Rethinking Industry-Specific Characteristics of Idiosyncratic Deals

Abstract

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are becoming an increasingly popular human resource management approach in various industries to attract, retain, and motivate personnel. They are non-standard work arrangements in which employees bargain with supervisors or managers to obtain resources or conditions that are personally desirable (e.g., flexibility in scheduling work, special assignments or training opportunities). According to the most recent i-deals' literature reviews, around one-third of i-deal articles were generalizability studies, which did not provide explicit hypotheses concerning contextual variables but frequently incorporated them to understand the findings. Despite growing interest in the concept, little is known about how and if i-deals differ amongst industries. This is a significant loss as i-deals are embedded in teams' and companies' social and organizational contexts, which vary in industries, affecting individual and collective outcomes. This paper aimed to distinct industry-specific aspects of idiosyncratic deals in the hotel, R&D and manufacturing, healthcare, higher education, and local government sectors. All reviewed articles were initially categorized into single-industry, multi-industry or mixed sample studies. Mixed studies were eliminated, and the remaining articles were examined. According to the research results, the cross-industrial i-deals research is still in the very early phase, but there could be some essential differences. Task, career, and incentive i-deals were proven to impact organization-based self-esteem in the hospitality industry positively. A significant positive relationship between different i-deals and psychological empowerment was discovered in high-tech organizations. Also, a positive relationship between task and work responsibilities i-deals and flexibility i-deals to employee innovative performance was noted. Local authorities in England were notorious for redeployment i-deals. I-deals in higher education had a positive association with psychological empowerment. I-deals had varied effects on job characteristics linked to different outcomes in the healthcare industry. Future research should focus on distinguishing these differences in more detail and consider industry-level influences when examining the nature of the relationship between i-deals and their outcomes.