Focus Research Project: "Managing new work relationships"

Research question

Overall question: How should workers that are external to the organisation be managed?

Initial focus - open-source contributors: Why do people contribute to open source and why do they stop?

Evolved focus – IT freelancers: How do freelancers experience and manage the tensions between insiderness and outsiderness? How do they develop a sense of insiderness? How does that influence their careers?

1- Workers outside of employment relationships hold multiple psychological contracts with different actors (the project / fellow developers / users for open source contributors; the organization vs. the team for freelancers).

2- These multiple psychological contracts create tensions and contradictions than individuals must navigate and can influence the evolution of workers’ careers.

3- There is a compelling need to encourage a sense of ‘insider-ness’ of workers outside of employment relationships at the team level, rather than focusing exclusively on the organisational level.
This shift in perspective requires changes in human resource management and leadership practices, with a focus on developing a sense of belonging within teams.

4- Support from team members is crucial in this process, but its effect is mediated by social cohesion and team trust.
There should be active encouragement and support for team members (both employees and non-employees) to help colleagues and make contingent workers feel part of the in-group