Flexibility has become a coveted attribute of organizations, who have been urged to deal with recent fluctuating demands in labor by hiring more "non-standard" workers such as those on temporary contracts. But what happens when standard and non-standard workers work together? Does this have negative or positive implications for the workers and the organization?

The question has been of interest to researchers but the results of previous studies have been mixed. Some say the outcome is good for both parties - standard employees are buffered from fluctuating demands and get more interesting tasks, while temporary workers get the flexibility to balance work with other demands, have autonomy over their work, gain skills as they move to new assignments and are free from office politics.

But on the flip side, blended workgroups have also had negative fallout in terms of both standard and temporary workers' attitudes to the organization and their co-workers. Standard workers may fear poorer relations with temporary workers who are less well-trained or committed to the organization, as well as increased competition for advancement. Similarly, temporary workers may think the presence of more temporary colleagues may reduce their chances of gaining standard employment with the organization.

To reconcile these competing findings, Elizabeth George, Prithviraj Chattopadhyay and Lida L. Zhang of HKUST look at standard and temporary employment as part of the status hierarchy of working conditions in organizations. Since status is tied to social identity, the ability to improve one's status becomes an important filter through which to consider the attitudes of standard and temporary workers.

"Our argument is that the perception that they can enhance their status within their organization moderates the influence of the proportion of temporary workers in a workgroup on group member outcomes. Higher proportions of non-standard workers would be viewed positively by those who perceive their own potential for upward mobility to be low, and negatively by members who perceive themselves to have high potential for upward mobility," they say.

They explore these ideas in surveys of 124 research scientists in an Australian organization, 18 per cent of whom were on temporary contracts and the remainder on standard contracts.

The first goal was to determine how the composition of the group and the perceived mobility of each group member shaped the extent to which employees valued their workgroup (their "workgroup prototype valence"). As expected, greater prospects of mobility tended to lead to a more negative view of temporary workers and fewer prospects to a more positive view.

Explaining the latter, the authors say that "when employees perceive little opportunity for upward mobility, they are more likely to focus their attention on the conditions that pertain to making their current situation positive rather than focusing on how to change status. Standard workers are likely to see temporary workers as 'helping hands' who make work easier, while temporary workers see their temporary colleagues as helpful in providing knowledge about surviving in the current organization and helping them gain access to opportunities for mobility outside the organization."

Attitudes to the workgroup in turn affect how much workers identify with their workgroup and their level of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). The higher the number of temporary workers in the group, the lower these measures tend to be. But when perceived mobility was lower, the relationship between temporary worker numbers and workgroup identification and OBSE was positive.

Interestingly, the proportion of temporary workers affected organizational citizenship behavior among respondents, but this was not mediated by workgroup valence. This may be due to the impact of interpersonal relationships as people are willing to help each other but not necessarily the organization, and warrants further study.

The authors conclude that the findings are useful for organizations as they consider how best to include temporary workers in their working environment.