Psychological contract factors affecting organizational citizenship behavior in blended workforce: a multi-industry study

Abstract

Today’s organizations give rise to a blended workforce, which consists of a healthy mixture of permanent and gig employees. The contractual employees are engaged with the organization until the project’s lifecycle they are working in lasts, post, which they scavenge for a new gig. Despite staying with the company for a defined period, they, like their permanent counterparts, enter into informal and implicit contracts with their employers, known as psychological contracts, involving a voluntary behavior by the employee, known as Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). This paper seeks to identify the psychological contract factors that differentiate the OCB of the gig and permanent employees. A representation of permanent and gig workers was taken from three different industries, namely IT, Manufacturing, and Educational Institutes, and a questionnaire was administered to employees belonging to these sectors. The results were generated utilizing qualitative analysis in Excel. The study results indicate different psychological factors playing a role in determining the various OCBs of gigs and full-time employees in all the three selected industries in the study.