Drawing upon the social identity theory, the authors argue that professionals' career identities have a positive indirect effect on identification with on-demand organizations through career networking behavior. In addition, the strength of these beneficial effects was also bound by extraversion and collectivism.
The hypothesized moderated mediation model was tested by multisource and time-lagged data about 242 Chinese accountants engaging in on-demand work.
The results demonstrated that professionals with a career identity tend to engage in career networking behaviors and identify themselves with a client company. In addition, extraverted professionals were more likely to engage in career networking behaviors, and collectivist professionals were more likely to identify with their on-demand organizations.
This research provides important guidelines on how managers in on-demand organizations leverage gig workers' career identities to establish deep relationships with them.
The authors expanded the traditional framework of identification in the setting of nontraditional work arrangements by establishing a link between career identity and organizational identification for on-demand professionals.
