The Role of Job Security in Understanding the Relationship Between Employees' Perceptions of Temporary Workers and Employees' Performance.

TLDR

The authors used a sample of 149 full‑time employees and applied psychological contract and social cognition theories to examine how perceived job security explains reactions to temporary workers. Employees’ perceived job security was found to negatively predict their perception that temporary workers threaten their jobs, but not to predict perceived benefits, and it moderated the link between these perceptions and supervisor‑rated performance—high security strengthened the positive effect of benefit perceptions, while low security amplified the negative effect of threat perceptions.

Abstract

On the basis of psychological contract and social cognition theories, the authors explored the role of full-time employees' perceived job security in explaining their reactions to the use of temporary workers by using a sample of 149 full-time employees who worked with temporaries. As hypothesized, employees' perceived job security negatively related to their perceptions that temporaries pose a threat to their jobs, but it did not relate to their perceptions that temporaries are beneficial. Furthermore, employees' job security moderated the relationships between benefit and threat perceptions and supervisor ratings of job performance. For those with high job security, there was a positive relationship between benefit perceptions and performance. For those with low job security, there was a negative relationship between threat perceptions and performance.