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date: 21 June 2021

Abstract and Keywords

A growing number of workers everywhere are choosing to work outside the boundaries of regular, full-time employment. Such “nonstandard” work has advantages and disadvantages. It takes a variety of forms. In this chapter, we begin by examining why and when organizations choose to use nonstandard workers, and we describe the stages and objectives of the talent lifecycle. We then map the talent-lifecycle stages and objectives against categories of nonstandard work, to develop a distribution of research attention across that map. We found large areas of sparse research, as well as two significant clusters of research. One focuses on more traditional arrangements (contractors, temporary, and outsourced work), and the other on less traditional arrangements (freelance platforms and crowdsourcing). We revealed striking differences in the theoretical frameworks and disciplinary foundations within each cluster. We close by considering questions and opportunities for future research to deepen our understanding of this budding phenomenon.

Keywords: nonstandard workers, talent lifecycle, outsourcing, freelance platforms, crowdsourcing, temporary work, employee engagement, talent, talent management

Wayne F. Cascio

Wayne F. Cascio holds the Robert H. Reynolds Distinguished Chair in Global Leadership at the University of Colorado, Denver. He has published 28 books and more than 185 articles and book chapters. A former president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, chair of the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, and member of the Academy of Management’s Board of Governors, he is an editor of the Journal of International Business Studies and a former senior editor of the Journal of World Business. He received the SHRM’s Losey Award for Human Resources Research in 2010, SIOP’s Distinguished Scientific Contributions award in 2013, and the Georges Petitpas Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Federation of People Management Associations in 2016.

John W. Boudreau

John W. Boudreau, PhD, is a professor and research director at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Centre for Effective Organizations. His more than 200 publications include such books as Lead the Work, with Ravin Jesuthasan and David Creelman (Wiley, 2015); Retooling HR (Harvard Business, 2010); Beyond HR, with Peter M. Ramstad (Harvard Business, 2007); and Short Introduction to Strategic Human Resources with Wayne Cascio (Cambridge University Press, 2012), as well as articles in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Management Science, and the Journal of Vocational Behavior. He has received the Michael Losey Award from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior New Concept and Human Resource Scholarly Contribution Awards, and the Chairman’s Award from the International Association for Human Resources Information Management. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the American Psychological Association.

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