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EFFECT OF TEMPORARY CONTRACTS ON PERCEIVED WORK CHARACTERISTICS AND JOB STRAIN: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY
Author(s) -
PARKER SHARON K.,
GRIFFIN MARK A.,
SPRIGG CHRISTINE A.,
WALL TOBY D.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2002.tb00126.x
Subject(s) - psychology , strain (injury) , work (physics) , social psychology , applied psychology , medicine , mechanical engineering , engineering
This longitudinal study investigates differences in perceived work characteristics and job strain as a function of employment status. The study examines the effects of a change from involuntary temporary to permanent status ( N = 75) compared to staying permanent ( N = 257), as well as comparing temporary contract and permanent contract employees at Time 1 and a second‐wave comparison that included new temporary contract employees ( N = 92) and new permanent contract employees ( N = 34). Results suggest that temporary employment status is associated with negative and positive consequences. On the negative side, temporary status reduced perceptions of job security and participative decision making, which had deleterious effects on job strain. On the other hand, temporary employees had fewer strain‐inducing role demands (in particular, lower role overload). The net effect was that temporary employees had lower job strain, which analyses suggested was due to indirect effects of the lower role demands.