Toward a new taxonomy for understanding the nature and consequences of contingent employment

Purpose – The main goal of this article is to present a new taxonomy of contingent employment that better represents the wide variety of part‐time, temporary, and contract employment arrangements that have emerged since Feldman's review. Design/methodology/approach – Reviews the literature over the past 15 years. Findings – The paper suggests that contingent work arrangements can be arrayed along three dimensions: time, space, and the number/kind of employers. In addition, analysis of the recent research on contingent employment should be expanded to include worker timeliness, responsiveness, job embeddedness, citizenship behaviours, quality of work, and social integration costs. Originality/value – The article suggests that a wider range of individual differences (including education, race, citizenship, career stage, and rational demography) all serve to moderate the relationships between different kinds of contingent work arrangements and outcome variables.