Abstract
Orientation: Role clarity is considered essential in the fulfilment of obligations in temporary employment relationships.
Research purpose: This study aimed to determine employees’ and employers’ experience of role clarity in relation to the psychological contract in temporary employment relationships in the Nigerian service industry.
Motivation for the study: Empirical investigations to examine the relations between role clarity and psychological contract in direct temporary employment relationships from the separate perspectives of employees and employers are lacking.
Research design, approach and method: The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design to collect data from a total sample of temporary employees (n = 354) and employers (n = 105) in the direct temporary employment relationship through a self-reported online survey. The data collected were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modelling to establish the structure of the measuring scales and test the stated hypotheses.
Main findings: The findings indicate that a strong relation exists between employees’ and employers’ experience of role clarity and psychological contract in temporary employment relationships.
Practical/managerial implications: Temporary employees and employers would not want to risk the consequence(s) of role ambiguity and unmet expectations in the exchange relationships.
Contribution/value-add: This study differs from extant studies and provides a new conceptual and structural outlook in the employment relations field and empirically establishes that psychological contract has a strong nexus with role clarity for employees and employers, such that the extent of fulfilment of obligations is dependent on the extent of role clarity in a temporary exchange relationship.
Keywords: temporary exchange relationship; psychological contract; role clarity; temporary employee; employer; Nigeria.
Introduction
Providing clarity in roles in the execution of expected duties and tasks is considered important in the fulfilment of obligations in temporary exchange relationships. Extant studies (e.g. De Cuyper & De Witte 2008; De Jong, Wilkin & Rubino 2019; Isaksson et al. 2010; Lee & Faller 2005; Le, Santos & Ferreira 2015; Rousseau 1990; Scheel, Rigotti & Mohr 2013) have focused on the psychological contract of temporary employees and employees’ perception of role clarity (Bernuzzi et al. 2023; Cuéllar-Molina, García-Cabrera & Lucia-Casademunt 2018; Hegazy et al. 2023; Li & Griffin 2022), vis-à-vis role clarity as an outcome of change complexity (Verlinden et al. 2023) and antecedent of job satisfaction (Fernández-Ferreras, Moreno-Romero & Cantisano 2018) and job performance (Luqman et al. 2022) in standard employment. In other words, there is no known study on employer psychological contract in temporary employment, employee and employer perspectives of role clarity in temporary employment, and the psychological contract as an outcome of role clarity from separate perspectives of employers and employees in temporary exchange relationships.
The share of these temporary exchange relationships has increased because of flexibility in the labour market (Idowu, Ilesanmi & Oyetunde 2019; Reichenberg & Berglund 2019; Verd et al. 2025). Temporary employment is an array of work arrangements that deviate from the standard employment relationship (Mattijssen & Pavlopoulos 2019). Scholars have indicated that both skilled and unskilled employees and their employers are engaged in temporary exchange relationships (Otuturu 2021). For temporary employees, a temporary exchange relationship is a way of changing unemployment status because of the absence of preferred permanent jobs (Enukora 2020), means of poverty reduction and of survival (Jawando & Adenugba 2015) and an opportunity to transit into permanent employment (Stecy-Hildebrandt, Fuller & Burns 2019). For employers, temporary employment is an opportunity to screen individuals for permanent positions, provide for numerical flexibility in times of peak demands for goods or services, and lower overhead costs (De Jong et al. 2019; Mattijssen & Pavlopoulos 2019; Nguyen-Huu 2021). Given the divergent reasons for entering into temporary employment as well as the short-term nature and lack of adequate protection for temporary employment relationships within the African context, there is a likelihood of encountering a lack of clarity in their perceived fulfilment of obligations in temporary work arrangements.
Consequently, temporary employees and employers might feel betrayed or develop a decline in mutual trust when either of the parties experiences a breach of the psychological contract (Ahmed & D’Netto 2013), which can be because of the lack of clarity of obligations in the employment relationship. In other words, ambiguity in roles occurs when a temporary employment relationship is characterised by a lack of information, understanding and unpredictability (Hegazy et al. 2023; Linde, Schalk & Linde 2008) as well as the incompatibility in role expectation in the fulfilment of obligations in temporary exchange relationships (Hegazy et al. 2023). These could lead to role stressors (i.e. role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload), causing job burnout, tension, emotional exhaustion, intention to quit, reduced job satisfaction, lower organisational commitment and lower job performance for the temporary employee, while, for the employer, it could lead to intention to terminate the short-term contract, reduction in reward, organisational productivity, turnover, profit and an unpleasant working climate (Hegazy et al. 2023; Karkkola, Kuittinen & Hintsa 2019; Templer, Kennedy & Phang 2020).
Further, this study examines the Global South as prior studies are Western-focused (Laß & Wooden 2020; Latner & Saks 2022) and because there is a high existence of temporary employment in the Nigerian service industry (Ikeije 2020; Nguyen-Huu 2021; Striler, Shoss & Jex 2021). Also, temporary employee and employer in direct temporary employment are taken as a unit of analysis because the indirect or triangular exchange relationship creates double employers with conflicting expectations between the client organisation and temporary agent (Handy, Gardner & Davy 2020). In other words, no prior study in Nigeria has examined temporary employment vis-à-vis role clarity and psychological contract from the separate perspective of direct temporary employees and employers in the service industry. Therefore, this paper aimed to bridge the existing research gap.
Research aim and questions
This study aimed to examine the relationship between temporary employees and employers (a non-dyad) role clarity and psychological contract in the Nigerian service industry. To address this aim, the following specific research questions were developed and highlighted below:
- Is there a relationship between temporary employees’ experience of role clarity and psychological contract in the Nigerian service industry?
- Is there a relationship between employers’ experience of role clarity and psychological contract in the Nigerian service industry?
Literature review
Role clarity and psychological contract in temporary exchange relationships
The psychological contract (PC) has been used as a framework to examine and make sense of the changing relationships between employers and employees (Le et al. 2015). Therefore, one of the requisites to understand the employment relationship when using a PC framework of analysis is that it should be regarded as mutual obligations between two parties with clarity in their reciprocal obligations (Le, Santos & Ferreira 2015). According to PC theory, employees hold a set of implicit expectations (the PC) about what they feel committed or obligated to provide to the employer (e.g. productivity), and what their employer is obligated to provide them (e.g. salary or career opportunities) (Morf, Arnold & Staffelbach 2014). When temporary workers perceive that the organisation has fulfilled its obligations, i.e. providing clarity towards them, they could reciprocate with job satisfaction and affective commitment towards the organisation (Chambel 2014). Likewise, when employers perceive that temporary employees have fulfilled their obligations by showing clarity in the performance of their job functions, they could reciprocate with permanent positions, improved remuneration and non-financial rewards.
Role clarity is the level to which temporary employees and employers clearly perceive the availability, understanding and certainty about their obligated tasks and responsibilities in the employment relationship (Linde et al. 2008). Role clarity suggests that when temporary employees are clear about their expected tasks and responsibilities issued by their employer, it can be instrumental in enhancing the reciprocity of fulfilling their obligations as expected by their employer in the exchange relationships (Adil et al. 2023; Flatau-Harrison, Griffin & Gagne 2020). Role clarity is identified as a crucial parameter for the temporary employees and employers to fulfil their PC in work roles and functions within the organisation (Muehlhausen et al. 2023). This shows that the availability of information, understanding and certainty is essential to gain more clarity concerning role expectations (Bernuzzi et al. 2023; Linde et al. 2008; Wang, Dyball & Wang 2023). Therefore, it is germane to transmit with clarity in PCs for workers and employers to maximise the fulfilment of obligations in temporary employment relationships (Chambel 2014).
Employees’ willingness to fulfil the employers’ perceived expectations depends on the extent to which an employee believes that his or her expectations will be met, perhaps by providing clarity by the employer and vice versa (Morf et al. 2014). Furthermore, the norm of reciprocity shows that when the employer perceives employee obligations (e.g. organisational citizenship behaviour), they feel obliged to reciprocate with extended involvement in employment relationships (Chambel et al. 2016). So, role clarity is essential in the understanding of mutual expectations in the fulfilment of the PC in an exchange relationship (Choo 2017; Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler 2002; Cross, Barry & Garavan 2008).
Social exchange theory for role clarity and psychological contract in temporary exchange relationships
Social exchange theory (SET) is an essential guide for employee-employer relationships regarding their reciprocal exchanges of resources, expectations and obligations for mutual benefits (Ahmad, Nawaz & Ishaq 2023; Zychlinski, Bar-Nir & Kagan 2022). This SET is considered a central framework to understand employment relationships (Ahmad et al. 2023), and it features economic exchange and social relationships (Chen & Sriphon 2022) that underscore transactional and relational obligations of employee and employer (Ahmad et al. 2023). This study builds and further extends the limited propositions of the social exchange theory in temporary employment (e.g. Chambel & Castanheira 2012) to include role clarity and PC between the temporary employee and employer. Thus, the underlying proposition of SET to this study is that when obligations are fulfilled, particularly if based on clarity in expected responsibility and task, it could compel them to reciprocate such treatment in the form of positive work attitudes and a good working atmosphere (Scheel et al. 2013). That is, the extent and qualities of role clarity could predict the fulfilment of obligations in the temporary employee-employer exchange relationships (Chen & Sriphon 2022). Therefore, this theory offers theoretical grounding that role clarity could either result to a direct or inverse relationship between role clarity and PC in temporary exchange relationships. Based on this background the study developed the following hypotheses:
H1a: There is no significant relationship between temporary employees’ role clarity and PC.
H1b: There is no significant relationship between employers’ role clarity and PC.
Research methods and design
Research paradigm
This study adopted a positivistic paradigm. This positivist worldview is epistemologically based on the assumption of objective reality that can be identified, understood and measured, such that the functional relationship can be derived from the causal and explanatory factors between the independent and the dependent variables (Park, Konge & Artino 2020; Schrag 1992). This study ontologically uses a hypothetical deductive approach to test hypotheses that are quantitative in nature (Schrag 1992). That is, this study adopted a quantitative approach underscored by a positivistic paradigm to examine the relationship between the constructs as perceived by employees and employers in the temporary employment relationship. Considering the primary objective of this study, the research design involved two studies, which included the temporary employee and employer perspectives in Nigeria, and this is in tandem with the existing research design adopted by Kim, Wang and Chen (2018). These two studies specifically adopted a survey research design that is cross-sectional in nature. The choice of survey research design was based on the quantitative description and tests for relations between variables (Creswell & Creswell 2018), and it is cross-sectional in nature because data were collected at one point in time (Creswell & Creswell 2018; Neuman 2014).
Research settings
This study included employees and employers in temporary and direct contracts in the formal and informal service industries in Nigeria. For study 1: temporary employees in the exchange relationship, this direct temporary employee was considered because they do not create ambiguity of double employers with mutually incompatible obligations and competing expectations between the temporary agent and the client organisation (Handy et al. 2020). In addition, this study considered temporary employees because extant laws in Nigeria do not adequately protect them (Otuturu 2021). This gives the temporary employees some unpredictable obligations in the temporary employee-employer relationship. For study 2: employers in the exchange relationship, the employer in the direct temporary employment was deemed because the employer in triangular employment creates two employers in the employment relationship (Menatta et al. 2022), and there is legal ambiguity on who is responsible for the temporary employee in an exchange relationship (Hopkins 2015). In this study, the employers are businesses that employ one or more persons, play supervisory roles to their subordinates, and register as small, micro, medium and large-scale indigenous or multinational establishments. In other words, the manager or supervisor represents the view of the employer (Kim et al. 2018), and interacting on behalf of the employer in a direct temporary employment relationship has a significant relationship with how temporary employees perceive the employer or the organisation.
Participants and sampling method
Because of the geographical spread of the study population and unavailable data on the list of employers and employees in direct temporary exchange relationships, the study adopted a cluster sampling technique for a representative sample by focusing on a cluster of participants in city (Lagos State, Nigeria) and industries (service) with the highest concentration of temporary employment in Nigeria (Ikeije 2020; Jawando & Adenugba 2015). Thereafter, a simple random technique was used to draw 354 participants and 105 direct temporary employees and employers, respectively, from the service industry in Lagos State, Nigeria. This sampling method was deemed because it helps with the proximity of the study sample and gives individual participants an equal chance of selection (Grønmo 2019)
For study 1: temporary employees, the participants’ mean age is 26 years (range = 18–50 years, standard deviation [s.d.] = 3.29). The sample consists mainly of males (53.1%, n = 188) working for 40 h per week or more full-time (51.7%, n = 183), in an internship type of temporary employment relationship (52.5%, n = 186) with an average of 2 years and 5 months in the temporary employment relationship and the service organisations. This indicates that the majority of the temporary employees are young and single males working as interns with an honours degree as their highest level of education in temporary fixed-term employment for less than 3 years in a direct temporary employment relationship within the service organisations.
For study 2: employer, the participants’ description shows that the average age of the employer in a temporary employment relationship is 42 years (range = 21–62 years, s.d. = 1.77). The sample consists mainly of males (64.76%, n = 68), who are married (81.90%, n = 86) with an honours degree (52.38%, n = 55) level of education, working in temporary fixed-term employment for 40 h per week or more full-time (76.19%, n = 80) and supervising daily or on-call-type of temporary employment (36.19%, n = 38). These employers have supervised temporary employment relationships at an average duration of 7 years and 5 months, and spent an overall average of 13 years and 6 months in their service organisations. This indicates that the majority of the employers are older adults and married males with an honour’s degree, supervising daily or on-call-type of temporary employment for less than 8 and 14 years in direct temporary employment relationship and in the service organisations, respectively.
Method
Data were collected through a self-administered online survey via QuestionPro (2022) after consent was granted by participating organisations and individuals. The participants for study 1 included temporary employees, and for study 2 employers were randomly selected without matching the views of temporary employees with their immediate supervisor or employer. The online survey was completed at an average of 15 min for temporary employees and 14 min for supervisors representing the employers. The participants completed the survey anonymously after they had been informed about its voluntary nature, research purpose only and that incentives are not given for participation.
Measuring instruments
Role clarity: The 12-item scale for the role clarity questionnaire (RCQ) was a single-dimensional scale and newly developed after adapting the role clarity model of Linde et al. (2008) vis-à-vis role conflict and ambiguity questionnaire (MRCAQ) developed by Rizzo, House and Lirtzman (1970). Examples of items include: ‘There is available information on expectations between my supervisor and me in this employment relationship’ (temporary employee perspective) and ‘There is available information on expectations between me and my employee in this employment relationship’ (employer perspective). Therefore, the two study scales were rated on seven-point Likert scales (1-never, 2-almost never, 3-rarely, 4-sometimes, 5-often, 6-very often, and 7-always). The Cronbach’s alpha for this current study is 0.96 and 0.93 for the temporary employee and employer scales, respectively.
Psychological contract: A 25-item scale for the psychological contract questionnaire (PCQ) was a single-dimensional scale and newly developed citing five content dimensions of employee obligations and six content dimensions of employer obligations after adapting the model developed by Linde (2015) citing the work of Robinson et al. (1994) and De Vos, Buyens and Schalk (2002) on employee obligations. This measurement scale is similar to the scale adopted by Farnese et al. (2018) with a satisfactory reliability test where employer obligations’ Cronbach’s alpha scored 0.90 and employee obligations’ Cronbach’s alpha scored 0.91. Examples of items that were included in the online questionnaire are ‘me and my supervisor in this employment relationship met performance expectations on the job’ (temporary employee perspective) and ‘me and my employee in this employment relationship met performance expectations on the job’ (employer perspective). Therefore, the two study groups of participants were requested to indicate their perception of the PC rated on a seven-point Likert scale (1-never, 2-almost never, 3-rarely, 4-sometimes, 5-often, 6-very often and 7-always). The Cronbach’s alpha for this current study is 0.95 and 0.92 for the temporary employee and employer scales, respectively.
Data analysis
The measuring scales for role clarity and psychological contract in both studies (study 1 temporary employees; study 2 employers) were formulated based on existing scales. As a result, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) via principal component analysis (PCA) with the varimax rotation option was used to explore and extract factor loadings for each item in temporary employees’ and employers’ role clarity and psychological contract scales. This EFA with PCA was chosen because it helps to determine the dimensionality of the given set of variables and the contribution of the items to their construct domains on a single data set (Chumney 2012).
To assess the internal consistency of the scales, inter-construct correlations coefficient analysis for distinctiveness of the constructs and Cronbach’s alpha were used to examine the validity and reliability of the scales, where the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α) (≥ 0.70) is within the acceptable baseline thresholds (Hair et al. 2019), while Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test values were used to establish the suitability of the data for EFA.
The descriptive statistics were analysed for the frequency distribution of the respondents, the mean and the standard deviation of the scales. The hypotheses were tested using the standardised regression weight of the structural equation modelling (SEM). This SEM was adopted in order to establish the relations between role clarity and PC in the direct temporary employment relationship from employers’ and employees’ perspectives (Pyrczak & Oh 2018). The results of the analysis are presented below.
Ethical considerations
Ethics clearance was obtained from the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences’ Ethics Committee (EMS-REC), North-West University, South Africa, with ethics number NWU-01843-23-A4. This ethics clearance provides the opportunity to seek the consent of the participants through informed consent before completing the online questionnaire, which gives the participants the opportunity to withdraw voluntarily from the online survey. Also, the participants were assured of their confidentiality as the data collected would be used for the purpose of the study only.
Results
Descriptive statistics
The descriptive statistics considered the mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficient of the constructs. The mean score for each variable in Table 1 is the mid-point of 4, which shows that, on average, temporary employees and employers have a high perception of role clarity and PC in the exchange relationships.
| TABLE 1: Descriptive statistics and correlation for constructs. |
Factor analysis
As shown in Table 2 and Table 3, a total of 37 items were explored using a PCA for the two studies. These items represent two constructs (i.e. the PC and role clarity), and there are 12 items for role clarity and 25 items for PC for study 1 (temporary employees) and study 2 (employers). Since the measuring scales are single-dimensional constructs, the extracted factor loadings were based on a single-factor solution. These items for role clarity and PC were extracted at a minimum suppressed value (of 0.30) (Alhija 2010), and none of the items were excluded for temporary employees, except for two items (work extra hours and perform non-required tasks) that were excluded for the employer PC scale only because the factor loading of items not retained was less than 0.30.
| TABLE 2: Factor loadings of a single-dimensional psychological contract. |
| TABLE 3: Factor loadings for single-dimensional role clarity. |
That is, all 37 items (> 0.37) were retained for temporary employees, and 35 items (> 0.35) were retained for employers. The communalities (h2) and factor loadings show that the items in the constructs are correlated and have a significant contribution to the temporary employee and employer role clarity and PC constructs. The data were assessed for their suitability for EFA using the KMO measure and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity for each scale across both samples. For the employer sample, the role clarity scale exhibited a KMO value of 0.867, and Bartlett’s test was statistically significant (χ2 [66] = 901.867, p < 0.001). The PC scale for employers (23 retained items) showed a KMO of 0.833 with a significant Bartlett’s test (χ2 [253] = 1319.822, p < 0.001). For the temporary employee sample, the role clarity scale had a KMO of 0.950 and a significant Bartlett’s Test (χ2 [66] = 4233.203, p < 0.001). Similarly, the PC scale (25 items) for temporary employees had a KMO of 0.948 and a significant Bartlett’s test (χ2 [300] = 5844.251, p < 0.001). As all KMO values were well above the recommended 0.60 threshold and all Bartlett’s tests were significant, the data were determined to be highly suitable for factor analysis.
Structural model
Having established that the data are reliable and suitable for EFA as indicated by the Cronbach’s alpha, and KMO and Bartlett’s test values respectively, the structural model was tested using the maximum likelihood with the aid of SPSS AMOS 30 (Collier 2020) to test the significant relations between role clarity and the PC, as indicated in the path diagram and Table 4. For this study, the structural model relies on EFA because they are newly developed scales for a single data set for each of the constructs and EFA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are inappropriate to be conducted on the same data set (Ocy, Sarifah & Riyadi 2025). Therefore, this study did not collect independent samples that would be required for a satisfactory CFA on the structural model (Henson & Roberts 2006). Further, the:
| TABLE 4: Standardised regression weights and hypothesis conclusion. |
EFA can be used to (a) explore poorly fitting CFA models, (b) explore factor structures without strong hypotheses and (c) confirm a factor structure based on strong hypotheses when the independent cluster assumption of CFA is unrealistic. (Schmitt 2011:315–316)
Given the results of Table 4, the hypothesised model implies that role clarity has a very significant relationship (β = 0.85, β = 0.61 and CR values of 10.636 and 4.101; p < 0.001) on PC for temporary employees and employers in the exchange relationship.
Discussion
The EFA result established that the measurement scale is reliable, and the outcomes of the tested hypotheses based on the standard regression weight as shown in Figure 1 (β = 0.85) for temporary employees and in Figure 2 (β = 0.61) for employers, with a significance level p < 0.001, show that there is a strong relationship between role clarity and PC for both parties; therefore, alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted and null hypothesis (H0) is rejected. This is in tandem with the view of Chambel (2014) that it is essential to transmit with clarity in PCs in order to maximise the perception of the fulfilment of obligations in temporary employment relationships. However, temporary employees establish a stronger relationship between role clarity and PC in the employment relationships than the employers. This could be attributed to the fact that temporary employees have low bargaining power, higher expectations but less clarity because temporary exchange relationships are not adequately protected by relevant labour laws, it is a way of changing unemployment status in the absence of preferred permanent jobs, a means of poverty reduction and of survival and, an opportunity to transit into permanent employment (Enukora 2020; Jawando & Adenugba 2015; Stecy-Hildebrandt et al. 2019). Therefore, better clarity in their roles has stronger and positive implications for the fulfilment of their PC.
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FIGURE 1: Path diagram showing the standard regression weight relationship between role clarity and psychological contract as perceived by temporary employees. |
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FIGURE 2: Path diagram showing the standard regression weight relationship between role clarity and psychological contract as perceived by employers. |
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This is seemingly evident in the results of the factor loading and communalities for temporary employees, where protection of each other’s image and opportunity for career growth have the highest correlation and contribute significantly to the PC construct, and certainty in responsibilities has the highest variance for the role clarity construct, while, for employers, providing a good working atmosphere and understanding the guiding policies and procedures have the highest variance for the PC and role clarity constructs, respectively.
This indicates that, in temporary exchange relationships, employees and employers have variance or divergence of perception of items that underscore their PC and role clarity. That is, temporary employees and employers perceive most of the PC when there is protection of goodwill and good working atmosphere, respectively, while they perceive role clarity when there is certainty in responsibilities for the temporary employee and an understanding of the guiding policies and procedures for the employer in the employment relationship.
The implication is that temporary employees experience their constructs when they perceive that the employment relationship fulfils the obligation of providing the opportunity for career growth and protection of each other’s image as well as certainty in obligated task and responsibilities, while employers perceive the fulfilment of the PC when there is a good working atmosphere and understanding of the guiding policies and procedures for role clarity in the temporary exchange relationship.
On the other hand, performing non-required tasks has the least correlation and contribution to the PC construct, and available information on expectations has the least correlation to role clarity for temporary employees while performing non-required tasks and working extra hours, and available guidelines for management policies and procedures have the least variance and contribution to the PC and role clarity constructs, respectively, in the temporary exchange relationship for employers. In other words, employers and employees have the least correlation for the fulfilment of obligations when performing non-required tasks and working extra hours for the PC, while the availability of information on expectations (temporary employees) and guidelines for management policies and procedures (employers) have the smallest effect for them in role clarity in the temporary exchange relationship. Overall, the availability of information, understanding and certainty in obligations has a relationship to fulfilling employee and employer obligations in temporary exchange relationships.
Theoretical implications
This study theoretically contributes to knowledge by: (1) advancing the understanding of the nexus between role clarity and PC in temporary exchange relationship; (2) empirically established that positive relationship exist between role clarity and PC from a separate perspective of the temporary employee and the employer in an exchange relationship; (3) establishing that what mostly defines role clarity and PC differ in perspectives of employee and employer in the temporary exchange relationship; and (4) providing a new conceptual and structural outlook to establish that temporary employee experience a strong link between role clarity and PC than the employer in the temporary exchange relationship.
Practical implications
The limited and lack of adequate protection in temporary contracts empowers the employer and the employee with the opportunity for ‘employment misbehaviours’, such as a temporary employee suddenly resigning and an employer terminating employment without prior notice, and the assignment or performance of tasks and responsibilities without clarity in the employment relationship.
Despite this, this study has practically made it evident that temporary employees and employers mostly want certainty in responsibilities and understanding in the guiding policies and procedures in role clarity, which to a large extent determines the fulfilment of obligations between the employer and employee in the temporary employment relationships.
In sum, temporary employees and employers would not want to risk the consequences of role ambiguity and unmet expectations in the exchange relationship if there is no availability, understanding and certainty in role performance for the fulfilment of PC despite the limited nature of temporary exchange relationships.
Limitations and recommendations
Despite the perceived gap in the literature to examine the relationship between role clarity and PC from a separate perspective of the temporary employees and employers, this study has identified some recommendations for future research based on the limitations of this study. These are highlighted below:
- This study considered the separate perspectives of temporary employees and employers; that is, this study does not match the perception of the employee with their direct employer in the temporary employment relationship. Future studies should consider a dyad study that matches the experience of temporary employees with their employers.
- This study is limited to using EFA on a single data set, where factor loadings and communalities show the level of significant contribution of each item to its construct domain. Further studies are encouraged to do an independent sample of respondents with similar characteristics for CFA of the structural model.
- This study is limited to giving an overview of each item’s contribution (high or low) to their construct domain (after considering a minimum suppress value of 0.30) because they are newly developed scales. It is recommended that future study could exclude items with low communities when adapting this study’s scales for their research.
- This study is limited to a self-reported survey research design with a cross-sectional design; it is recommended that future research should consider a qualitative research approach with a longitudinal design reflecting over time the changes in the clarity of role and PC of temporary employees and employers in an employment relationship within the service Industry.
- The study is limited to the Nigerian context, and a comparative study is recommended either within countries in Africa or between Africa and non-African countries in order to reflect the divergent or convergent experiences of temporary employees and employers in a direct temporary employment relationship vis-à-vis role clarity and PC.
- This study is limited to the perception of employers and employees in a temporary exchange relationship; future research should consider investigating the perception of employees and employers in permanent employment using role clarity as an antecedent of PC.
- The study is limited to direct temporary employees and employers in the service organisations; future research should consider investigating the direct temporary employees and employers’ perceptions in the manufacturing organisations.
- This study examines the perception of employers and temporary employees across the public and private sector service industry. Future research should investigate distinctively the experience of temporary employees and employers in the private and public sector.
Conclusion
Employer and employee established a strong relationship between role clarity and PC in the temporary employment relationship, such that the clarity in the expected role performance has a strong link to the fulfilment of the PC in the employment relationship.
However, temporary employees have a greater associated relationship between role clarity and PC in comparison with the employers in the temporary exchange relationships.
This study has entrenched a new conceptual and structural outlook in temporary exchange relationships vis-à-vis role clarity and PC, and it is expected to provide theoretical and empirical nuances for future studies.
Acknowledgement
This article is partly based on the author’s, Idowu A. Taofik’s doctoral thesis entitled, ‘Investigating role clarity, psychological contract and perceived mutual trust in temporary employment in Nigeria’, towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Labour Relations Management in the WorkWell Research Unit, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the North-West University, South Africa. The study was supervised by Prof. Bennie Linde and Prof. René Schalk. The thesis was reworked, revised and adapted into a journal article for publication. The thesis is currently unpublished and not publicly available.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
CRediT authorship contribution
Taofik A. Idowu: Conceptualisation, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. René Schalk: Conceptualisation, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Bennie Linde: Conceptualisation, Supervision. All authors reviewed the article, contributed to the discussion of results, approved the final version for submission and publication, and take responsibility for the integrity of its findings.
Funding information
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are not openly available and are available from the corresponding author, Idowu A. Taofik, upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.
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