomes, and considering the relatively small amount of research that has been
conducted to date, additional investigation of possible predictors of contingent workers’
performance is certainly warranted.
Psychological Contracts
An emerging area of interest pertaining to the study of contingent work relates to the nature
of the psychological contract held by these workers (i.e., beliefs which workers have con-
cerning the reciprocal obligations between themselves and their employing organizations).
In particular, Rousseau (1995) and Rousseau and Wade-Benzoni (1995) have suggested that
workers on contingent or fixed-term contracts are more likely than permanent employees
to have transactional rather than relational psychological contracts. McLean Parks, Kidder
and Gallagher (1998) also suggest that the psychological contracts of contingent workers
have shorter and more finite time frames, and also be less dynamic and malleable, narrower
in scope, less focused on socio-emotional rewards, and more explicitly defined.
Strangely, one of the few published studies comparing the psychological contracts of
permanent and contingent workers in the same organization, found the two groups to have
no differences in their psychological contracts (McDonald & Makin, 2000). However, the
authors did find that the extent of perceived contract violation was considerably lower among
the temporary workers. McDonald and Makin suggest that the finding of “no difference”
in the psychological contracts of the permanent and contingent workers may be due to the
fact that many contingent workers view short-term contracts as the means by which they
may transition into the organization on a more permanent basis. This finding also reaffirms
the importance of understanding the motivations or reasons why individuals engage in
contingent work. As in the case of OCB, workers who see contingent work as a way to access
permanent positions may be more likely to have a relational psychological contract. It might
also be argued that contingent workers who have expectations of long-term relationships
might perceive psychological contract “breaches” more frequently. In contrast, workers who
voluntarily choose contingent work and have a clear preference for fixed-term relationships
may be more disposed to framing their psychological contract in more “transactional” terms
(Levesque & Rousseau, 1999). Further, as noted by Guest and Conway (2003), professional
and knowledge workers on fixed-term contracts may report positive evaluations of the
“state” of their psychological contracts because their contracts tend to be more transactional
due to the more explicit and bounded nature of the tasks which they perform for client
organizations.
It would also appear that the transition from a standard or traditional employment contract
to a contingent one, within the same organization, would possibly represent both a breach
and basic restructuring of the psychological contract. As noted by Pearce (1998), a move
from permanent to contingent status is likely to result in greater employment insecurity,
but a greater negative consequence rests in the breach of the pre-existing psychological
contract. From a different perspective, research by Ho et al. (2003) also revealed that when
professional IT workers were moved from permanent to independent contractor status,
the workers immediately reconfigured the nature of their psychological contract with the
organization. However, the organization tended to retain their expectations that existed from
the previous psychological contract.
The idiosyncratic nature of psychological contracts will always make empirical investi-
gations difficult to fully interpret, but as noted by McLean Parks et al. (1998) there may be
greater diversity among different types of contingent employment contracts (e.g., direct-
hires, independent contractors, etc.) than there are dissimilarities between contingent and
permanent employment arrangements (which has been the main focus of psychological
contract research). Furthermore, among independent contractors or workers who have a
succession of temporary assignments at different firms, the psychological contract may
change as the worker moves from client to client. Finally, as noted by McLean Parks et
al., some forms of contingent employment (i.e., temporary-help firm workers) may operate
under the condition of “multiple agency” whereby the contingent worker is simultaneously
fulfilling obligations to more than one employer (i.e., the client and the temporary-help
firm). Guest and Conway (2003) also suggest that the state of the contract (e.g., breach
or compliance) is likely to systematically vary by the structure of the contingent work
arrangement.
Workforce Integration and Trust
For the most part, a good deal of the literature promoting the advantages of contingent
work arrangements has focused both on the themes of organizational flexibility and a means
of insulating traditional or core workers in the organization from the perils of market ad-
justments (Nollen & Axel, 1996; Lepak & Snell, 2002). However, there has been a growing
body of literature that addresses the extent to which permanent employees and contingent
workers are “integrated” (i.e., “blended”) within the organization. In addition, researchers
have also begun to more actively consider the potential impact of the use of contingent
workers on the attitudes, behaviors, and job design of permanent employees.
Research by Lautsch (2002) has been particularly instructive by suggesting that the extent
to which organizations are willing or able to follow a strategy of “blending” or “separating”
contingent and non-contingent workers is largely a function of the nature of the operational
technology and the performance objectives which the firm seeks to accomplish through
the use of contingent workers. As noted by Lautsch, a firm’s technologies may allow for
tasks that require firm-specific knowledge to be reassigned to permanent employees, while
tasks that require more general skill sets can be allocated to contingent workers. However, if
“non-adaptable” technologies are being used, then contingent workers may need to perform
similar tasks side-by-side of the core workforce. Furthermore, Lautsch’s case-based research
suggests that organizations’ reasons for using contingent workers also affect their degree of
integration into the core workforce. In particular, recent research suggests that when firms
use contingent workers to enhance the firm’s flexibility, these workers are more likely to
receive compensation and benefits that are similar to those of core workers (Lautsch, 2003)
and to be more fully integrated into the organization than when they are simply trying to
minimize their costs (Lautsch, 2002).
While cost and flexibility are important considerations, some firms engage the services
of contingent workers in order to benefit from their specialized knowledge. In fact, Galup
et al. (1997) suggest that a significant amount of knowledge is transferred from temporary
workers to permanent employees. However, the use of contingent workers can also result
in a leakage of proprietary knowledge into the public domain, if contractors apply what
they learn in one context to another (Matusik & Hill, 1998). It is perhaps for this reason
that permanent workers in a variety of industries may be reluctant to share their knowledge
with temporary workers (Connelly, 2000). This reluctance may also be present among the
contingent workers themselves. Because of their job insecurity, contingent workers may
purposely avoid sharing any valuable or rare knowledge with their permanent colleagues,
in order to encourage their employers to engage their services for a longer period of time.
In fact, Sias, Kramer and Jenkins (1997) suggest that contingent workers are less likely to
share knowledge compared to newly-hired permanent employees.
A firm’s integration strategy may also pose barriers to knowledge sharing between con-
tingent workers and permanent employees, and vice versa. Segregating workers according
to employment status may hinder workers’ likelihood of interacting with each other socially,
which may decrease their trust toward each other. Unfortunately, firms with hostile social
interaction climates are less likely to see much knowledge sharing between organizational
members (Connelly & Kelloway, 2003). Because of these trust concerns, permanent em-
ployees may not necessarily be receptive to contingent workers who endeavor to share their
knowledge. While contingent workers’ knowledge may be valuable, it is not necessarily
valued (Castaneda, 2003). Individuals who are not “official” members of an organization
may face difficulty in establishing their credibility and in having their knowledge accepted
by permanent employees.
There is also evidence to suggest that core workers may sometimes be negatively affected
by the use of contingent workers. For example, research by Pearce (1993), Geary (1992),
and Twiname, Humphries and Kearins (2003) found that the use of contingent workers
negatively affected the workload and structure of the duties assigned to non-contingent or
core employees. Barnett and Miner (1992) found that the use of temporary workers had
an adverse impact on the promotion opportunities for core workers at the lower end of the
organizational hierarchy. However, the use of contingent workers had a positive effect on
higher-level jobs, due to the decreased presence of core workers who could compete for
advancement opportunities.
A recent study by Davis-Blake, Broschak and George (2003) also found that the “blend-
ing” of core and contingent workers had the dysfunctional impact of worsening relations
between managers and core employees. It also resulted in lower levels of loyalty among
permanent employees as well as an increased interest in leaving the organization. In ad-
dition, Davis-Blake et al. also suggest that the core workers’ negative perceptions tend
to be more pronounced when they work with temporary workers rather than contractors.
It is also interesting to note that the increased use of contingent workers, under certain
structural arrangements, can result in lower levels of perceived organizational trust and
morale among the core workforce (Chattopadhyay & George, 2001; Morishima & Feuille,
2000).
Recent work by Cappelli and Neumark (2003) has suggested that employing contingent
workers has been used in some organizations to avoid restructuring the internal wage struc-
ture for core employees (despite increased market salary levels for occupational groups in
high demand). In this context, it would appear that the “protective” value associated with
the use of contingent workers is more beneficial for the employers’ overall wage bill and
not necessarily the security of core workers.
It would appear that research comparing the appropriateness of integrating or separating
contingent and standard (core) employees is a topic of primary importance to managers.
As shown in the work of Lautsch (2002), Smith (2001), and Twiname et al. (2003), further
case-based research strategies may be particularly useful approaches to building theories
concerning both organizational motivations and worker responses.
Figure 1. Framework of behavioral research on contingent work.
Integration of Past Research
As noted, research on the topic of contingent work has covered a broad range of topical
areas. Although most of existing empirical research has been well conceptualized and exe-
cuted, it has often been difficult to draw comparisons between studies due to the broad range
of variables which have been the focus of attention. However, when viewed collectively,
the existing research on contingent work appears to suggest that there are many potential
causal relationships that have not been tied into a broader behavioral framework.
In Figure 1, a framework is presented to demonstrate how the existing contingent work
research might fit together. While the minimalism of this framework must be acknowledged,
its purpose in this paper is primarily to provide a general overview of relationships between
constructs that have been discussed above.
This framework suggests that contingent workers’ attributes have a direct impact on their
health and well-being, and an indirect impact on their behaviors. Worker attributes may
also predict which types of contingent work they are involved in, as well as whether they
are voluntarily choosing contingent work. For example, a highly educated software spe-
cialist may voluntarily decide to become an independent contractor, while a less educated
general laborer may involuntarily end up as a seasonal worker. Volition and motivations for
choosing temporary work may also potentially moderate the relationship between organi-
zational treatment and worker attitudes, as well as between attitudes and worker behaviors.
Hypothetically, a worker’s attitudinal and behavioral reactions to negative organizational
treatment may be exacerbated if the underlying motivation was to undertake the fixed-term
assignment as means of acquiring a permanent position with the organization. Further-
more, a contingent worker who is motivated by the goal of a long-term contract, may
cognitively construct a relational psychological contract with the “employer” organization
which is unlike that of an independent contractor who has voluntarily undertaken such
short-term contracts as a means of avoiding long-term commitments to any single employer
organization.
The type of contingent work contract may in turn predict the way in which the orga-
nization treats these workers. For instance, as noted in the research, an organization may
seamlessly integrate its direct-hire temporary workers throughout its operations, while keep-
ing temporary workers that it has hired through a temporary-help service firm separate from
all other employees. This relationship may be moderated by a worker’s tenure with a client
organization, a temporary firm (if applicable), and by the amount of their work experience
and time engaged as a contingent worker. Tenure may also moderate the relationship be-
tween organizational treatment and worker attitudes and well-being. As the worker spends
longer periods of time within the position, their reactions may intensify. This is an especially
important consideration for contingent workers whose tenure generally differs from that of
permanent employees.
In many respects, the research on contingent work dealing with models of worker attitudes
and behaviors is analogous to much of the research regarding part-time work which was
prevalent in 1980s and 1990s (Barling & Gallagher, 1996). In particular, as noted by Feldman
(1990), many causal models of part-time work are based on the assumption that part-time
employment status has a direct impact on job attitudes and behaviors with both “work
context” and “demographic” variables serving as potential modifiers of the relationship.
However, as noted by Feldman (1990), the causal framework may, in fact, be more complex.
For example, demographic characteristics might not only moderate the relationship between
part-time status and job-related attitudes and behaviors, but also be a determinant of the type
of part-time work arrangement which a worker enters into. As suggested in the framework
presented in this paper, demographic characteristics may not only moderate the relationship
between certain constructs, but also have a direct effect upon other variables, most notably
the type of contingent work arrangement toward which a worker may gravitate.
Similarly, within the contingent work framework, “organizational treatment” (i.e., work
context) may mediate the relationship between the type of contingent work arrangement
and job attitudes, behaviors, and individual well-being. Other factors, such as volition,
motivation, and tenure, might also serve as intervening variables which may both mediate
and moderate the causal relationships of interest.
In a very broad sense, the existing research collectively informs our understanding of the
relationships between various constructs noted in Figure 1, although at present there is little
systematic evidence of a more comprehensive model. In addition to the specific suggestions
for future research attention which have been made in previous sections of this paper, it is
also important for researchers to consider whether any findings arising from research on
a particular form of contingent work (e.g., staffing agency temporary) may apply to other
forms of fixed-term contract work (e.g., independent contractors). While the experiences of
direct-hire temporary workers appear to be a particularly under-studied research topic, all
types of contingent work could benefit from further study. For example, additional research
could investigate the psychological contracts of temporary workers hired through agencies,
the volition, motivations, and work–family conflict of independent contractors, and the
organizational citizenship behaviors, work–family conflict, trust, integration, knowledge-
sharing, and performance of direct-hire temporary workers.
Methodological and Theoretical Considerations
Previous sections of this paper have provided a broad overview of the topics that have been
the subject of past research on contingent employment. Throughout this upcoming section,
we raise a number of further theoretical and methodological issues for the consideration of
future researchers.
Sample Characteristics
Some early studies do not specify the nature of the contingent work contract being
examined (Pearce, 1993) or provide contradictory information that calls the nature of the
contract into question. For example, some “independent contractors” (Ang & Slaughter,
2001; Collinson, 1999; Ho et al., 2003; Kochan et al., 1994; Uzzi & Barsness, 1998) do
not appear to set their own hours of work or determine for themselves how their tasks
will be completed, even though these are generally considered to be prerequisites for a
worker to be considered an independent contractor rather than a direct-hire temporary
worker (Connelly & Gallagher, 2004). However, these distinctions are important because
workers with different forms of contingent work contracts will not necessarily have similar
expectations or experiences. In fact, some of the contradictory findings may be explained
by differences in the contexts of the studies’ participants.
While the way in which academic researchers define temporary workers also poses some
difficulty, the manner in which temporary workers define their own employment relation-
ships may also pose methodological challenges. The likelihood of temporary workers (who
work for temporary-help agencies) responding to self-report questionnaires may be affected
by whether they are currently on an assignment, how long they have been registered with
their agency, and how recently they have been contacted by the agency regarding a tem-
porary assignment. Although a temporary help-agency may consider its “employees” to
include all the individuals who are registered in its database, these individuals may disagree
with this assessment.
To date, a significant portion of the research on contingent workers compares the attitudes
and behaviors of these workers to those of permanent employees (e.g., McDonald & Makin,
2000). However, a relatively small number of these studies compare direct-hire temporary
workers and permanent (standard) employees (e.g., Parker et al., 2002). This may be due to
a perception that the employment relationships of direct-hire temporary workers are very
similar to those of permanent employees. These groups are indeed similar, in that they are
not affiliated with intermediaries and they do not have autonomous relationships with their
employers. Future research could investigate if there are, in fact, subtle differences between
these groups beyond the regularity of the hours of employment.
Psychological vs. Objective Contingency
Comparative research that contrasts any form of contingent employment (e.g., temporary-
help workers, independent contractors, direct-hires, or seasonal workers) with permanent
workers should be conducted with the caveat of not relying on a false or inflated dichotomy
between psychological and objective contingency (Bergman, 2002). “Permanent” employ-
ees who believe that their position is insecure may have job attitudes and behaviors that
are similar to most contingent workers, while “temporary” workers who have been with
the same client for extended periods of time or who believe that their skill levels or market
conditions grant them high employment security may have more in common with most
permanent employees.
In the same way that we can no longer assume that all contingent workers have voluntarily
or involuntarily chosen this employment status, we can also no longer assume that all
contingent workers view their status as precarious or indeterminate. It is also possible that,
as with the study of part-time workers where many studies explored possible attitudinal
differences between part-time and full-time workers (see Thorsteinson, 2003 for a review),
differences between contingent workers and permanent workers may be less significant than
differences between types of contingent work.
Longitudinal Designs
Current research on contingent work is similar to most other areas of behavioral research
with respect to the rarity of longitudinal research designs. However, in the limited number
of studies where longitudinal data collection designs have been used, the results are notably
rich in content and more convincing in terms of causal conclusions (e.g., Bauer & Truxillo,
2000; Parker et al., 2002; Virtanen et al., 2003). Unfortunately, some forms of contingent
employment may, in practice, be particularly difficult to approach from a longitudinal per-
spective. This may be particularly true in the case of temporary-staff firm temporaries where
tenure of assignment to the client is often of extremely short duration and where turnover
rates within the industry itself are high.
The instability of the employment relationships of independent contractors and
temporary-help staff workers also poses a challenge. For example, as previously noted, the
literature is replete with studies reporting upon the attitudes of contingent workers toward
their experiences within their employer or client organizations. However, unlike standard or
permanent workers, the organizational reference point for most contingent workers changes
with indeterminate frequency. As a result, are the present measurements of certain constructs
(e.g., client commitment, job satisfaction, role ambiguity, perceived organizational support,
etc.) generally stable over time, or do contingent workers experience considerable variation
in these constructs as they move between client organizations? If these attitudes are vari-
able, then cross-sectional measures of these constructs may not be reliable indicators of the
contingent work experience.
Construct Relevance
Throughout this review, it has been necessary to be particularly cautious in the selection
of such commonly used terms as “employer,” “employee,” “worker,” etc. This carefulness
reflects the fact that, to varying degrees, contingent workers are removed from the tradi-
tional notion of an employment relationship. However, the meaning and application of a
number of common constructs may require reflection in terms of evaluating their relevance
to contingent workers. For example, something as apparently straightforward as the notion
of a “job” or perceived “job” satisfaction may not have an unambiguous meaning as in the
case of a standard employment relationship. For workers assigned to client organizations by
temporary-help firms, some may perceive their “job” as being that of a temporary worker,
while others may identify their “job” as the tasks and duties they are currently performing
for their clients, particularly if they perform the same types of tasks for a number of differ-
ent organizations. Some contingent workers’ client-related attitudes might change as they
move from organization to organization, while their overview of their “job” as a temporary
worker or independent contractor might remain stable. As noted by Gallagher and McLean
Parks (2001), even such a well-understood construct as “organizational” commitment can
assume an imprecise meaning in certain types of contingent employment arrangements.
As noted earlier, organizational commitment may need to be recast under some contingent
work arrangements as separate measures of “agency” and “client” commitment (e.g., Liden
et al., 2003). Similarly, among independent contractors, commitment to the “employer” or-
ganization may not be especially relevant when the contractor is technically self-employed.
Client commitment may be a more applicable construct, but the construct is again confused
by a multiplicity of targets. The issue of construct relevance is not raised here for the pur-
pose of complicating the conduct and interpretation of contingent work research, but rather
to reaffirm the need to consider the prima facie relevance of various constructs, that were
developed in the context of clear employer–employee relationships, to the study of work
arrangements which fall outside that standard framework (Beard & Edwards, 1995).
Additional Theoretical Perspectives
Perhaps the most commonly applied theory used today to understand contingent workers
is social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), which suggests that peoples’ relationships can be
partially explained by implied reciprocal obligations. Due to the fact that opportunities for
reciprocity can be limited by the temporary status of a contingent worker, it is perhaps
surprising that this theory has been so widely used. Social exchange theory has been used
to predict a number of attitudes and behaviors, including contingent workers’ perceived
organizational support, psychological contracts, organizational commitment, organizational
citizenship behavior, and performance (e.g., Ang & Slaughter, 2001; Liden et al., 2003; Van
Dyne & Ang, 1998).
Given that contingent workers often occupy a “special” status within an organization,
social comparison theory (e.g., Kruglanski & Mayseless, 1990), which assesses how indi-
viduals evaluate their own situations relative to those of others, can also offer insight into
contingent workers’ experiences. For example, Ang and Slaughter (2001) use this theory
to explain contractors’ attitudes and behaviors when they are integrated into work envi-
ronments that also include permanent employees. However, contingent workers’ roles and
identities may also affect their permanent colleagues. Along similar lines, but is a more
theoretically constrained context, social identity theory suggests that individuals maintain
a positive self-image by categorizing themselves into in-groups and others into out-groups
(Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Chattopadhyay and George (2001) use this theory to show why
permanent employees’ trust in and attraction towards their peers are negatively affected by
membership in teams that are dominated by temporary workers. Fenner and Renn (2002)
have also posited that social identity theory exists as a useful framework for understanding
the motivations of IT workers who leave secure organization-based jobs and move into more
contingent contractor arrangements.
Social capital theory (e.g., Burt, 1992) stipulates that social structure (e.g., who you
know), rather than human capital (e.g., what you know), results in success. Essentially, this
theory suggests that a trusted social network can provide an individual with timely and useful
information as well as referrals for future exchanges with people outside the individual’s
network. Social capital theory has also been applied to the context of contingent workers,
particularly in the case of independent contractors. For example, Castaneda (1999) explored
how independent contractors might use their social networks to secure employment as well
as to gather technical and professional knowledge. Her findings suggest that the size and
quality of a social network are important predictors of contractors’ career success. Social
capital theory may be a particularly apt lens with which to view the long-term implications
of the contingent worker’s experience, because as noted by Castaneda (2003), contingent
workers’ intra-firm mobility is conducive to building a large network with many structural
holes. Within-firm social networks are also important. Galup et al. (1997) suggest that
organizations may purposely integrate their contingent workers into teams in an effort to
provide them with sufficiently strong ties so that they may work effectively. Clearly, social
structure has a number of implications for contingent workers; future research can address
this further.
Wheeler and Buckley (2000) use expectancy theory to propose a series of research ques-
tions related to how temporary workers can be motivated. According to Wheeler and Buck-
ley, individuals may become temporary workers if they believe that this will result in a
permanent position and they may also engage in impression management in pursuit of this
goal. Future research could test the applicability of expectancy theory, perhaps in compar-
ison with other motivation theories.
Although research on contingent workers could be criticized for relying on existing be-
havioral theories that were developed in the context of standard employment arrangements,
there is no evidence that these theoretical perspectives need to be completely dismissed
in an effort to better understand contingent work arrangements. In contrast, a review of
the literature has suggested that investigations of contingent workers experiences can be
informed by a number of existing theories.
Conclusion
As noted at the onset of this review, there has been a tremendous growth over the past
ten years in the number of research studies that address the development and the conse-
quences of contingent work arrangements. This research has yielded informative, yet at
times contradictory and unexpected findings, in a broad range of topical areas. However,
one compelling finding is that contingent work is not a unitary concept. Not only are there
contractual differences among the various forms of contingent work arrangements, but there
are also differences in the reasons why workers accept such arrangements, as well as the
contextual environments in which they perform their jobs.
Once again, analogous to research on part-time employment (Feldman, 1990), more
inclusive causal models of contingent employment must be developed. At a very basic
level would be a model of how contingent workers’ attitudes and behaviors are mediated or
moderated by individual motivations and by factors associated with the work-context. Such
a model may be complicated by both the large quantity of work-context attributes and job
environments that vanish and recompose as workers move from one client organization to
another.
Finally, the emerging literature pertaining to organizational strategies associated with the
use of contingent workers (e.g., blending vs. separating) is of practical value to organizations
that are considering, using, or expanding upon the use of contingent workers as part of their
human resource strategy. Firms need to be particularly cognizant of the implications in
the use of contingent workers as they relate to existing permanent employees. However, as
contingent work becomes increasingly popular, and as these workers become increasingly
integral to the functioning of many firms, the “core-periphery” model may one day become
an anachronism to future management researchers.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the constructive comments provided by Daniel
Feldman and an anonymous reviewer. The assistance of Karen Bennington in the preparation
of this manuscript is also greatly appreciated.
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Daniel G. Gallagher is the CSX Corporation Professor of Management in the College of

Business at James Madison University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois
at Urbana, Champaign. His research interests have recently focused on examining the psy-
chological aspects of alternative employment contracts. He currently serves on the editorial
boards of Industrial Relations (Berkeley), International Journal of Conflict Management,
Journal of Management, and Journal of Organizational Behavior.
Catherine E. Connelly is an Assistant Professor of Human Resources and Management at

the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. She earned her Ph.D.
in Management from the School of Business at Queen’s University. Her current research
interests include the attitudes and behaviors of contingent and other non-standard workers,
and knowledge transfer in organizations.

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Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983

Emerging Trends in Contingent Work Research

Emerging Trends in Contingent Work Research

of workers on “contingent” or “fixed-term contracts” (Zeytinoğlu, 1999). Within the Euro-

Deﬁning Contingent Work

Independent contractors or “freelance” workers are often also defined as self-employed

to be “direct-hire” contingent workers, or perhaps the research on seasonal work is being

Past and Emerging Research Topics

C.E. Connelly, D.G. Gallagher / Journal of Management 2004 30(6) 959–983

received an exhaustive treatment. H, high; M, moderate; and L, limited.

Job Satisfaction, Role Conﬂict and Ambiguity

As previously suggested, one of the most central findings in contingent employment

Perceived Organizational Support and Justice

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

Workforce Integration and Trust

Figure 1. Framework of behavioral research on contingent work.

Integration of Past Research

Methodological and Theoretical Considerations

Psychological vs. Objective Contingency

Additional Theoretical Perspectives

Daniel G. Gallagher is the CSX Corporation Professor of Management in the College of

Catherine E. Connelly is an Assistant Professor of Human Resources and Management at

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