Shaping the future of work: how labour market intermediaries (LMIs) use institutional work to transition to triadic, project-based employment relationships

Purpose This paper identifies how the operations of labour market intermediaries (LMIs) transform dyadic employment relationships into triadic ones. It reveals the change dynamics that LMIs engage in to bring about this transformation and that contribute to the projectification of work. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on an institutional-work lens and using interview data from both TempX, a German-based staffing service provider, and its client organizations, the analytical framework details the dynamics by which LMIs appropriate various HR tasks and different labour-market-organizing roles and thus create these triadic employment relationships. Findings TempX assumes a powerful position between its client organizations and workers by increasingly taking over HR tasks from its client organizations, alternating between profiting from market transactions and engaging as a buyer and seller of labour. This powerful position, gradually created through four distinct, sequential, institutional work dynamics, allows it to transform dyadic employment relationships into triadic ones and to promote project-based work. Originality/value By showing how LMIs capitalize on the multiple services they offer, and how they use these services to establish a powerful position in both the labour market and in their relations with client organizations, this paper contributes to research on how LMIs change their institutional environment. Second, by showing that LMIs switch between different labour-market organizing roles and HR tasks, this paper reveals how essential this switching is for LMIs to establish triadic employment relationships and to drive the projectification of work, and thus it also contributes to research on LMIs’ role in the projectification of work.