HR attributions and the dual commitment of temporary agency workers and outsourced workers: implications on performance

Research has shown that HR-attributions, particularly those focused upon increased commitment, may affect employees’ commitment and ultimately their performance. A critical question concerns these relationships among workers who have two potential foci of commitment, for example temporary agency workers and outsourced workers: They develop commitment vis-à-vis their contractor and their client. In reply, we test separately in the two groups the idea that commitment-focused HR-attributions - dual affective commitment -- self-rated performance. Our hypothesis is that the relationships between variables would be stronger for outsourced workers compared with temporary agency workers due to the fairly strong role of the contractor. In contrast, the links to and from affective commitment to the client would be stronger among temporary agency workers compared with outsourced workers. Survey data from 365 manufacturing workers was analyzed through multiple group analysis. Results were in line with the hypothesis: Affective commitment to the contractor for outsourced workers and to the client for temporary agency workers mediated the positive relationship between commitment-focused HR attributions and self-rated performance. Furthermore, for both groups, affective commitment to the contractor was positively related to affective commitment to the client. Our conclusion is that it is important to account for dual commitments.