Musarrat Shaheen, Keerti Shukla, Sonali Narbariya, A.K. Subramani and N. Akbar Jan
Proper utilization of contingent/freelance workers has now been recognized as contributing to a firm’s competitive advantage, according to Accenture’s Tech Vision 2016 report. Thus, in the light of the growing importance of the contingent/freelancing population in an organization, this study attempts to identify factors which foster leadership strategies among marketing contingent workers which in turn will assist in developing their skills set. Based on the social cognitive theory of career management, the study proposes a model where freelancers’ human capital leads to active participation in employability activities, which affects self-leadership—behaviour-focused strategies, natural reward, and constructive thought patterns. For the present study, data were collected from around 384 freelancers of India. Hierarchical regression analysis and Process-Macros test the proposed relationships between human capital, self-leadership strategies, and employability activities. Results show a significant impact of human capital on self-leadership strategies and significant mediation of employability activities on the said relationship. The results obtained assist human resource professionals in promoting the use of self-leadership strategies by marketing freelancers.