The association between perceived personal power, team commitment and intrinsic motivation for permanent and temporary workers

Jeroen P De Jong,Cristina Rubino,Christa L Wilkin

doi:10.1177/0143831x18805848

Abstract

To date, research on how temporary workers are embedded in teams is limited to how they impact their co-workers with permanent contracts and how temporary workers impact team functioning and performance through power structures in teams. We know very little about how the perceptions of personal power of temporary and permanent workers affect their own motivation and commitment. This study aims to assess the relationship between perceived personal power, intrinsic motivation and team commitment for temporary versus permanent workers. Drawing on Conservation of Resources Theory, the authors propose that this association is non-linear for temporary workers and linear for permanent workers. They test these assumptions using a sample of 64 temporary and 275 permanent workers nested in 58 teams. Multilevel analyses show that for temporary workers, the association between personal power perceptions and intrinsic motivation and team commitment flattens at moderate to high levels of perceived personal power. For permanent workers, the study finds a linear relationship. Implications for theory are discussed.

Highlights

Temporary work is on the rise, with the past few decades experiencing a steady increase in different types of temporary employment
We argue that perceptions of personal power in the workplace have different nonlinear associations with employee attitudes of temporary versus permanent workers, which we outline in greater detail below
The correlations indicate that there is a positive association between power perceptions and both team commitment (r = .23; p < .01) and intrinsic motivation (r = .33; p < .01)

Summary

Introduction

Temporary work is on the rise, with the past few decades experiencing a steady increase in different types of temporary employment (e.g. fixed-term contracts and temporary agency work [TAW]). The study of temporary employment has widened to how temporary workers impact team functioning and performance (Rink and Ellemers, 2009; Wilkin et al, 2018). These studies show that permanent workers view temporary workers differently and have difficulty accepting temporary workers in the group. Numerous scholars have noted differences in status between temporary and permanent workers. Temporary workers are considered to have a lower status in the eyes of both permanent (Boyce et al, 2007) as well as temporary workers themselves (Von Hippel, 2006). A lower status denotes lower authority and control over one’s work, which is reflected in lower job autonomy (De Cuyper and De Witte, 2006) as well as less participation in decision making (Parker et al, 2002)

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