Love it, change it, or leave it: Understanding highly-skilled flexible workers' job satisfaction from a psychological contract perspective

Abstract

In order to understand highly-skilled flexible workers' job satisfaction, we take their track records into consideration, integrating several employment contracts. We conceptualize our research interest within the framework of the psychological contract to explore individual rationalities in exchange relationships. This expectancy-oriented approach allows the reflection of contract arrangements and related attitudes from a process perspective. The analysis is based on a qualitative approach, investigating data from 13 in-depth interviews with workers from knowledge-intensive working contexts. As a result, it becomes evident that an inherent notion of continuity independent of the formal work contract exists, job episodes apparently indicate continuity. For the interviewees, pro-active changes in episodic work relationships are a dominant coping pattern for sustaining satisfaction at a high aspiration level. Satisfaction appears as an interactional construct with a high notion of reciprocity, acknowledgment and skill development. The emphasis on career track satisfaction instead of job satisfaction and the specification of dynamics across several job episodes as an external regulation for keeping satisfaction at a high aspiration level provides insights in research on job satisfaction. Key words: job satisfaction, aspiration level, flexible employment, employment relationship, psychological contract, reciprocity (JEL: D23, J28, J24) 1. Introduction How does labor market flexibility affect job satisfaction and vice versa? This interdependence is the key concern of this paper. The focus of analysis relies on highlyskilled flexible workers and is based on qualitative interviews. Contradictory findings exist concerning the job satisfaction of this group of employees. In-depth analysis exploring the actors' considerations and rationalities is therefore a promising approach for a better understanding of their demands, expectations and the fulfillment of these criteria. Job satisfaction is a widespread research topic (Fischer, 2006; Matiaske & Mellewigt, 2001). Empirical analysis concerning job satisfaction related to different contractual arrangements is diverse and do not allow us to draw a clear picture. Several studies confirm the detrimental impact of flexible contracts. Some find negative effects of temporary work on job satisfaction which are linked to perceived job insecurity and ^voluntariness (Origo & Pagani, 2006; Green & Heywood, 2007). Similar findings, using the European Community Household Panel Survey data, state lower levels of overall satisfaction for fixed-term full-time workers and the self-employed (Kaiser, 2002). Likewise, temporary employment is found to be associated with significantly lower levels of job satisfaction compared to its permanent counterpart (Bardasi & Francesconi, 2003), still marking long-term jobs within a single organization as an ideal for many new (Huiskamp & Klyutmans, 2004). Related studies provide evidence that temporary contracts are generally less desirable than permanent employment but are considered as stepping stones to permanent jobs (Booth et al., 2002). Other studies stress no overall significant differences between workers with flexible employment contracts and permanent employees (Green et al., 2009). Following this direction, the contract type does not clearly predict job satisfaction (De Cyper & De Witte, 2006). Likewise, there is evidence that highly qualified flexible workers do not principally differ in job satisfaction from workers in standard employment relationships (Martin, 2006). Differences in job satisfaction cannot be traced back to the question of contract type, whether flexible or not. Especially studies that do not focus on a single employment contract but emphasize career satisfaction including career aspirations and post organizational career patterns (Herrmann & Mayrhofer, 2005) identify similar levels of satisfaction among permanent and flexibly employed workers (Mayrhofer et al. …