Atypical Employment: An Explorative Study of the Motivations and Attitudes of Atypical Workers

Atypical employment is currently on the increase; atypicality is considered to be a consequence of the lack of long-term agreements (both explicit and otherwise) between the employee and the employer. In such a context, companies need to find more flexible ways to face up to different circumstances and to maintain their productivity level in order to remain in the labor market. This brand-new work setting has led to a remarkable diffusion of atypical agreements, which differ from traditional ones inasmuch as they offer business organizations an opportunity to employ workers in a more dynamic way. As a consequence of this evolution in the occupational environment, employees have been obliged to readapt their skills, collecting and seeking all the new information they can find about the labor market and its changes. Moreover, employees have radically changed their ideas about work, as well as their expectations and hopes concerning their future job. Ashford and Black (1996) first understood the importance of proactive behavior during the work entry process; they analyzed the socialization process, discovering that proactivity helps the newcomer to positively enter into a new organization. The dimensions of proactivity analyzed by Ashford and Black (1996) are: information seeking, feedback seeking, general socializing, positive framing, networking, boss relationship building and job-change negotiating.