Leading and Managing People: Literature Review and Recommendations

Leading and managing people
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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................2
First: Literature review.................................................................................................................2
1.1 First: Flexibility at the workplace..........................................................................................2
1.2 Psychological contract...........................................................................................................3
Second: Discussion.........................................................................................................................4
Third: Recommendations.............................................................................................................6
Conclusions.....................................................................................................................................7
References.......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Contemporary organizations face the challenge of managing different types of employment
simultaneously. The last decade witnessed an increasing rate of temporary and flexible
employment by organizations because it acts as a means of buffering changing customer demand
for organizations products and services. Temporary work is related to flexibility in managing
work schedules that creates a room for work-life balance. Traditional psychological contracts
between employees and their workplace are built on the employees' perspectives to their
workplace (Chambel, 2014) (Whyman & Petrescu, 2014).
This report investigates the concepts related to flexible working and the psychological contract
with an application on my workplace. Also, recommendations to implement changes are
considered.
First: Literature review
1.1 First: Flexibility at the workplace
Labor flexibility refers to the employer ability to adjust the number of employees and schedule
their working hours. The demand for flexible workers has increased in recent decades. It copes
with the just in time strategies that yield business benefits represented in reduced wages cost,
shifting the risk of instability of hours and income to the employees (Peterson & Wiens-Tuers,
2014).
Temporary employment differs from standard employment in terms of job and work continuity
and legal benefits. Temporary employees are directly hired or hired from a temporary agency,
they could receive work for a fixed term or on call. They usually desire to become permanent to
feel job security and certainty.

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The work schedule of the part-time employees can include weekends and evening shifts that
provides flexibility to both the employer and the employee who can manage work-life balance
(Ede & Rantakeisu, 2015; Powell, 2013).
The term work-life balance was argued by Cooper and Rousseau (2000), as cited in Kebbe &
Ramsoomair (2017), it refers to the employee achievement of a balanced position that enables
him to achieve all aspects of life without conflicting his roles in home and at work. Fisher
(2001), as cited in Kebbe & Ramsoomair (2017), proposed four factors for work-life balance; the
family conflict that affects work, the work conflict that affects family, family to work
enhancement, and work to family enhancement.
1.2 Psychological contract
A psychological contract refers to an individual’s belief towards reciprocal terms and conditions
between him and the employer at the workplace. It discusses the employees' expectations of
receiving benefits in exchange for their efforts in the organization. The term "promise"
represents an important proportion of the contract that reflects confirmation of employees'
expectations by the organization. There are two types of psychological contracts that were
argued by the researchers; First, transactional psychological contracts that are based on
employees performance and the second, is the relational psychological contracts that are based
on the social exchange and relationships between parties (Ahmed, et al., 2016) (Hattori, 2018).
According to Guest (2005), as cited in Manuti (et al., 2016), the temporary staff generally
develops a transactional contract, while permanent staff usually develop a relational contract that
involves organizational commitment and higher job satisfaction.
Psychological contracts are unwritten expectations that should be met by the organization to
guarantee employee satisfaction and commitment to the workplace (Asiedu-Appiah, et al., 2016).