External workers’ perception of leadership behaviour – a study of Swedish temporary agency workers and contractors

• Date: 01 April 2015
• Author: Stig Vinberg,Johan Larsson,Sven Svensson
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12053

External workers’ perception of leadership

behaviour – a study of Swedish temporary agency

workers and contractors

Sven Svensson, Department of Social Sciences/Sociology, Mid Sweden University

Stig Vinberg, Department of Health Sciences, Mid Sweden University

Johan Larsson, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research, Department of Occupational

and Public Health Sciences, University of Gävle

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 25, no 2, 2015, pages 250–266

The increasing prevalence of externalised work arrangements in industrialised countries has brought

with it ever greater managerial complexity in the workplace. This article explores how leadership

behaviour is perceived by internal and external workers within a public authority in Sweden.

Questionnaire data from 505 temporary agency workers (TAWs), contractors and internal employees

have been analysed. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate that external workers such as

TAWs and contractors are more likely than internal employees to notice leadership profiles, including

pronounced, task-oriented leadership behaviour. These results hold true when controlled for demographic

and socio-economic variables and organisational tenure. A practical implication is that explicit attention

should be paid to the need for leadership training in developing HRM strategies with regard to external

employees.

Contact: Sven Svensson, Department of Social Sciences/Sociology, Mid Sweden University,

Kunskapensväg 1, Östersund SE 83125, Sweden. Email: sven.svensson@miun.se

Keywords: work externalisation; leadership; temporary agency work

INTRODUCTION

The phenomenon of temporary work arrangements, such as the hiring of temporary

agency workers (TAWs) or contractors, has been a focus of increasing interest in research.

TAWs and contractors are part of a triangular employment relationship consisting of the

temporary work agency or contracting firm, the TAWs/contractors, and the client organisation

(Kalleberg, 2000; Davidov, 2004; Buch etal., 2010). The TAWs, or contractors, are formally

employed by the temporary work agency or contracting company. However, it is the client

organisation’s responsibility to manage the actual work carried out. Thus, TAWs/contractors

correspond to Pfeffer and Baron’s (1988) definition of external workers in the sense that the

client organisation does not have full administrative control over them; responsibility for the

TAWs/contractors’ work and employment is divided between various parties (Davidov, 2004).

One result of having employees from a number of organisations working together is that you

get a heterogeneous workforce. Managers of organisations have to balance several perspectives

in their leadership, taking into account each employee’s personal needs as well as the

organisational demands for effectiveness (Larsson, 2010). In leading a heterogeneous workforce,

managers have to consider demands from the TAWs/contractors, from the temporary work

agencies or contracting companies, and from their internal employees (Lautsch, 2002; Gossett,

2006; Chen and Brudney, 2009), as well as demands for organisational effectiveness (Ward et al.,

2001). As shown in previous research, such complex demands might result in managers putting

less emphasis on the development of relations with the external employees (Gossett, 2006) and

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doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12053

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 25 NO 2, 2015250

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: Svensson, S., Vinberg, S. and Larsson, J. (2015) ‘External workers’ perception of leadership behaviour – a study

of Swedish temporary agency workers and contractors’. Human Resource Management Journal 25: 2, 250–266.

instead tending to emphasise specific details of the work to be carried out (Lautsch, 2002; Barley

and Kunda, 2004). Thus, the mixing of internal and external workers is likely to result in

situations characterised by managerial complexity.

Previous research in this area has pointed to several issues of concern, such as managers in

client organisations being caught in-between conflicting demands from the client organisation

on the one hand and temporary work agencies or contracting companies on the other hand

(Ward et al., 2001; Rubery et al., 2005; Gossett, 2006). Other researchers have found that external

workers might perceive that they are treated differently compared with employees of the client

organisation (Barley and Kunda, 2004). However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been

no study that has specifically addressed perceptions of leadership behaviour in a context of

temporary, externalised work arrangements and that has compared such perceptions among

different categories of workers.

In this article, it is argued that many of the outcomes and characteristics of work

externalisation found in previous research correspond to the description of situational factors

as described in the literature on situational leadership theory (SLT) (e.g. Fiedler, 1967; Reddin,

1970; Hersey and Blanchard, 1982). If this idea holds true, then external workers would

constitute a situational factor that influences leaders’ behaviour. Accordingly, we argue that any

differences in leadership behaviour will result in different perceptions of leadership behaviour

across categories of internal and external workers. There is thus potential for gaining a deeper

understanding of the behavioural and attitudinal dynamics inherent in work externalisation by

paying closer attention to leadership behaviour in client organisations. As a first step in such

an approach, this study examines leadership behaviour as perceived by internal and external

workers, respectively. To begin with, we elaborate upon the definition of work externalisation,

and thereafter in departing from leadership behaviour theory, we draw on the literature on

work externalisation to formulate hypotheses about the expected differences in perceived

leadership behaviour. The hypotheses are tested in the analysis of internal and external workers

in a Swedish public organisation.

WORK EXTERNALISATION

Pfeffer and Baron (1988) define work externalisation by the categories of physical distance

between organisation and the worker, the duration of employment contract (fixed term work

and indefinite tenure, respectively), and the amount of administrative control that an

organisation has over workers. Given new forms of distance work that have evolved in line

with new types of information technology, such a classification might be rather dated (Cappelli

and Keller, 2013). Another argument against such a classification might be that employees are

just as likely to be working on a fixed term contract irrespective of whether or not they are

under an organisation’s administrative control. Therefore, in line with, for instance, George

(2003) and Lapalme et al. (2009), the term external work is used in this article with reference to

the category of administrative control. By external workers, this study refers to workers who

are performing work in an organisation, in which they do not have their formal employment,

together with the internal employees of the same organisation. The external workers included

in this analysis are employees leased from a temporary work agency (TAWs) as well as

employees leased from a contracting company (contractors). To keep the internal and external

categories separate, those working on fixed term contracts are excluded from the analysis.

The study was carried out in Sweden, and the term contractor (e.g. Kalleberg, 2000) refers to

a ‘consultant’ in the Swedish context. The commonest form of employment for a Swedish TAW

is indefinite tenure, and the employment agency has full responsibility for its TAWs between

Sven Svensson, Stig Vinberg and Johan Larsson

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 25 NO 2, 2015 251

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.