Happy Insiders or Alienated Outsiders? Unpacking Heterogeneity in Job Satisfaction among Contract Workers

• In Event: 2150 - Technology, Flexibility, and Work Arrangement

Abstract

The trend towards organizations increasingly using nonstandard workers, such as contractors, to do jobs previously reserved for regular employees is well documented, with many contractors now working alongside regular employees doing similar tasks. With the proliferation of contractors, how does job satisfaction vary among contractors in different occupations and across different organizational contexts? This is an important question because many argue that contractors on the whole enjoy meaningful non-pecuniary benefits that boost satisfaction, such as enhanced autonomy and flexibility, in exchange for forgoing job security and bearing more risk. Analyzing worker level data from Glassdoor, a leading career intelligence website, this paper has two main findings. First, we observe some firms using contractors in occupations offering little autonomy, with these contractors reporting lower relative job satisfaction than those in high autonomy occupations. Second, building on work studying how contractors integrate with organizational cultures, we find that contractors are relatively less satisfied in organizations with more cohesive cultures than in organizations in which culture is ostensibly less salient. It appears that the benefits of cultural cohesion enjoyed by regular employees fail to extend to provisional members, resulting in greater relative disparities between contractors and regular employees in some firms.

Authors

• Matthew Corritore, McGill University

• Christos Makridis, Council of Economic Advisors