Client supportiveness in contingent employment: The role of relationship quality

Abstract

Extant literature dealing with nonstandard employment relationships reveals that contingent (“temporary”) workers are influenced by the supportiveness levels of their client organizations. However, the antecedents and consequences of client supportiveness remain underinvestigated. Specifically, the link between client supportiveness and relationship quality (i.e., the relationship between client organizations and temporary help services [THS] firm) has received minimal attention. I proposed that (1) the quality of the relationship between client organizations and the THS firm will influence client supportiveness, (2) client supportiveness will influence contingent workers’ job attitudes, (3) these job attitudes will influence future levels of relationship quality, and (4) relationship quality will predict unit-level profitability. A time-lagged, unit-level test of this model using large samples of worker and client data obtained from 89 business units of a THS firm provided complete support for the first three proposed relationships. Further, the association between relationship quality and profitability was found to be significant for medium-sized and large business units, but not for small business units.

Keywords:

• Contingent workforce
• Temporary employees
• Employee organization relationships

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Allan McKisson, Jayson Finnegan, and Nancy Levin for access to the data used in this study, and SSB for his inspiration.