Does the employment contract make them different? Diversity management and identity of temporary agency nurses in the Italian healthcare

This paper studies the employment contract as variable of diversity in the organizations, analyzing the relation between diversity management and the construction and regulation of new identities in the complex Italian healthcare system. Our idea starts with the “very Italian” problem of recruiting nurses. This concern depends on a structural shortage of nursing staff of the whole Italian healthcare. Hospitals face this shortage relying on Temporary Work Agencies (TWAs) and short-term nurses, especially foreigners. Trough the analysis of the critical management literature, we attempt to offer an insight into the employment contract differences to understand if different types of contracts (permanent vs temporary employees) and the concerning diversity management practices contribute to construct different professional identities. Given the different ways in which an employee can perceive his/her employment relationship with an organization, we observe the influence of specific context (healthcare), specific job (nursing) and different DM programs in shaping identity. The originality of the paper is in the attempt to address a topic focusing on diversity management and identity of temporary workers not much-discussed in the critical diversity literature. The main limit of this paper is the absence of empirical research that inhibit relevant findings