Disposable workforce or valuable resources? Exploring the role of strategic positioning and high performance work systems in temporary staffing firms

The temporary help service industry has witnessed a rapid growth in the last couple of decades. Not only did the number of market players balloon in a matter of a few years, but the growth is also evident in the number of services that are offered to numerous market segments. Although they helped in changing the face of the traditional employment relationship in today's economy, the temporary staffing firms (TSFs) have been under represented in contemporary management research. Very little is known about the factors that distinguish successful firms from others in this growing industry. The proposed research study helps to address this gap in our understanding by exploring and testing a conceptual model suggesting relationships between service market strategic positioning, high-performance work systems (HPWS), internal service quality and firm performance. Parallel research streams, grounded in the strategic human resource management (SHRM) and the services marketing (i.e., service-profit chain) literatures, are employed to understand these relationships. General firm performance measures are used (productivity, repeat business) in addition to industry specific indicators of firm success (e.g., placement success rate, temp hours sold). Specific hypothesis generated from the model are tested using primary data generated through a survey-based methodology. The sample of firms operating in the temporary help supply service industry is drawn from the populations of firms listed in the Directory of Corporate Affiliations.;Implications for research and practice are discussed as well as study limitation and directions for future research.