Patterns of part-time employment

Abstract

The research examines the impact of type of part-time work arrangements, type of referent others used by part-time employees to make equity assessments, and demographic variables on part-time workers' reactions to their jobs. Data were collected from 707 part-time workers in five medical care, retailing, and educational settings. Consistent with the hypotheses, part-time workers have more positive job attitudes toward positions which are permanent and are congruent with their past education and work experience. Relative to part-time student workers, married women with children are more likely to be employed in these permanent part-time jobs, to have more positive job attitudes, and to earn higher wages. Contrary to the traditional assumption of the literature on part-time workers, part-time workers in this study used other part-timers in their organizations as their referent others rather than full-time colleagues.