Temporary contracts and manufacturing firms' outcomes in Spain : A curvilinear examination

This work contributes to research on temporary employment, specifically through an analysis of its effect on firm efficacy. The authors analyze the potential curvilinear (nonlinear) relationship between temporary contracts and organizational outcomes and examine how the proportion of indirect temporary workers – hired through Temporary Help Agencies (THAs) – influences this relationship in a sample of 1597 Spanish manufacturing firms. The analysis finds a negative linear relationship between temporary contracts and labor productivity and a predominantly positive concave downward curve between temporary contracts and gross operating margin. This curvilinear relationship is especially stronger when the proportion of indirect temporary contracts is low, and it is found that the use of temporary contracts has a positive effect on gross operating margin, but this effect becomes negative with overuse. This empirical evidence partially questions the dominant linear view that has been established over the past few decades in the labor flexibility literature at an organizational level.Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the SEPI Foundation for access to the Survey of Business Strategies and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. Funding This work was carried out as a part of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. ECO2008-01674 and ref. ECO2011-25809). It was also supported by Bancaixa Foundation (ref. P1.1B2011-52