Psychological Contracts of Multiple Jobholders: A Multilevel Analysis

Employment Contracts

The nonstandard work arrangements of multiple jobholders are highly diverse, but they are still distinct from the employment situation of permanent or temporary and full-time or part-time employees with one job. Some multiple jobholders work full time with an additional part-time job; others combine two part-time jobs, perform self-employed work for several customers, or are employed in a sequence of temporary jobs (Hipple, 2010; Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2010). Although multiple jobholders in the United States are more likely to combine a full-time job with a part-time job, multiple jobholders in Europe more often work in two part-time jobs. Multiple jobholders can occupy managerial and nonmanagerial positions and jobs in different occupations, and also occupations they have not been trained or educated for (Panos et al., 2014; Sliter & Boyd, 2014; Wu, Baimbridge, & Zhu, 2009). Relating employment contracts and the nonstandard work arrangement of multiple jobholders to their psychological contracts contributes to identifying whether their psychological contracts reflect typical patterns of their employment.

Previous research has shown that for employees with one job, psychological contracts depend on employment contracts and positions employees are hired for. Psychological contracts were found to vary between employees with permanent and temporary contracts, between employees with full-time and part-time employment, between employees in managerial and nonmanagerial positions and according to the qualifications for the job (Conway & Briner, 2002; Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2000; Luksyte, Maynard, & Spitzmueller, 2011; Van Dyne & Ang, 1998). These studies compared groups of employees with different employment contracts to find differences between their psychological contracts. The types of employment contracts can, however, vary between groups of employees; for example, more women are found in part-time jobs, and temporary employees are more likely to be less educated (OECD, 2014, 2015). Because multiple jobholders have one psychological contract in each employment relationship, differences between multiple jobholders and within the employment portfolio of multiple jobholders can be investigated simultaneously.

Existing studies have used various terms for psychological contracts, such as fulfillment or breach, obligations and expectations, or transactional and relational contracts (Conway & Briner, 2002; Millward & Brewerton, 1999; Tekleab & Taylor, 2003; Van Dyne & Ang, 1998). Fulfillment and breach refer to the quality of the employment relationship, denoting whether obligations or promises are fulfilled (Conway & Briner, 2002; McDermott et al., 2013). Investigating the level of obligations or expectations toward the employer or the employee aims to determine how broad or narrow psychological contract obligations are (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2002; Van Dyne & Ang, 1998). When obligations are split up into dimensions of psychological contract contents, often transactional and relational contracts are distinguished that cover economic or socioemotional aspects of psychological contract contents (Chambel & Alcover, 2011; Millward & Brewerton, 1999). Some researchers have used more than two dimensions of psychological contract contents to provide more differentiation particularly in relational aspects of psychological contracts (Blomme, van Rheede, & Tromp, 2010; Dabos & Rousseau, 2013; De Vos, Buyens, & Schalk, 2003; Freese, Schalk, & Croon, 2011; Lub, Bijvank, Bal, Blomme, & Schalk, 2012; Raeder, Wittekind, Inauen, & Grote, 2009). Such differentiation is conducive to research that places its main emphasis on psychological contracts. In line with this body of research, this study investigates dimensions of employer obligations and multiple jobholder obligations. This literature review thus aims to interpret empirical evidence with a focus on obligations but includes studies with other terms if they support the development of the hypotheses.

Empirical research comparing permanent employees and temporary workers has noted that permanent employees report higher obligations (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2002; McDermott et al., 2013; Van Dyne & Ang, 1998) and more relational psychological contracts with a socioemotional, long-term exchange relationship (Chambel & Alcover, 2011; De Cuyper & De Witte, 2006; Isaksson et al., 2010; Millward & Brewerton, 1999). Only one investigation failed to find significant differences in obligations between permanent and temporary employees (McDonald & Makin, 2000). Permanent employees reported an overall higher fulfillment of obligations (McDermott et al., 2013; Scheel, Rigotti, & Mohr, 2013) but a lower fulfillment of relational obligations (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2006; Isaksson et al., 2010). Temporary employees were more likely to perceive transactional obligations—with a short-term, economic focus—as fulfilled. Overall, a permanent employment contract was associated with higher obligations, a more relational contract and higher fulfillment of obligations.

Comparing psychological contracts of full-time and part-time employees yielded fewer significant differences than were found for permanent and temporary employees (Conway & Briner, 2002; Gakovic & Tetrick, 2003). In contrast to part-time employees, full-time employees were more likely to report higher obligations and higher fulfillment (McDermott et al., 2013). Compared to full-time employees, part-time employees perceived fewer employee obligations, but a similar number of organizational obligations (Gakovic & Tetrick, 2003). Part-time employees in a bank were more likely to perceive their psychological contracts as fulfilled by the employer, but no such effect was found for employees in a supermarket (Conway & Briner, 2002). The evidence regarding full-time and part-time employees is hence less clear, but it suggests lower obligations for part-time employees. Part-time employees are very heterogeneous, with some working few hours every week and others 80% or 90% of a full-time equivalent. Working hours in part-time employment and the related psychological contract thus appear as a continuum between a combination of few hours and lower obligations and a combination of more hours and higher obligations. Given that multiple jobholders most likely combine two or more part-time jobs, employment contracts with more working hours presumably rather resemble a full-time job.

Research has identified typical psychological contract perceptions of managers and employees. Compared to employees, managers reported higher relational obligations of the employer and a higher fulfillment of relational and transactional obligations (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2000). Managers perceived a lower fulfillment of employee obligations and a higher fulfillment of employer obligations than employees (Aydin, Yilmaz, Memduhoğlu, Oğuz, & Güngör, 2008; Lester, Turnley, Bloodgood, & Bolino, 2002). Employees and their supervisors agreed on employer obligations and their breach (Tekleab & Taylor, 2003). This research demonstrates a negative bias of managers toward employees and their psychological contracts and a tendency for mangers to perceive higher obligations and higher fulfillment.

Multiple jobholders hold jobs in the same occupation or in different occupations or industries (Hipple, 2010; Panos et al., 2014). If they work in different occupations, they have probably not been trained or educated for all their occupations. For example, one job might correspond to their occupational training, the second job might require other knowledge and skills, and the third job may require lower qualifications. Only one study investigated overqualification and psychological contracts, finding a negative association with a balanced or relational psychological contract and a nonsignificant association with a transactional psychological contract (Luksyte et al., 2011). This finding was interpreted in a way that the employment relationship lacks long-term orientation. Due to the scarce research investigating psychological contracts and under- or overqualification, it is tentatively expected that multiple jobholders would perceive higher obligations if the job corresponded with their qualifications than if the job required lower or higher qualifications.

In line with previous research, it is expected that the psychological contracts of multiple jobholders are related to each employment contract. A higher level of obligation was hypothesized to be associated with a permanent employment contract, more work hours, a supervisor position and correspondence between job and qualifications.

Nonstandard Work Arrangements

Economic studies have primarily investigated types of jobs and portfolios and the motivation and demographic characteristics of multiple jobholders (Dickey et al., 2011; Panos et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2009), but they have not considered behavioral or attitudinal outcomes. Multiple jobholding has not been linked to the psychological contract. Research in labor economics has presented multiple jobholders as a heterogeneous group of workers with various combinations of jobs (Hipple, 2010; Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2010). The work arrangements vary regarding the type of employment contract (permanent/temporary, working hours) in each job but also regarding the number of jobs of one multiple jobholder. It could be expected that multiple jobholders perceive lower obligations in each job if they work in several smaller jobs. If a multiple jobholder is employed in several jobs, fewer opportunities for developing promises and obligations exist in jobs with few working hours. When working in several jobs, the other jobs can compensate for obligations that are not fulfilled in one job. Correspondingly, multiple jobholders probably perceive on average higher obligations if they work in two jobs of equal importance or one larger and one smaller job as compared with several smaller jobs.

The reasons of multiple jobholders for their nonstandard work arrangement have been widely researched in economic studies that usually distinguished between financial and nonfinancial reasons (Averett, 2001; Dickey et al., 2011; Kimmel & Powell, 1999; Martel, 2000; Wu et al., 2009). Multiple jobholders gave primarily financial reasons for their nonstandard work arrangement, also known as constraints related to their main job, such as “meet regular household expenses,” “pay off debts,” “save for the future,” or “insure against job insecurity” (Averett, 2001; Dickey et al., 2011; Kimmel & Powell, 1999; Martel, 2000). Nonfinancial considerations, also known as heterogeneous job motives, such as “gain experience,” “enjoy the work of the second job,” or “family responsibility,” were cited less often as motives for multiple jobholding (Brown & Gold, 2007). Researchers have recommended considering motives when investigating multiple jobholding and behavioral or attitudinal outcomes (Zickar et al., 2004).

Economic research concentrated on financial reasons to determine whether employees need a second income to earn their living but did not aim to further differentiate nonfinancial motives (e.g., Dickey et al., 2011). Self-determination theory has in a similar manner identified a continuum between controlled and autonomous motivation, with controlled motivation being related to extrinsic rewards and autonomous motivation to an individual’s volition and interest (Gagne & Deci, 2005; Ryan & Deci, 2002). In contrast to psychological theories of motivation, reasons for multiple jobholding only focus on why an individual opts for this form of employment but not how such reasons contribute to work outcomes. According to self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation is linked to the satisfaction of three basic needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of needs in an employment relationship entails that resources are available and guarded by obligations of the psychological contract (Dabos & Rousseau, 2013). It is thus expected that multiple jobholders with more intrinsic motivation or more nonfinancial reasons for multiple jobholding perceive a higher level of obligations. Accordingly, a lower level of obligations presumably correlates with financial reasons.

Sample

The sample of this study consisted of 141 multiple jobholders in Switzerland. Because multiple jobholders account for less than 10% of the working population in Switzerland and work in various types of organizations and work contexts, several routes were used to access the sample: (a) 25 organizations that might employ multiple jobholders were contacted, including temporary work agencies, radio stations, vocational schools, colleges, cleaning companies, hotels, and mountaineering offices. (b) Multiple jobholders who were portrayed in the media or on the Internet were approached. (c) Furthermore, multiple jobholders who agreed to participate were asked to spread information about this research in their network. The questionnaire was finally sent to 347 multiple jobholders and was filled out by 148 respondents (response rate = 43%).

In this sample, 64 respondents were employed in two or more jobs, 77 respondents were simultaneously employed and self-employed, and seven respondents were self-employed, with two businesses. Data from all multiple jobholders with salaried positions (N = 141) were used because their job portfolio represents a realistic employment situation of multiple jobholders. Psychological contracts for self-employed positions were not included because in these positions, multiple jobholders lack an employer who can make promises on which a psychological contract is built. Hence, 64 respondents provided information on two psychological contracts and 77 on one psychological contract. The multiple jobholders reported in total 205 employment relationships and psychological contracts.

The multiple jobholders were working in a broad range of occupations (International Labour Organization, 2010), the most frequent being teaching professionals, business professionals, clerks, artists, social science professionals, and journalists. Multiple jobholders were either working in one occupation or combined two or more occupations. Examples of combinations of different occupations were software developer and farmer, teacher and goldsmith, artist and engineer, employee at a cinema and photographer, puppeteer and psychologist, and innkeeper and physiotherapist. The respondents were aged 20 years to 62 years (M = 41.92, SD = 9.85) and had worked as multiple jobholders for 1 month up to 33 years (M = 7.12, SD = 6.20). Of the 141 multiple jobholders, 69 were female, 70 were male, and two provided no information regarding their gender. The respondents had an above-average education; 96 held a university or college degree.

Measures

The psychological contract was measured with five validated scales capturing employer and multiple jobholder obligations (Raeder, Wittekind, et al., 2009). These scales have been used in other studies (e.g., Gerber, Grote, Geiser, & Raeder, 2012) and have a similar structure and contents as other measures of psychological contracts that distinguish dimensions of contents (Dabos & Rousseau, 2013; De Vos et al., 2003; Freese et al., 2011; Lub et al., 2012). Respondents were instructed to focus on obligations that were promised in the context of the employment relationship and were then presented with a list of obligations. Respondents indicated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) whether these obligations were promised by the employer or by the multiple jobholder. The multiple jobholders filled out identical scales for up to two salaried jobs but not for self-employed work. The questionnaire would have become overly long and complex if data on more than two employment relationships were provided in detail.

Employer obligations were covered with the scales security and retention, support for career and skill development, and participation. Security and retention was measured with four items. A sample item was “Opportunities for identification.” One item was deleted because it negatively affected the internal consistency. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale consisting of three items was .69. Support for career and skill development was evaluated with seven items (sample item, “Opportunities for promotion”). Cronbach’s alpha was .78. Participation was captured with three items, for example, “Involvement in decision making.” Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .83.

Multiple jobholder obligations were captured with the scales loyalty and performance and responsibility for career and skill development. Loyalty and performance was measured with five items (sample item, “Achievement orientation”). Cronbach’s alpha was .71. Responsibility for career and skill development was measured with two items, for example, “Responsibility for skill development.” Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .70.

Nonstandard work arrangements of multiple jobholders are complex and diverse. This study hence aimed to identify the most important aspects with standardized questions that could be answered by all respondents. Additional open questions served to understand the complexity of the work arrangements and to verify the quantitative data. With one exception, reasons for multiple jobholding, only the quantitative data were used for this analysis.

The employment contract was measured with four objective variables: permanent/temporary contract, working hours, manager position, and correspondence between job and qualifications. The multiple jobholders indicated whether their employment was permanent or temporary on a dichotomous scale (0 = temporary, 1 = permanent). Information on working hours agreed upon in their employment contract was given as a percentage of a full-time employment between 40 hr and 44 hr because this is the standard form of defining part-time employment in Switzerland and some other European countries. For example, 80% indicates that someone is hired for 34 hr a week, with 40 hr full-time employment. Respondents provided information on managerial responsibility (0 = no, 1 = yes). Whether the job corresponded to qualifications and skills was measured on a dichotomous scale (0 = no, 1 = yes). This item was used to measure the correspondence of education and occupation in an objective way and to avoid comparing each multiple jobholder’s occupations and education. In some cases, it would have been difficult to decide about the match of occupation and education based on job titles and education and training activities. To explain the idea of corresponding occupations and education, the following examples are provided: (a) An example of correspondence between qualifications and occupation is a multiple jobholder trained as a sports teacher and working as a sports teacher, (b) an example of a higher qualification than necessary in a job is a person who studied agriculture at a college and is working as a farmer, (c) an example of a lack of qualification for a job is a goldsmith working as a graphic designer without having been trained in graphic design.

The nonstandard work arrangement was captured with two variables. First, the multiple jobholders indicated whether their work arrangement consisted of more than two employment relationships on a dichotomous scale (0 = no, 1 = yes). This question aimed to distinguish between multiple jobholders with the minimum number of jobs required for such a work arrangement and multiple jobholders with more complex work arrangements. It is difficult to capture a complex work arrangement in a questionnaire because job portfolios are diverse and can consist of a sequence of temporary jobs or a number of parallel jobs with few hours worked or a mix of both. The information that participants provided in an open question showed that some work arrangements would be too complex to measure in a standardized way. Basic information about the different jobs was further captured with the items on the employment contract (temporary/permanent, working hours).

Second, multiple jobholders were asked to provide reasons for multiple jobholding in an open question, and these were coded as financial and nonfinancial, in line with earlier research (Dickey et al., 2011; Kimmel & Powell, 1999; Martel, 2000). Financial reasons, also known as reasons related to constraints in one job, comprised motives in the categories “provide security for income,” “additional income,” “part-time employment in one job,” and “career advancement.” Nonfinancial reasons, also known as heterogeneous jobs motives, were “enjoy work arrangement,” “diversity,” “good combination,” “personality development,” “social contact,” “health,” “habit,” and “chance” (Raeder, Mutz, Widmer, Wittekind, & Grote, 2009). The qualitative results were quantified by counting the number of financial and nonfinancial reasons provided by each respondent. Because some multiple jobholders reported many reasons and some very few, the proportion of financial and nonfinancial reasons was transformed into a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating exclusively financial reasons, 3 indicating a balance between financial and nonfinancial reasons, and 5 indicating exclusively nonfinancial reasons.

Educational level, age, and gender were included as control variables because they were found to be related to different patterns of psychological contracts and multiple jobholding. Psychological contracts varied according to employees’ education, age, and gender (Bal & Kooij, 2011; Bellou, 2009; Sok, Blomme, & Tromp, 2013). Women and more highly educated people were more likely to work in more than one job, whereas younger and older workers were less likely to work in more than one job (Hipple, 2010; Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2010). Men and women combined different types of jobs; for example, men were more often self-employed in their secondary job. The reasons for multiple jobholding were shown to vary according to the gender and age of multiple jobholders (Dickey et al., 2011; Wu et al., 2009). Younger workers were more likely to hold multiple jobs due to financial reasons (Dickey et al., 2011). Two levels of education were distinguished (0 = only junior secondary school or junior secondary school plus an apprenticeship or senior secondary school with university entrance certificate, 1 = college, bachelor’s degree, higher vocational education, master’s degree, or PhD) because differences in multiple jobholding between these two levels were found to be most pronounced (Dickey et al., 2011; Hipple, 2010; Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2010).

Analysis

The data were analyzed with multilevel modeling because the multiple jobholders reported one or two psychological contracts, resulting in unbalanced data that could be handled with multilevel analysis. Multilevel analysis was also suitable because the jobs could not be ranked into a primary and a secondary job (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). The data of all multiple jobholders were used in this analysis because (a) the data represent the real employment situation of multiple jobholders and (b) a larger sample size at higher levels is beneficial for multilevel models (Maas & Hox, 2005). To avoid overly complex models that would be based on sparse data, the analysis did not contain random slopes. The high number of singletons (i.e., multiple jobholders with only one psychological contract) could be criticized, but simulation studies found low levels of bias for models with up to 70% singletons and 50 to 500 clustering units (Bell, Ferron, & Kromrey, 2008; McNeish, 2014). These simulation studies showed that the proportion of singletons was less influential than the sample size at the highest level and supported the decision to include data of all multiple jobholders. With a sample size of 141 multiple jobholders, this study was well above the critical threshold for the number of clustering units.

The research question and the hypotheses were tested in SPSS 24 in two sets of multivariate multilevel models predicting employer obligations (security and retention, support for career and skill development, and participation) and multiple jobholder obligations (loyalty and performance and responsibility for career and skill development). Through the use of multivariate models, all employer obligations and all multiple jobholder obligations could be tested in one model each, without producing different results than univariate models would provide. The multivariate multilevel models contained three levels (Figure 1): the multivariate measurement of obligations of the employer or multiple jobholder (Level 1), the employment contract (Level 2), and the multiple jobholder (Level 3). For each multivariate model, an empty model without predictors (Model 0) was calculated to investigate the partitioning of variance. In Model 1 the control variables were added, in Model 2 the predictors at Level 2 measuring the employment contract and in Model 3 the predictors at Level 3 measuring the work arrangement. The model fit was assessed with Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) on a smaller-is-better basis.

Limitations

There were limitations in this study that should be noted. The sample size at the group level (i.e., multiple jobholders) was sufficiently large, whereas each Level 2 unit contained only one or two elements (i.e., employment contracts), posing limits on adding additional random effects (Clarke, 2008; Kenny et al., 2006). Although a larger sample would have been beneficial for the statistical model, many people with a nonstandard work arrangement were reached who were willing to participate in the study. All multiple jobholders with at least one salaried job were retained in the sample because this sample better represented the employment portfolio of multiple jobholders than if partly self-employed respondents were excluded. It could be argued that those with only one salaried job should be excluded to avoid singletons, that is, groups with only one measurement. Singletons are, however, less problematic for the analysis than expected (Bell et al., 2008; McNeish, 2014), and a realistic representation of the work arrangement compensates for the disadvantages.

It proved to be difficult to perfectly represent the employment relationships of all types of multiple jobholders in a quantitative survey. It could be possible to investigate the psychological contracts of three salaried positions, instead of examining only two, if multiple jobholders work in three permanent part-time jobs. It might be difficult to examine psychological contracts for more than three smaller part-time jobs, for a sequence of temporary jobs or for a mix of all these types of jobs. If the same set of questions has to be filled out three or four times for three or four jobs, respondents most likely perceive this as redundant. Specifically, it is demanding to fill out identical scales for small jobs with few hours per week (e.g., language teacher) or short temporary assignments of a few weeks (e.g., actor). Due to fewer options for interaction, employers and employees probably share fewer promises and create fewer obligations. Thus, only the two main jobs were considered, also for multiple jobholders with more than two jobs, although the psychological contracts of additional jobs were not included.

Future Research

Although the models explained the variance between and within multiple jobholders well, a considerable proportion of unexplained variance remained, particularly regarding the obligations of multiple jobholders. The unexplained variance (Tables 3 and 4) shows at which level predictors should be sought. Variance within multiple jobholders could be explained through predictors related to the employment relationship, for example, organizational predictors such as organizational culture, perceived organizational support or Human Resource Management practices. Variance between multiple jobholders could be explained through predictors related to the individual (e.g., individual goals) and his or her career.

This study did not test whether the psychological contracts of multiple jobholders are distinct from the psychological contracts of workers with one job. It would be necessary to compare multiple jobholders and employees with one job and their psychological contracts to determine whether multiple jobholders are a distinct group of the working population. One basic research question to be answered could refer to the factorial structure of psychological contract measures. When differences between these two groups of the working population are large, items might not load on the same factors, as was the case for the scale security and retention. Further differences could then be explored in a next step.

Further research should also consider the development of multiple jobholding and psychological contracts over time. A focus on events of change could be used to examine how psychological contracts develop. Such change events could occur when multiple jobholders return to work in only one job or change one of their jobs.

Practical Implications

Multiple jobholders are a special type of employee who deserve the attention of employers. Multiple jobholders differentiate well between their jobs, especially regarding temporary/permanent contracts and manager positions. They are highly flexible regarding the use of their competencies, and they provide broad experience from their secondary jobs and often also a broad range of competencies due to education and training. Organizations can thus benefit from their flexibility and their broad range of competencies, and they can also influence psychological contracts through the choice of terms in their employment contracts.

Multiple jobholders have the flexibility to work in different jobs and different types of work tasks. They are resilient due to the other job(s) that gives them security, additional income, or options for developing their career. However, multiple jobholders can also feel stressed due to their other job (Zickar et al., 2004), and their flexible use of work time is probably limited. These are some of the few restrictions that employers have to be aware of when hiring multiple jobholders.