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It seems that some aspects of employees' experience can lead to their “losing faith in the system of paid employment”. This disillusion can be studied and measured through the theoretical construct of a psychological contract breach experienced by the employee. This exploratory article thus examines whether the conditions of paid employment could lead to a new dimension of psychological contract breaches: a breach with paid employment itself that could drive to self-employment.

The authors use a structural equation modeling on a sample of 403 people who have declared their intention to leave paid employment for self-employment.

The study's results show that working conditions affect psychological contract breaches in various dimensions. The authors propose a dimension of psychological contract breaches linked to paid employment, which can lead to the choice to leave paid employment and become self-employed. The authors also confirm the importance of working conditions as antecedents of psychological contract breaches.

The main limitations of this exploratory research are the use of unvalidated scales and a small sample size, with a population that could be better defined. As Murgia et al. (2020) point out, it is not yet clear at the moment whether this category is a special group, equivalent to traditionally distinguished groups of working people. The study's assumptions and these limitations lead us to propose the following avenues for future research.

For managers and the development of management, the possible relationship between working conditions and psychological contract breaches seems to be very important. In fact, a whole range of best management practices could be developed if this relationship is confirmed. Improving working conditions could thus be a way to repair psychological contracts.

This research field is still quite underdeveloped in comparison to its importance to organizations because the increase in self-employment challenges traditional models and assumptions in human resources management.

This study aims to expand the theoretical frameworks of psychological contracts and breaches. It thus responds to recent calls for research on psychological contracts (Bankins et al., 2020); Moreover, this research suggests, in line with the work of Aubert and de Gaulejac (2018), that there are relationships between poor working conditions and psychological contract breaches. To the authors' knowledge, this approach is missing from international research into psychological contracts, which focuses only on job characteristics and individual determinants (personality traits, etc.).

Looks in depth at Romania’s Labour Code and lists out in more detail all the relevant points, to show how employees and employers may work better together without conflict, Using guidelines from the European Union. Uses countries as a flagstaff for what could be done to improve matters for temporary employees.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an expanded temporal context of non‐permanent work through an examination of the influence of previous experience of temporary working, contract duration and time remaining on contract and expectations of continued employment on reports of job insecurity, job satisfaction, in‐role performance and organisational commitment.

Hypotheses were tested using responses of 1,169 temporary workers from a multi‐national, cross‐sectional questionnaire study.

Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that having previous experience of temporary work was associated with higher in‐role performance. No significant effects were found for contract duration, but shorter time remaining on present contract was associated with greater job insecurity and also greater in‐role performance. However the strongest effects were found for expectations of continued employment, with stronger expectations being linked to more positive reports of each outcome. A number of moderation effects were found that indicated interactions between temporal variables and revealed a moderating role of preference for temporary work.

The paper is one of the first to formally consider the influence of a broader temporal context on attitudes and behaviours of temporary workers. Significant associations were found between elements relating to each of the past, present and future and important individual and organisational variables in the present. These effects were sustained above and beyond the influence of variables such as country, sector, preferences, skill level, contract type, and demographics that are known to affect temporary workers' attitudes and behaviours.

Explores worker choices to become self‐employed contractors. Adopts a qualitative method and uses data from in‐depth interviews with workers from two contrasting occupational groups. Reveals five sets of factors which appear to be central to worker decision making. Contrasts the perspectives of the workers and draws conclusions relating to the impact of skill and labor market power on the choice of employed/self‐employed status, and subsequent career prospects. Suggests that recent views of “boundaryless careers” are more relevant to highly‐skilled groups of workers, and discusses the tensions between structural forces that constrain individuals’ career autonomy and the desire of many workers to be proactive agents in the construction of their own careers. The findings suggest that a balanced examination of “new careers” should account for the complexity of a new world of work that advantages only some. Argues for greater understanding of the choice between different modes of employment rather than just occupational choice. Finally, suggests that researchers and career practitioners need to be able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of employment from a sound knowledge base.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between perceived investments in employees’ development (PIED) on work engagement and the moderating effects of psychological capital on this relationship for liquid knowledge workers, employed in the Indian cutting and polishing of diamond industry (CPD).

A questionnaire composed of established scales was administered to 134 liquid knowledge workers. Having established convergent and discriminant validity using structural equation modelling, the model was further analysed using the Process macro to check for direct and moderating effects.

The research findings suggest that the perceived investment in employee development and psychological contract enhancement (relational and transactional) made by CPD units for liquid knowledge workers positively influenced their work engagement level. The study also finds that relational contract (not transactional contract) positively moderates the relationship between perceived investment in employee development and work engagement.

This is a cross-sectional single source study; future studies could look at longitudinal and multisource perspective.

The study presents a “star matrix of engagement” that guides the application of the two strategies of perceived employee development and psychological contract enhancement for liquid knowledge workers. This has implications for design and implementation of human resource management practices and policies for employee management.

The study makes significant contributions to existing literature on antecedents of work engagement of liquid knowledge workers by examining the direct and moderating influences.

The paper examines young adults’ perspectives on and experiences of job insecurity, including both objective insecurity and perceived uncertainty, as they emerged in a series of focus groups and interviews. It discusses young adults’ changing notions of security and career, effects of insecurity and uncertainty on planning future work and non work lives for people with different levels of occupational skills and qualifications, the gendered effects of insecurity and the impact of insecure employment on attitudes to employers. The impact of perceptions and experiences of job insecurity on young men and women’s expectations of work are considered in terms of a changing psychological contract.

The efficiency of execution of public works contracts is usually defined in terms of the capacity to complete works within the costs and the time agreed on in the contract. Therefore, it has been traditionally measured considering either costs overruns or delays. Our purpose is to consider both measures simultaneously, so as to develop a measure of overall efficiency of public works contracts execution. We compute this measure, through a benchmark procedure, using a non-parametric approach (DEA - Data Envelopment Analysis). The analysis is carried out employing a detailed data set of Italian public contracts for roads and highways, in the period 2000- 2005.

In this paper, the authors analyse a 2010 legal reform in the Czech Republic, which allowed retirees to simultaneously receive regular pension benefits and to work on a permanent contract for a period longer than one year. Previously, concurrence of employment and receipt of retirement benefits were only allowed in conjunction with a temporary work contract with a maximum duration of one year.

The authors employ the difference-in-differences method. The authors include only males in the analysis because it is not possible to identify the legal retirement age for women from available data. Men in the workforce 1–3 years prior to the statutory retirement age are in a control group, while men 1–3 years older are in a treatment group.

The authors show that the reform significantly increased the share of permanent contracts held by retirees (by 22.5–27.6 percentage points), though we do not find any aggregate short-term change in employment of retirees. Heterogeneity analysis shows a significant increase in the employment of retirees with only elementary school education (by 17.9 percentage points) and a significant decrease in the number of hours worked by retirees (by 2.5 h weekly for low-educated workers).

The policy conclusion is that the regulation of employment contract does not affect aggregate employment, but may improve employment of low skilled workers.

To the authors’ best knowledge, there are no studies directly analysing motivation of retirees by types of employment contracts. The authors, thus, add to the literature that studies dealing with the general fixed-term versus permanent contracts (Engellandt and Riphahn, 2003) and motivation to work.

According to the Italian regulation firms must qualify to bid in auctions for public work contracts worth more than 150,000 euros. In this paper, we investigate the link between the efficiency of infrastructure provision, and the Italian regulation concerning the firm's entry and qualification system, employing a large dataset on Italian public works contracts for roads and highways. First, firm's efficiency in public contracts' execution is estimated using a smoothed data envelopment analysis (DEA) bootstrap procedure. Then, the effects of the qualification system on firm's efficiency is evaluated using a semi-parametric technique that produces a robust inference for an unknown serial correlation between efficiency scores. Our analysis shows that fully qualified firms perform better than partially qualified firms.

The Panama Canal expansion is one of the most important public works projects in recent times. Both the awarding of the contract and its execution have been surrounded by intense controversy. The situation came to a head in February 2014 when the contractor halted construction work due to the canal authority’s failure to maintain the economic balance of the contract. This article explains the circumstances surrounding this dispute and analyses the causes and consequences of modifications to the contract. These are classic problems that affect all public procurement systems. The lessons drawn from this extraordinary case are valid for other legal systems