The association between perceived personal power, team commitment and intrinsic motivation for permanent and temporary workers

To date, research on how temporary workers are embedded in teams is limited to how they impact their co-workers with permanent contracts and how temporary workers impact team functioning and performance through power structures in teams. We know very little about how the perceptions of personal power of temporary and permanent workers affect their own motivation and commitment. This study aims to assess the relationship between perceived personal power, intrinsic motivation and team commitment for temporary versus permanent workers. Drawing on Conservation of Resources Theory, the authors propose that this association is non-linear for temporary workers and linear for permanent workers. They test these assumptions using a sample of 64 temporary and 275 permanent workers nested in 58 teams. Multilevel analyses show that for temporary workers, the association between personal power perceptions and intrinsic motivation and team commitment flattens at moderate to high levels of perceived personal power. For permanent workers, the study finds a linear relationship. Implications for theory are discussed.