The employment relationships of foreign workers versus local employees: a field study of organizational justice, job satisfaction, performance, and OCB

Foreign workers seek overseas employment without sponsorship from a firm in their home country and hold temporary work visas in the host country. Despite the rising numbers of foreign workers, there is very little research that examines employment relationships and work behaviors of foreign workers....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of organizational behavior 2003-08, Vol.24 (5), p.561-583
Main Authors: Ang, Soon, Van Dyne, Linn, Begley, Thomas M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Behavior
Career development planning
Careers
Chinese people
Comparative analysis
Decision making
Distributive justice
Employee attitude
Employee supervision
Employee-Employer relationships
Employees
Employment
Expatriates
Field study
Foreign labor
Host country
Human capital
Hypotheses
Job performance
Job performance evaluation
Job satisfaction
Organizational behavior
Organizational justice
Organizations
Overseas employment
Overseas sojourners
Passports & visas
Procedural justice
Scope of employment
Singapore
Skilled workers
Social comparison
Social exchange theory
Studies
Vacations
Work behaviour
Workforce planning
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Summary:Foreign workers seek overseas employment without sponsorship from a firm in their home country and hold temporary work visas in the host country. Despite the rising numbers of foreign workers, there is very little research that examines employment relationships and work behaviors of foreign workers. In this study, we draw on social exchange theory and predict differences in work perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of foreign versus local employees based on differences in their exchange relationships. We then draw on social comparison theories and propose that these differences in perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors will be accentuated for workers in jobs with high task interdependence. We examined these hypotheses in a field study of 466 ethnic Chinese employees (213 foreign workers from the People's Republic of China and 253 local workers in Singapore with ongoing employment status). Results demonstrate lower distributive justice judgments, performance, and organizational citizenship for foreign versus local employees. Furthermore, results demonstrate that differences in distributive and procedural justice, performance, and organizational citizenship were heightened by task interdependence. We discuss findings and the implications of employing foreign workers.
ISSN:0894-3796
1099-1379
DOI:10.1002/job.202