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Introduction
The number of temporary agency workers (TAW) has increased over recent years both in the USA and in Europe and the majority of organizations are now faced with having to manage employees with this status. In Portugal, the country in which the current research was completed, temporary agency employment has proved to be such a growing phenomenon that the number of TAW doubled from 1998 to 2008 and penetration rates increased from 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent ([12] CIETT, 2010).
Temporary agency work is associated with more flexibility, lower labor costs, and less HR manager (and company) responsibilities since temp agencies appear to reduce the time that has to be invested in recruitment and rewards ([71] Torka, 2004). One important question is to ascertain whether these short-term benefits for organizations using TAW may bring the risk of long-term costs, namely poor worker attitudes, well-being and behaviors that compromise their effectiveness ([31] Forde and Slater, 2006). However, the results of research comparing temporary and permanent workers have proven inconclusive and shown that attitudes or well-being of TAW are not inevitably worse than those exhibited by permanent workers (for example see [22] De Cuyper et al. , 2008). One of the aspects that have contributed to such an inconsistency of findings is that TAW responses depend on the employment relationship they develop. Several authors have demonstrated that when TAW develops a social exchange relationship they reciprocate with very positive responses, namely satisfaction, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors ([8] Chambel and Castanheira, 2007; [18] Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler, 2002; [74] Van Dyne and Ang, 1998).
Our objective, in this research, is first to investigate whether training plays a crucial role in explaining TAW' affective commitment and exhaustion. We believe that training is a positive organizational action aimed at temporary workers ([32] Forrier and Sels, 2003). Training meets some relevant needs referred to by TAW, namely the need for incertitude control and employability, and relates with a social exchange relationship. We explore two mechanisms of explanations for this social exchange relationship. First, we expect a positively direct relationship between training and affective commitment and a negatively direct relationship between training and exhaustion. Second, we also expect that training to be related to the workers' perceptions of psychological contract...