| Being There: The Acceptance and Marginalization of Part-Time Professional Employees |
| | Lawrence, Thomas B. | U. of Victoria | tlawrenc@business.uvic.ca | 250-7216401 |
| | Clark, Vivien S. | Wilfred Laurier U. | vclark@wlu.ca | (519)884-1970 |
| | Part-time professional employees constitute a new social category that
challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between time and
professional work. In this article, we examine both the historical emergence
of part-time professional work and the dynamics of its integration into
contemporary organizations. Professional employment has traditionally been
associated with being continuously available to one's organization, and
consequently, contemporary professional jobs are typically structured in
ways that assume full-time (and greater) commitments of time to the
organization. Because part-time status directly confronts that tradition,
professionals wishing to work part-time may often face potentially
resistant work cultures. The heterogeneity of contemporary work cultures
and tasks, however, presents a wide variety of levels and forms of
resistance to part-time professionals. We develop a theoretical model
that identifies characteristics of local work contexts that lead to the
acceptance or marginalization of part-time professionals. Specifically,
we focus on the relationship between a work culture's dominant interaction
rituals and their effects on co-workers' and managers' reactions to
part-time professionals. + |
| | Keywords: Part-Time Work; Professionals; Culture |
| Factors contributing to success of teleworkers |
| | Raghuram, Sumita | Fordham, U. | raghuram@mary.fordham.edu | 212-673-2921 |
| | Garud, Raghu | New York U. | rgarud@stern.nyu.edu | 212-998-0255 |
| | Wiesenfeld, Batia M. | New York U. | bwiesenf@stern.nyu.edu | (212)-998-0765 |
| | We use data gathered from a large-scale telework program to test hypotheses regarding critical determinants of telework success. Our investigation is guided by four complementary perspectives on organizations; we consider organizations as information processing systems, socio-cultural systems, task systems and human systems. |
| | Keywords: new forms; tele-work; virtual work |
| Predicting the Use of External Labor Arrangements: A Test Reconciling the Transaction Costs Perspective with the Development of Organizational Capabilities |
| | Masters, John K. | Western Illinois U. | Ken_Masters@ccmail.wiu.edu | (309)-762-3999 ext. 250 |
| | Miles, Grant | U. of North Texas | MILES@COBAF.UNT.EDU | (940) 565-3469 |
| | One of the most prevalent and least understood trends in organizations today is the increasing use of external labor arrangements (ELAs) to augment more traditional employment relationships. Past research on ELAs has resulted in a confusing, disorganized, and often contradictory list of potential antecedents of ELA use. The blame for this state lies, at least in part, with the lack of a parsimonious theory to guide researchers. We propose a model of ELA use drawn from the transaction costs perspective. This model was tested against models drawn from competing perspectives and found to be a good predictor of ELA use. The results are discussed in terms of both the transaction costs perspective and the resource-based view of the firm. The findings of this study may help to explain the apparent paradox between the increasing externalization of human resources and the use of human capital as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. |
| | Keywords: Externalization; Employment; Transaction Costs |
| Social Networks in the Open Labor Market: An Exploration of Independent Contractors' Careers |
| | Castaneda, Laura Werber | Stanford U. | castaned@stanford.edu | (650)-723-9440 |
| | Over eight million Americans participate in the labor market as independent contractors, yet the economic and social dimensions of this phenomena
remain largely unexplored. The research reported here seeks to close this gap in organizational literature by describing the impact
of social networks on the careers of independent contractors. Interviews with independent contractors in the information technology (IT) industry
enabled me to determine the techniques they use to locate contracts, the role of social networks in their professional lives, and the relationship
between their network structures and career outcomes. My findings suggest that while referrals are but one of the means relied upon by independent
contractors to ensure continual employment, a network of contacts is consistently valued as a source of technical and professional information.
In addition, data culled from the interviews imply that certain network structures, measured in terms of size and tie strength, are more effective than
others in different situations. Overall, this research extends social network theory by applying it to contingent workers rather than permanent
employees, and it hints that theories developed within the traditional organizational context may need to be revisited in light of this return to the
open labor market. |
| | Keywords: qualitative methods; contingent employment; social networks |