Thesis (M.A.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by David Hachen for the Department of Sociology. "April 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-52).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-135).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of West Florida, 2006. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 108 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

One segment of the Temporary Help Services (THS) industry which has not been well researched is that of the Professional temporary employee. The career THS professional employee is an employee who categorically refuses permanent employment. There is no research which compares the professional career THS employee with the traditional employee. This study examines the work values and expectations of technical writers within one company and compares responses of career THS employees and incidental THS employees with those of permanent employees in that same company. The Campbell Organizational Survey and the Work Values Survey were administered and the results were analyzed. Except for the perception of "Benefits" work cluster there were no significant differences between the groups. It was then possible to assume that perception of the organization was held constant. Differences in work values among groups were found. Results were discussed.

The purpose of this study was to extend research findings on perceived equity into the context of the contingent workforce by examining employees' perceived fairness of a child-care subsidy (i.e., distributive justice perception) in a temporary employment agency. The variables of interest to the study were perceived fairness, comparison other, input importance, organizational responsibility and family-friendliness. The variables were examined on three levels of subsidy status (i.e., subsidy group, parents/no-subsidy group, and nonparents group). A cover letter and a questionnaire regarding perceived fairness of the child-care subsidy were mailed to all employees who had worked for the temporary agency in the last three years. In addition, a stamped self addressed envelope was attached, so respondents could mail the questionnaire directly to the researcher within 2 weeks. Respondents were instructed to anonymously answer the entire questionnaire, and to indicate the degree of their agreement or disagreement with respect to each of the statements in the questionnaire. Findings are based on 64 survey responses, which represented a return rate of 9.5%. The data were analyzed using separate analyses of variance and regression analyses. Results indicated significant differences among parents with subsidy, parents without subsidy and non-parents on their perceived importance of inputs such as level of education, hours per week and "other'' inputs (i.e., client satisfaction and work environment). Specifically, parents without subsidy perceived the level of education and the number of hours worked per week as more important inputs than did either the non-parents and the parents with subsidy. However, non-parents perceived the level of education and the number of hours worked per week as more important inputs than did the parents with subsidy. Furthermore, non-parents and parents without the subsidy perceived "other'' inputs as more important input than did the parents with subsidy. Significant differences were also found between the subsidy group and no-subsidy group and perceived fairness. Specifically, the subsidy group perceived the child care subsidy as more fair than the no-subsidy group (i.e., parents without subsidy and non-parents). A significant interaction of the effect of family-friendliness on the relationship between subsidy status and perceived fairness was also found.

As the staffing agency business is rapidly growing and suffering from accidents resulting in higher sick leave than in other businesses, it is of great interest to analyze which responsibilities prevail between the customer companies and the staffing agencies, when it comes to working environment for hired staff. The purpose of this essay is to clarify the distribution of responsibilities between customer companies and staffing agencies, regarding working environment. I would also like to analyze which consequences this distribution of responsibilities may lead to. To be able to answer these questions, I have chosen to use the legal dogmatic method together with the sociology of law method. I have studied legal sources, literature and also interviewed three persons who are active within the staffing agency business; one person from the Swedish Work Environment Authority, one person from the employers’ side and one person from the employees’ side. The conclusion of my survey is that the SAM-responsibility is divided equally between staffing agencies and customer companies, since the customer company who hires staff is equated with an employer. The employer must also ensure that there is an organized work adaptation and rehabilitation function within the company. According to Working environment regulation, the employer is obliged to immediately report accidents or other harmful incidents to the Swedish Work Environment Authority. Apart from the SAM-responsibility the customer company must also ensure that the hired staff takes necessary protective actions, to be able to safely perform their work and also to give the hired staff access to common facilities under the same conditions as for the other employees.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-189). Also available in electronic version.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Japanese Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

Firms' use of external labor arrangements (ELAs), such as temporary, contract and seasonal workers, has become increasingly prevalent over the last two decades. Despite the increasing importance of this phenomenon, little is known about firms' reasons for using ELAs. Most research to date has been exploratory, using qualitative methods or archival data not well suited to the constructs. The result of this research has been a long and often contradictory list of proposed antecedents of ELA use. In this study, I tested the ability of the transaction costs theory to predict when firms will fill a given job using an ELA rather that a permanent employment relationship. According to this theory, three characteristics of the job will determine whether the job will be filled using an ELA: transaction-specific investment, likelihood of repetition, and uncertainty of performance. Firms will be less likely to staff a given job using an ELA when the job requires investment in idiosyncratic skills, when the firm is likely to require a person with that set of skills regularly, and when performance in that job is difficult to measure.

Within the last decade, more organizations are utilizing a non-traditional workforce. Specifically, these organizations are utilizing contract workers as resources to provide services and manufacture products. While this change in workforce provides benefits to organizations, the change also presents numerous challenges such as turnover. The turnover involved in such a relationship along with the addition of newcomers translates into an organizational socialization and knowledge transfer (KT) issue, because contract workers as well as employees need to be efficiently brought into a new organization, and knowledge needs to be shared with these new individuals so that they can effectively contribute to the work process. It is contended that organizations follow a typical, informal organizational socialization "policy" which involves KT in getting new contract workers and employees up to speed. This study addressed the typical organizational socialization policy as it is represented by formal knowledge transfer (FKT) via instructor-led/classroom training (ILT) and computer-based training (CBT) and by informal knowledge transfer (IKT) via a social network. The study focused on IKT, because companies understand this type of KT the least. In order to evaluate the organizational socialization of contract workers for this study, the contract worker population was compared to a baseline population of employees which was broken up into two employee groups: "rookies" and experienced hires. The formal and informal transfer of three types of knowledge (job task, role, and organizational norms) was assessed by using surveys and interviews (including social network methods) on a research population consisting of 166 employees (both rookies and experienced hires) and contract workers from a Fortune 100 company. The findings include: (a) Job task knowledge was transferred more often than role and organizational norms knowledge, (b) coworkers were used more than managers a source of knowledge overall, (c) worker classification as well as job task and role knowledge explained significant amounts of variance in performance, and (d) network size impacted performance.