The impact of the employee-organization relationship on temporary employees' performance and attitude: testing a Singaporean sample

Following the framework proposed by Tsui et al. (1997), this research paper examines the impact of the employee-organization relationship on temporary employees' job performance, turnover intention, overall job satisfaction, affective commitment, perception of fairness and perception of work options . Data were collected from 191 temporary employees from seven employment agen cies in Singapore. Analysts conducted revealed that employee responses do v ary under the four types of relationship (quasi-spot contract, under-invest ment, mutual investment and over-investment). In general, both mutual inves tment and over-investment relationships were associated with higher levels of performance and more favourable attitudes than either the under-investme nt or quasi-spot contract. Specifically, temporary employees under the mutual investment and over-inve stment relationships have better job performance, a higher level of affecti ve commitment to the agency, improved overall job satisfaction, higher perc eption of fairness, higher perception of work options and lower turnover in tentions. Furthermore, these finding were obtained even after controlling f or the effects of company tenure and job level on employee performance and attitudes. The results highlight the importance of employee-organization relationships in eliciting the desired temporary employee outcomes. Practical implicatio ns were drawn for human resource practitioners and employment agencies on h ow best to manage temporary employees. Some limitations and suggestions for future research were discussed.