This study aimed to contribute to the understanding of how the identity of contractor influences individual perspectives and interaction, especially skilled contractors and their supervisors. In the future, there will be an increasing number on contractors with professional knowledge and engage in core jobs in the client organization. However, existing researches in
Taiwan are mostly focus on general quantitative investigation on clerical or customer service contract workers. Future researchers are suggested to endeavor to discover deeper insights and truth on the area of contract workers through qualitative researches.
According to the findings of other related issues on contractors, regular workers’
attitudes can also be an interesting and meaningful topic for future researchers to explore. The identity effects on the triangular relations within contractors, regular workers, and supervisors is especially encouraged for researching, but it might take extremely prolonged time to complete.
Since this study inquires how the identity might affect contractors and supervisors, like mutual interaction, future researchers can inversely make efforts in discovering potential factors that influence the interaction between these two subjects. Because skilled or knowledge contract workers will be inevitably widespread in every corporation in the future, any future research with regard to related issues would be of value in a way.
Additionally, future researchers who use this study as reference resources are suggested to pay attention to some essential limitations of this research. First, the sample of this research is relatively limited with only three pairs, six interviewees, due to the inconvenience and difficulties on gaining access and permission. That might result in weakness on representability of the sample. The other limitation is that the interviews are conducted in Mandarin but the data collected and analyzed will be shown in this study in English. There may be a language gap between the primary data and the interpreted version and causes an obstacle to present informants’ response completely explicitly.
Reflection
Through the whole process of conducting this study, the researcher considers the period of searching for interviewees as the most challenging part because there is still only small
portion of corporations utilizing contractors on skilled and knowledge work in Taiwan.
Furthermore, it is hard to gain permissions from supervisors to carry out interviews for one reason that supervisors are busy and the other is the current lay-off boomer which represents a sensitive time for talking about issues on contractors. Consequently, there are only three pairs of interviewees successfully interviewed which cause a limitation for this research.
Additionally, it is hard to completely and perfectly attest the quality of qualitative research. The researcher might have to spend a large amount of time and efforts on thoroughly exploring social phenomena in a certain context by using multiple methods, documenting and describing persistently, and eliminating subjectivity, etc. In spite of the difficulties, doing researches with qualitative method is rather interesting because themes always have something to do with social phenomena, human perception and insights which are regarded by the researcher as topics of high-leveled value.
When it comes to the current issue on lay-off boomer, one of the interviewed contractors, the programmer, is laid off not long after the interview. The researcher is informed with this by the programmer himself and feels sorry for him because his concern on the instability of contract work just comes to be true. The researcher has reflected over this event for a while, what is the most important is that workers must have full understanding on the nature of contract work itself: flexibility, the most frequently praised character of it accompanied with instability for sure. Workers have to examine personal condition, like needs and expectation before work as a contractor. For client organizations, even if saving labor cost and using workforce efficiently is imperative under the circumstances of economical depression, more punctilious personnel planning is encouraged before releasing openings. Take advantages of what contractors can bring to corporations with correct ways and attitudes. Do not regard them as vendors available all the time and dismissible at will. At the meantime of pursuing profits, organizations which regard human as the centrality can be constant winners.
REFERENCES
Abernaty, D. J. (1998). Blending the workforce. Training & Development, 52(6), 78.
Alison Davis-Blake, J. P. B., & George, E. (2003). Happy together? how using nonstandard workers affects exit, voice, and loyalty among standard employees. Academy of
Management Journal, 46(4), 475.
Bednar, R. J., & Quigley, G. P. (2007). The blended workforce. Government Executive, 39(7), 68.
Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. NY: John Wiley.
Broschak, J. P., & Davis-Blake, A. (2006). Mixing standard work and nonstandard deals: The consequences of heterogeneity in employment arrangements. Academy of Management Journal, 49(2), 371.
Burgess, J., & Connell, J. (2006). Temporary work and human resources management: Issues, challenges and responses. Personnel Review, 35(2), 129-141.
Connell, J., & Burgess, J. (2002). In search of flexibility: Implications for temporary agency workers and human resource management. Australian Bulletin of Labour, 28(4), 272.
Daniel, L. (2006). Using TEMPS in HR. HRMagazine: On Human Resource Management, 51(2), 62.
Foote, D. A. (2004). Temporary workers: Managing the problem of unscheduled turnover.
Management Decision, 42(7/8), 963.
Forde, C., & Slater, G. (2006). The nature and experience of agency working in britain: What are the challenges for human resource management? Personnel Review, 35(2), 141-158.
Good contracting: Key to success in using contingent workers.(1997). Getting Results ...for the Hands - on Manager, 1-3.
Guest, D. (2004). Flexible employment contracts, the psychological contract and employee outcomes: An analysis and review of the evidence. International Journal of Management Reviews, 5-6(1), 1.
Hall, R. (2006). Temporary agency work and HRM in Australia: "cooperation, specialisation and satisfaction for the good of all"? Personnel Review, 35(2), 158.
Johnson, J. (2004). Flexible working: Changing the manager's role. Management Decision, 42(5/6), 721.
More contingent workers are a blessing and sometimes a challenge for HR.(2006). HR Focus, 83(1), S1.
Mertens, D.M. (1998). Research methods in education and psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Nollen, S., & Axel, H. (1996). Managing contingent workers: How to reap the benefits and reduce the risks. NYC: American Management Association.
Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome.
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Olsen, K. M. (2006). The role of nonstandard workers in client-organizations. Relations Industrielles, 61(1), 93-119
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Roper, G. (2005). Managing employee relations. HRMagazine: On Human Resource Management, 50(5), 101.
Stern, P. N. (1980). Grounded theory methodology: Its uses and processes. Image, 12, 20-23.
Ward, K., Grimshaw, D., Rubery, J., & Beynon, H. (2001). Dilemmas in the management of temporary work agency staff. Human Resource Management Journal, 11(4), 3-21.
PubMed. Retrieved Jan 20, 2008 from URL:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=11894680&cmd=showdetail view&indexed=google
Peter Suber, “Glossary of First-Order Logic.” Retrieved Jan 17, 2008 from URL:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/glossary.htm#r
Wikipedia. Retrieved Jan 17, 2008 from URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship
Original work in Chinese
成之約（1998）。淺論派遣勞動法之現狀。就業與訓練。(16)，6，17-21