Research-Thesis: Le groupement d'employeurs à travers le contrat psychologique: Basic+, un cas d'écoles

Abstract

Among contemporary atypical work arrangements, Employer Pools occupy a particular domain. Created in France from the basis of informal practices, it has not enjoyed widespread success since its inception 40 years ago. In the year 2000, the concept of Employer Pool was imported in the Belgian context, under a different, stricter legal and regulatory framework. In the heart of the concept of Employer Pool lies a triangular employment relationship; a relationship in which concrete daily work and legal employment contracts are dissociated. Neither consultants nor temporary workers, pooled employees are shared between a closed network of organizations, which in turn administrate the Employer Pool as a non-profit organization. To better understand the individuals’ perceptions of this particular and niche work arrangement, we have leveraged the Psychological Contract theory and conducted qualitative research using 18 semistructured interviews in an Employer Pool specialized in pooling legally protected professions active in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and involved with public schools and non-profits, Belgium, extracting the contents of each party’s Psychological Contracts and classifying said contents using Rousseau’s Psychological Contract typology. We also discussed whether each party to the Employer Pool’s Psychological Contracts contents were compatible or bore tensions. Although we couldn’t generalize our findings, our study shows that the studied Employer Pool reasonably satisfies each stakeholder, which prompts us to encourage non-profit organizations to investigate joining or creating an Employer Pool to cater to their needs of skills that are difficult otherwise to acquire in the long run.