Enabling empowerment over exploitative specialization: The role of total productive maintenance in precarious work contexts

The growing reliance on contingent workers raises critical questions about organizational practices that shape both firm performance and worker outcomes. We examine how high-performance work practices (HPWPs) focused on specialization versus empowerment influence contingent worker development, organizational returns, and risks of exploitation. We then compare these practices with the more organic, process-oriented principles of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), emphasizing transparency, cross-training, and discretion as foundations that enable empowerment to deliver mutual benefits. We employ a multi-method, multi-source design: matched-sample surveys of operations and human resource (HR) managers, third-party financial data, and 14 semi-structured post-hoc interviews with HR and operations managers. Our results reveal two distinct paths for firms. A specialization-focused approach enhances task-specific productivity but risks limiting professional growth, with burdens falling on contingent workers. In contrast, when TPM conditions provide knowledge foundations, empowerment practices show a significant positive relationship with return on equity. Interviews further indicate that such empowerment benefits not only firms financially but also contingent workers’ professional well-being. This study highlights the dual-edged nature of HPWPs for contingent workers, distinguishing between potentially exploitative specialization and mutually beneficial empowerment. By demonstrating how TPM conditions enable empowerment to deliver both organizational and worker gains, we contribute to theory and practice on the socio-technical dynamics of contingent work. Findings underscore the importance of coordinated operations and HR planning, showing that empowerment can only succeed when supported by transparent processes and cross-functional training.