Employment contract and work outcomes: A comparative study of in-house and outsourced employees.

Mulokozi, Cordatus (2006) Employment contract and work outcomes: A comparative study of in-house and outsourced employees. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

To improve efficiency and reduce costs, many organisations in the United Kingdom and other industrialised countries have embarked on outsourcing practices for resources such as skills and products. The objective of the study was to determine whether being in-house or outsourced has a significant effect on an employee's work outcomes i.e. work adjustment, job satisfaction and organisation commitment. And if they do, which of the two employment contracts has a higher effect on which outcome or outcomes. In-house and outsourced employees from two major London-based teaching hospitals and one mid-sized hospital, and three major London-based colleges were studied. In the case of hospitals, agency (outsourced) nurses were compared with their in-house counterparts. For the college employees, supply (outsourced) teachers were compared with their in- house counterparts. In-house business administration staffs of the above hospitals and colleges were compared with their outsourced (agency) counterparts. The above organisations and occupations were selected for the study because they had large numbers of outsourced employees and exhibited a variety of working conditions, management styles and organisational cultures. The employees were compared on five work adjustment behaviour indicators (below), satisfaction with: career progress made nature of work and overall organisational atmosphere, and affective organisational commitment. The work adjustment behaviour indicators were: The extent to which an individual pursued the organisation's work values. The extent to which an individual sought to meet job demands. The extent to which an individual sought to adhere to the organisation's norms and traditions. The extent to which an individual sought to adjust to the overall organisational atmosphere. The extent to which an individual sought to maintain the organisation's standards. A survey method was used to collect the data as it was deemed the most appropriate strategy, and questionnaires were sent to the employees of the above organisations. Regression analysis, one-way and two-way analyses of variance, and discriminant analysis were used to test the posited hypotheses. The results were supportive of the main hypothesis that 'an in-house employment contract relates to (or predicts) an individual's work adjustment, job satisfaction and organisational commitment differently from an outsourced employment contract'. The general pattern was that in-house employees were better adjusted, had higher job satisfaction and were more positively affectively committed than their outsourced counterparts. However, there were exceptions, which were discussed and explained. Work adjustment - conceived as a fundamental and primary outcome - was used as an explanatory framework. It was also found that the work adjustment process differed in different occupations. This differentiation between occupations in adjustment to work represented a step forward in our understanding of this area of organisational behaviour. The contribution and implications of the findings were explained. Recommendations for further study using longitudinal analysis and standardised work adjustment questionnaires were made. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations, Sociology, Organizational, Psychology, Industrial
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2060

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