Socializing the Nomad: Problematizing the Socialization of Profession-Specific Temporary Workers

While growth in the majority of economic areas has slowed greatly over the past few years, the percentage of individuals moving into temporary labor has seen double-digit expansion. However, the understanding of how temporary workers switch from organizational outsiders to insiders has remained largely unexplored as traditional socialization scholarship has focused primarily on linear and sequential steps. This study challenged the nature of the socialization process by analyzing how substitute teachers, as profession-specific temporary workers, assimilated in their work arrangement. We concluded that instead of the linear model dedicated to organizational members with long-term contracts, socialization models encompassing substitute teachers would best be described as cyclical. With uncertainty being the only thing that has been certain, organizations have adapted by relying more on contingent and alternative work arrangements with their employees. Traditionally, the largest category of temporary workers in the United States has been temporary clerical and administrative workers (i.e., administrative work), comprising around forty percent of th~ temporary workers in the United States. However, there has been a second, growing category of temporary workers in the United States. These workers have trained in a particular professional field or craft (bookkeepers, legal and medical secretaries, industrial workers, information tec1mology engineers, etc.), but have often contracted with different organizations on part-time or temporary bases to provide their professional services (Melchionno, 1999). Gossett (2006) explained that the number of temporary laborers has grown in these "specialized" professions (i.e., medicine, law, and education). As job tenure decreased across a wide variety of occupations, the "non-temporary" segment of the work force Nas increasingly characterized by the instability endemic to temporary ,abor. As more indivi-dualsbecame-contract laborers (either explicitly)r implicitly), the number of people wearing the mantle of temporary ;yorker increased. Many career professionals, including lawyers, mgineers, educators, doctors and others have worked in the field of heir training over most of their career, but they have provided these ervices for a number of different organizations. Given that between 10 o 42 million Americans could already be considered temporary vorkers (Kruse, 2012) and the likely increase in temporary workers in he near future, there is a practical need for an understanding of how emporary workers integrate into their work environments. Organizational Socialization Socialization is widely articulated as "the process by which an Idividual acquires the social knowledge and skills necessary to ssume an organizational role" (van Maanen & Schein, 1979, p. 211). ,t the heart of …