The Formation And Influence Mechanism Of Relative Deprivation Among Outsourced Employees In Inter-organizational Teams

In the context of sharing economy,external employment mode with advantages of flexibility and low cost has shattered the limitations of traditional employment relationships,the scope of externalized employment has gradually expanded from the traditional non-core task to core areas,such as research and development,design,and innovation.It has become a mainstream for companies to build a triangular employment relationship with companies with professional capabilities,and its skilled employees,that is,form inter-organizational teams to complete project tasks.In this process,stimulating the innovative performance of outsourced employees possessed professional knowledge is critical for enterprise to accompanying project goals and cross-border innovation.However,as the workplace was transferred into client organization,outsourced employees in the inter-organizational team not only need to adapt to the work environmental changes,but also were treated differently with formal employees due to their marginalized position in the inter-organizational team.Both make relative deprivation a prominent problem of outsourced employees,and exert a negative influence on the achievement of innovative project,and outsourced employee’ well-being.This study suggests that the chaxu atmosphere in inter-organizational team is a key factor in eliciting outsourced employees’ relative deprivation.Due to the divergence in employment mode and unequal status between outsourced employees and client organization employees,inter-organization team members are divided into different circles according to their closeness to the ruling person,which resulting in outsourced employees’ being treated differently,and generating high relative deprivation.Current researches on hybrid employment focus on low-skilled externalized labor,or the impact of hybrid employment tactics on regular employees,but lack of attention to the high-skilled outsourced employees.Besides,researches of relative deprivation launched mainly in sociology and psychology areas,or traditional organization context,it still lacks an understanding on relative deprivation’generation and influence in inter-organizational team context.Based on realistic and research status,this study focused on the outsourced employees in inter-organizational teams,explored the formation mechanism of relative deprivation and its influences,and provided practical implications for the management of inter-organizational teams.Specifically,this study focuses on three research questions:(1)how does the relative deprivation of outsourced employees generated in the inter-organizational context?(2)How does relative deprivation affect the innovation performance of outsourced employees?(3)What intervening practice can be adopted to alleviate the generation and impact of relative deprivation?Based on these questions,this study launched three sub-studies.First of all,following the exploratory case analysis method,the sub-study 1 constructed the research thread of ’team difference atmosphere--relative deprivation--Innovation performance’,and uncovered the mechanism of outsourced employees’ relative deprivation’generation and influence,from the perspective of status competition motivation.Based on the case analysis results,relevant propositions are proposed,and the overall framework of this research was constructed.Second,sub-study 2 explored the influence of team chaxu atmosphere on outsourced employees’ relative deprivation from the perspective of client organizational employees’ status defense motivation,proposed the chain mediating effect of moral atmosphere and workplace ostracism,and explored the moderating effect of team reflexivity.Hypotheses were testified by using a questionnaire survey of 320 outsourced employees from 59 teams.Finally,sub-study 3 adopted the perspective of outsourced employees’ status promotion,put forward that status conflict between outsourced employees and client organizational employees mediating the negative effect of relative deprivation on outsourced employees’ innovation performance,and dual organizations support exert a complicated moderating effect on the relationship.Data were collected from 283 outsourced employees and their leaders in 52 inter-organizational team.The results show that:(1)In the generation stage of relative deprivation,chaxu atmosphere in inter-organizational team was a key factor in eliciting outsourced employees’relative deprivation.Chaxu atmosphere can stimulate client organizational employees’ motivation of status defense,lead to their workplace ostracism by weakening the moral atmosphere,and finally lead to outsourced employees’ relative deprivation.There exists a chain mediating effect of ’chaxu atmosphere-moral atmosphere-workplace ostracism-relative deprivation’.(2)In relative deprivation’ influence stage,empirical study proves that relative deprivation in inter-organizational team can negatively affect outsourced employees’innovative performance.Relative deprivation was found to strengthen outsourced employees’status promotion motivation,and undermine their innovation performance by triggering the status conflict of outsourced employees and client organizational employees.Empirical results show that status conflict plays a mediating role in the relationship between outsourced employees’ relative deprivation and innovative performance.(3)In relative deprivation’ generation stage,team reflexivity can weaken the negative impact of team chaxu atmosphere on moral atmosphere,and can weaken the indirect increasing effect of the chaxu atmosphere on outsourced employees’ relative deprivation caused by the chain mediation of moral atmosphere and workplace ostracism.In the influence stage of relative deprivation,client organizational support can weaken the status conflict induced by relative deprivation,while supplier organizational support can strengthen the status conflict elicited by relative deprivation.Besides,supplier organizational support weakens the moderating effect of client organizational support.The innovations of this study are as follows:(1)This study focuses on the context of inter-organizational teams,and explored the managerial issues of skilled outsourced employees under the triangular relationship,which deepens the understanding of hybrid employment.(2)This study extends relative deprivation researches into the triangular employment context,providing an integrated research framework for understanding the working environment,psychological state and outcomes of outsourced employees in inter-organizational context.(3)From the interactive perspective of status competition,this study explores the mechanism of generation and influence process of outsourced employees’relative deprivation.Besides,this study adds the research on the antecedent variables of relative deprivation,expand the research of workplace status’ negative effects.(4)This study explores the boundary conditions of the generation stage and the influence stage of outsourced employees’ relative deprivation,and expands the related research on human resource practice in the context of inter-organizational cooperation from the perspective of inter-organizational collaboration.