The world of work is changing. The employment contract which determined to a large extent the employment relationship between employees and employers is no longer the only go-to way to organise work. Alternative work arrangements are on the rise. In the US, 0.5% of the entire workforce in 2015 was already involved in crowd work through platforms (Katz and Krueger, 2019) while crowd work represents the main job for 2% of the entire workforce in 14 countries in Europe (Pesole et al., 2018).
Yet, the vast majority of management theories are based on notions of traditional, 9 to 5, employment relationships (Cappeli and Keller, 2013). Such a disconnection with empirical realities risks management and organisation studies unconsciously ignoring new issues. We seek to assess and update the psychological contract, a major management theory, to understand alternative work arrangements.
