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New Contractual Relationships in the Agency Worker Market: The Case of the UK's National Health Service
Author(s) -
Hoque Kim,
Kirkpatrick Ian,
De Ruyter Alex,
Lonsdale Chris
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
british journal of industrial relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.665
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-8543
pISSN - 0007-1080
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2008.00693.x
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , workforce , negotiation , business , vendor , matching (statistics) , service (business) , public economics , agency cost , labour economics , economics , public relations , marketing , finance , economic growth , political science , sociology , law , social science , statistics , mathematics , corporate governance , shareholder
In recent years, there has been a trend towards the negotiation of closer contractual relationships between employers and employment agencies. However, little is known about this change or its likely consequences. In theory, such relationships can benefit employers by lowering fees and also reducing many of the hidden costs associated with the use of agency staff by improving the effectiveness of placement matching. Against this is the suggestion that formal partnerships are unlikely to have a positive impact given the uncertainty of demand for temporary labour and broader tendencies for risk displacement in buyer–supplier networks. In this article, our aim is to explore this matter focusing on recent developments in the UK's National Health Service. We find that new contractual relationships such as framework agreements and master vendor contracts are having mixed effects. While they serve to reduce direct costs for employers in the short term, this has been at the expense of relationship building and improvements in placement matching. These developments are also found to have some potentially negative consequences for the agency workforce itself.