Employment status congruence and job quality

Abstract

While recognizing the daunting task of defining universal indicators of job quality we may overlook something more fundamental: in North America about a third of people may not want to be employed in their current job status. Job status congruence (i.e. the extent to which people are working full-time, contract, or part-time by choice) may now be an integral part of high quality work. We test this proposition using a process-oriented theoretical model reflecting established relationships in the work design literature. Findings suggest that a socio-economic predictor (job status congruence) may rival established psychological predictors of job quality (e.g. intrinsic job characteristics and role stressors) in predicting aspects of workers’ personal and organizational functioning. Our findings also suggest that different mediators may be operating for each outcome. The model is tested on 171 full-time workers; a revised model is then supported on a holdout sample of 172 full-timers, and replicated on 132 contract/part-time workers using multi-group structural equation modeling. Implications for future research are discussed.