Agency workers and organisation's commitment to its workers

This study explores the understanding that Dutch agency workers (i.e. workers affiliated with a temporary-help service firm) have of organisation's commitment to its workers (OCW). Semi-structured interviews with 33 Dutch agency workers aimed to answer two questions: (1) what do agency workers believe the agency and the client should offer if they are aiming for perceived OCW and (2) who are the potential messengers of agency and client OCW? If agencies and clients want to get rewarded by agency workers with perceived OCW, they have to carry a shared responsibility for many aspects of fair and favourable human resource management. However, agency workers link some aspects exclusively to one of the two organisational parties: agency workers seem to associate promotion with the client organisation, and certain aspects of job characteristics (e.g. autonomy and performance feedback) solely with the client OCW. Other elements related to job characteristics were only associated with agency OCW (current and future person–task fit, job-satisfaction concerns and job-related problems), as well as keeping in touch and problem solving (e.g. job dissatisfaction) solely with agency OCW. Moreover, agency workers personify all the mentioned responsibilities: organisational member's actions concerning these responsibilities represent OCW. Agency consultants seem to be the sole representatives of perceived agency OCW, whereas several agents (e.g. top managers, direct supervisors, co-workers, clients' ‘clients’) serve as potential representatives of client organisations' commitment.     

The impact of job training on temporary worker performance: Field experimental evidence from insurance sales agents

Despite the limited incentives they provide for idiosyncratic investment, temporary work arrangements are becoming increasingly common. Using evidence from a field experiment conducted among salespeople in a Kenyan insurance firm, this paper examines the consequences of providing job training for temporary workers. The findings show that providing access to training significantly increases firm revenue, primarily due to performance increases among higher‐ability workers. The findings from the study are consistent with temporary workers willingness to invest in job training when the job‐specific returns from doing so are sufficiently high.     

Managing temporary workers: work identity,diversity and operational HR choices

Strategic HRM theory argues that organisations should distinguish different types of employees according to their value and availability. We argue that this has resulted in an underestimation of the importance of specific HRM practices in relation to temporary employees. Building on theoretical work that discusses the employment relationship for temporary employees, the process of identification with the organisation and different ways of managing diversity, we distinguish three approaches to the operational management of temporary employees. We explore two cases that reflect opposite ends of the scale. They illustrate the value of the theoretical framework and substantiate the claim that, even after the strategic choice for a lean, distanced and uninvolved temporary ‘employment mode’ is made, different operational HRM practices lead to differences in performance.     

Explaining union membership of temporary workers in Spain: the role of local representatives and workers’ participative potential

It has been widely assumed that type-of-contract segmentation represents a strong structural constraint on trade union growth. The analysis of a sample of the Spanish workforce shows, however, that the effect of contract type on union membership is not statistically significant once the availability and performance of local union representatives are introduced in the explanatory model. Additionally, the worker’s participative potential, as indicated by his/her social and political capital, is also found to be a major explanatory factor. These findings are placed in comparative perspective and discussed in relation to possible union revitalisation strategies.     

Job-related education and training: their impact on earnings

A worker's education and an appropriate job requiring education or training are significant determinants of earnings; qualifying training and training taken to improve skills play different roles in the workplace, but both contribute to greater earnings.     

Learning from the alien: knowledge relationships with temporary workers in network contexts

This paper contributes to our understanding of the role of temporary workers in learning for innovation in network contexts. The strategy literature advocates that the knowledge and talent of workers is vital to competitive success yet at the same time temporary workers are becoming more prevalent, making relationships with workers more ephemeral. These shifting competitive and employment contexts make insights into learning from, and with, contractual nomads paramount. The setting is the UK television industry, where such workers are dominant. Internationally, creative industries are a prime site of networks where temporary workers are brought together for specific projects. In the television industry, a range of knowledge attachment employee relationships have been developed by firms to ‘contain’ and sustain worker contributions in terms of knowledge and talent. These relationships are identified as freelance, regular contract, golden handcuffs and invest in knowledge firm. This paper highlights the learning implications both positive and negative arising from these different ways of relating to temporary workers thereby extending our understanding of employee relationships built on mutuality.     

Explaining variations in absence rates: temporary and agency workers in the food manufacturing sector

This article responds to a recent call in a provocation article in the Human Resource Management Journal by Thompson to use workplace studies to investigate employees' experiences of HR practices. Examining the particular case of absence management, the article investigates the experiences of short‐term workers in the food manufacturing industry in the UK. Variations in absence rates between directly employed temporary workers and agency workers are shown to be the result of differing levels of managerial control over absence, which affects workers' ability to use absence as a form of industrial conflict to escape a low‐skilled and monotonous work process.     

Microfranchise emergence and its impact on entrepreneurship

Our investigation uses structuration theory to explore the emergence of a microfranchise whose aim is to raise the income of smallholder farmers in Kenya by enabling an increase in productivity. This longitudinal real time qualitative study tracks the key actions taken in developing the venture, beginning in the conception phase of startup and continuing through to the initial stage of operations. In doing so it focuses on how agency and structure reciprocally influence the resulting social enterprise. The findings indicate that agency is not exclusive to the founders. Rather it was distributed among the micro-franchisor’s stakeholders to significantly shape the nature and scope of the enterprise. While franchising, generally, is not noted to provide autonomy and independence to franchisees, we find the opposite in this emerging market context. Implications are discussed.     

The impact of the employee-organization relationship on temporary employees' performance and attitude: testing a Singaporean sample

Following the framework proposed by Tsui et al . (1997), this research paper examines the impact of the employee-organization relationship on temporary employees' job performance, turnover intention, overall job satisfaction, affective commitment, perception of fairness and perception of work options. Data were collected from 191 temporary employees from seven employment agencies in Singapore. Analyses conducted revealed that employee responses do vary under the four types of relationship (quasi-spot contract, under-investment, mutual investment and over-investment). In general, both mutual investment and over-investment relationships were associated with higher levels of performance and more favourable attitudes than either the under-investment or quasi-spot contract. Specifically, temporary employees under the mutual investment and over-investment relationships have better job performance, a higher level of affective commitment to the agency, improved overall job satisfaction, higher perception of fairness, higher perception of work options and lower turnover intentions. Furthermore, these finding were obtained even after controlling for the effects of company tenure and job level on employee performance and attitudes. The results highlight the importance of employee-organization relationships in eliciting the desired temporary employee outcomes. Practical implications were drawn for human resource practitioners and employment agencies on how best to manage temporary employees. Some limitations and suggestions for future research were discussed.     

Determinants of employee training: impact on organizational legitimacy and organizational performance

Employee training is one of the most studied human resource practices, as it is considered critical for organizational success. However, employee training and its impact on organizational performance have usually been studied from an economic-rational perspective, in terms of the economic and competitive advantages that companies can achieve by training employees. This study goes beyond the economic-rational approach and draws on institutional theory. We introduce contextual factors in the analysis of the determinants of employee training to complement the variables of competitive advantage and explain the relationship between employee training and organizational outcomes. Data were collected from 374 organizations using a questionnaire administered in Spain. The findings support the idea that both economic-rational and institutional determinants influence employee training. There are also two different kinds of outcome from training employees: organizational legitimacy improves at the same time as organizational performance.     

Entrepreneurial size,complexity and decentralization of decision-making in the use of temporary help workers in Spain

Using data from a postal survey of Spanish firms, the present work, as its main objective, tries to evaluate the effect of entrepreneurial size, degree of decentralization in decision-making and vertical complexity on the use of temporary help workers. As complementary objectives, it also seeks to confirm the effect of entrepreneurial size on elements of the organizational structure, such as decentralization in decision-making, and on vertical complexity. To respond to the hypotheses, a LISRE model has been used. The results show that entrepreneurial size and degree of decentralization positively affect the frequency with which companies use temporary help workers. In contrast, vertical complexity negatively affects the use of this type of worker. On the other hand, it is confirmed that entrepreneurial size positively affects decentralization in decision-making and vertical complexity.     

Effects of the ‘principle of non‐discrimination’ on temporary agency work: compensation and working conditions of temporary agency workers in 15 European countries

This article examines, with reference to Europe (EU‐15), whether temporary agency workers experience less favourable working conditions and compensation than employees with a standard employment contract. Furthermore, it analyses whether the same differences exist in European countries with and without the principle of non‐discrimination in force. The results show that discrimination of temporary workers persists even when we control for other factors. Second, in countries with the principle of non‐discrimination in force, the discrimination is higher with respect to employer‐provided training.     

Calibration of deterministic NWP forecasts and its impact on verification

Deterministic forecasts (as opposed to ensemble or probabilistic forecasts) issued by numerical weather prediction (NWP) models require post-processing. Such corrective procedure can be viewed as a form of calibration. It is well known that, based on different objective functions, e.g., minimizing the mean square error or the mean absolute error, the calibrated forecasts have different impacts on verification. In this regard, this paper investigates how a calibration directive can affect various aspects of forecast quality outlined in the Murphy–Winkler distribution-oriented verification framework. It is argued that the correlation coefficient is the best measure for the potential performance of NWP forecast verification when linear calibration is involved, because (1) it is not affected by the directive of linear calibration, (2) it can be used to compute the skill score of the linearly calibrated forecasts, and (3) it can avoid the potential deficiency of using squared error to rank forecasts. Since no single error metric can fully represent all aspects of forecast quality, forecasters need to understand the trade-offs between different calibration strategies. To echo the increasing need to bridge atmospheric sciences, renewable energy engineering, and power system engineering, as to move toward the grand goal of carbon neutrality, this paper first provides a brief introduction to solar forecasting, and then revolves its discussion around a solar forecasting case study, such that the readers of this journal can gain further understanding on the subject and thus potentially contribute to it.     

Central Asia's transport cost burden and its impact on trade

This paper examines the role of transportation costs in causing the countries of Central Asia to generate far less trade with the European Union (EU) than their relative location would suggest. Based on data collected from transport professionals, it detects a sharp increase in the transportation costs and time at Warsaw, moving east from the EU towards the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the case of Central Asia, border-crossing problems, low traded volumes and trade imbalance, inter alia, seem to be major explanations of the unexpected low trade level between Central Asia and the EU.     

Power distance and its moderating impact on empowerment and team participation

Power distance, the level of acceptance of an uneven distribution of power by those enjoying less power, impacts empowerment and team participation, both of which are crucial to innovative performance in R&D companies. Although low power distance generally implies empowerment and team participation, this study empirically finds that high power distance actually leads to higher team participation. The relationship between power distance, empowerment and team participation is more complex than is generally believed. The study, instead of arriving at some definitive conclusions and proposing some effective and practicable solutions, points out the need for a deeper study of related issues.     

External workers’ perception of leadership behaviour – a study of Swedish temporary agency workers and contractors

The increasing prevalence of externalised work arrangements in industrialised countries has brought with it ever greater managerial complexity in the workplace. This article explores how leadership behaviour is perceived by internal and external workers within a public authority in Sweden. Questionnaire data from 505 temporary agency workers (TAWs), contractors and internal employees have been analysed. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate that external workers such as TAWs and contractors are more likely than internal employees to notice leadership profiles, including pronounced, task‐oriented leadership behaviour. These results hold true when controlled for demographic and socio‐economic variables and organisational tenure. A practical implication is that explicit attention should be paid to the need for leadership training in developing HRM strategies with regard to external employees.     

Screening and training inter-cultural competencies: evaluating the impact of national culture on inter-cultural competencies

Inter-cultural competencies have become increasingly important for international personnel selection and training. The purpose of this article is to evaluate psychometric data regarding the controversy as to whether inter-cultural competencies are culture-free or culture-bound. In two empirical research projects in the USA and Germany national differences in inter-cultural competencies are evaluated. National culture is indicated as a significant independent variable for inter-cultural competencies in both studies. However, the impact of national culture on inter-cultural competencies seems to be minor in relation to the impact of gender culture as well as of organizational culture. Therefore, inter-cultural competencies are judged to be culture-general in the two nations. Conceptual conclusions as well as practical conclusions for IHRM are discussed, based on the results. Finally, the limitations of the studies are pointed out.     

浅析会计电算化及其影响

文章简单分析了会计电算化的性质、特点和影响,以期为相关人员提供一个宏观的把握。     

浅析会计电算化及其影响

文章简单分析了会计电算化的性质、特点和影响,以期为相关人员提供一个宏观的把握。