Events

Mr. Zhefan Huang
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Management
Warrington College of Business
University of Florida

Firm nonstandard worker use, or using employment arrangements deviating from traditional fulltime, indefinite contracts, has become a key element of contemporary human resource (HR) management. Despite extensive research on firm nonstandard worker use and its implications, however, prior studies predominantly adopt a static perspective. This approach overlooks the dynamic nature of workforce composition and potentially leads to theoretical tensions and mixed empirical findings. The current study theorizes and tests a dynamic theoretical framework of nonstandard worker use trajectories following external crises. Integrating the flexibility perspective, which highlights short-term benefits of workforce flexibility via increased nonstandard worker use, with the resource-based view, emphasizing the long-term strategic importance of firm-specific human capital fostered by standard workers, this study theorizes and examines the short- and long-term changes in nonstandard worker use and their productivity implications after external crises. Further, this study examines how HR practices enhancing the flexibility of standard workers (in accordance with the flexibility view) and the strategic importance of human capital (in accordance with the resource-based view) shape the dynamic changes in nonstandard worker use. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing a dynamic lens of nonstandard worker use following external crises, which helps reconcile competing theoretical perspectives and offers new insights into workforce composition management in changing external environments.