Human Resource Management and Employment Relations Essay

Human Resource Management and Employment Relations - Essay ExampleIt has been referred to as a flexible staffing arrangement (Houseman, 2001), a market-mediated batch (Abraham, 1990), a flexible inventing practice (Brewster et al, 1997) or more gener alone toldy as atypical interlocking (De Grip et al 1997 Crdova 1986). Based on the definitions, all of them imply that non-standard employment is a clear departure from the standard work arrangement. As it is, standard work arrangements ar basically linked to full-time positions that are founded on an unspecified contract and are carried out at the employers site under the employers control and supervision (Mckenberger, 1985, p. 429 Bosch, 1986, p.165 Talos, 1999, pp. 417-418 Rogowski & Schmann, 1996). Although, international economic changes and modifications have toughened argument and intensified existing ambiguities within firms, the same have exerted greater pressure on these companies to push and aim for bigger profits and m ore flexible work arrangements.Generally, there have always been employment relations that did not fit in to the normative proto token of full-time work (Peck, 1996) and this is quite true flush for temporary agency work that initially surfaced in the United States after the Second World War (Mitlacher, 2004, p. 9). As a classic example of a non-standard employment relation, temporary agency work entails the externalization of administrative control and responsibility (Pfeffer & Baron, 1988). Temporary work agencies hire workers and employ them out to a guest company where they work at the clients premises and direction while the agency charges a fee for the service (Kalleberg, 2000, p. 346). This consequently creates a triangular relationship wherein an employee sets up different linkages with various establishments (Vosko, 1997). In the past decade, the use of temporary work agencies has been prominently evident in most European business firms and in close to commercial organisa tions in Asian countries (Bergstrm & Storrie, 2003). Consequently, the figure of temporary workers in the global labour market greatly increased which correspondingly created a new type of employment relationship within firms. As it is, engaging temporary workers through temporary work agencies has now become an ordinary procedure in all types of work organisations and such emerging trend has been mirrored in contemporary publications generated from the human resource and employment relations community (Beynon et al 2002 Mangan 2000 Carre et al. 2000 Barker & Christensen, 1998 Blanpain & Biagi, 1999 Felstead & Jewson, 1999). though the open-ended employment contract still dominates, the role of temporary agency work can no longer be ignored. Obviously, a huge number of organisations are taking advantage of these workers and the nature of the tasks assigned to them is becoming more complex. However, even with this reality, only a small number of empirical investigations have been d o on the human resource management of temporary employment and those that exist have not given so much attention to its peculiarities and dynamics. The temporary employment workforce is theoretically considered as a group consisting of contingent workers (Polivika 1986) and the benefits in employing such workers can be