ABSTRACT
Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) refer to voluntary, personalized agreements of a nonstandard nature negotiated between individual employees and their employers regarding terms that benefit each party. The chapter reviews the current state of i-deals research and then gauges the extent to which it has captured researcher's interest. It highlights confusing aspects of the i-deals definition and critiques its features. The chapter evaluates the offered theoretical mechanisms linking i-deals to putative outcomes and considers whether i-deals offer a novel lens to understand the employee-organization relationship. It identifies problems with the ways i-deals have been measured and raise issues about the research designs used in empirical studies. Most studies consider whether employees' self-reports of i-deals are associated with self-reported outcomes. I-deals have been linked to a wide range of outcomes, including affective commitment, work-family conflict/balance, work engagement, voice, proactive behaviors, motivation to continue working, working overtime, citizenship behaviors, and employee performance.
