Tit for tat? Predictors of temporary agency workers’ commitments

Abstract

The temporary workforce is a small but increasing proportion of the labor market in most industrialized countries. It has been argued that the competitive advantage of temporary work agencies will be increasingly determined by their capacity to retain a committed workforce of temporary agency workers. Hence, we investigated temporary agency workers’ commitment to their client organization and also their temporary work agency. Normative and affective commitments were predicted by perceived organizational support (POS) in the case of both entities, supporting the idea that these types of commitment are governed by a social exchange relationship. Continuance commitment was not associated with POS or placement-related variables. Unexpectedly, agency temps’ commitments did not differ across the two entities. The results suggest that client organizations and temporary work agencies can each strive to achieve greater affective and normative commitments from agency temps, through POS-related activities, without compromising agency temps’ commitments to the other entity.

Keywords

contingent workers dual commitments organizational commitment perceived organizational support temporary workers temps

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