•Job insecurity negatively impacts employees’ job performance via decreasing their subjective wellbeing.•Job insecurity negatively impacts employees’ subjective wellbeing and job performance is ...decreased by psychological capital.•Test and report moderated regression analysis for each moderator.
The article illuminates one of the central concerns in organizational study; the extent to which job insecurity (JI) affects employees’ subjective well-being (SWB) and consequently their job performance (JP) in hospitality industry. Building on the transactional theory stress and coping, the study analyses the buffering role of psychological capital (PsyCap) as a strategy by which employees overcome the negative impact of JI on SWB and JP. Respondents include 250 four and five star hotel employees in Tehran, Iran. The results highlighted the mediating role of SWB, affirming that JI negatively impacts employees’ JP via decreasing their SWB. Furthermore, the results show that employees with high level of PsyCap are able to cope with JI. Hotel management teams should make appropriate decisions to minimize or eliminate stressful stimuli, particularly JI in the workplace, which has been found to have severe mental, emotional and behavioural consequences.
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. Yet, little is known about how perceived job ...insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899 US-based participants across 5 waves (March to June 2020), we investigated the trajectory of job insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this trajectory depended on habitual coping strategies such as planning, reappraisal, and distraction. Results from latent growth curve analysis indicated that, on average, job insecurity initially increased and then decreased after signing of the coronavirus stimulus bill, suggesting a pattern of shock followed by adjustment. During the shock phase, habitual use of distraction was related to less increases in job insecurity. Later during the adjustment phase, decreases in job insecurity were more pronounced for individuals with higher habitual use of planning, but were not affected by reappraisal or distraction. Hence, different coping strategies appear beneficial in different phases of adjustment, and the beneficial effect of planning may take time to manifest. Altogether, our study highlights how in the context of extraordinary and uncontrollable events, coping strategies can impact the trajectory of a stressor.
•In earlier months of the pandemic, job insecurity increased, and later decreased.•Higher initial increases in job insecurity were related to steeper decreases.•Early in the pandemic, distraction was associated with less increases in job insecurity.•Later in the pandemic, planning was associated with more decreases in job insecurity.•During crisis times, the effectiveness of some coping strategies in reducing stressors may only show at later stages.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused organizational crises leading to shutdowns, mergers, downsizing or restructuring to minimize survival costs. In such organizational crises, employees tend to ...experience a loss or lack of resources, and they are more likely to engage in knowledge hiding to maintain their resources and competitive advantage. Knowledge hiding has often caused significant adverse consequences, and the research on knowledge hiding is limited. Drawing upon the Conservation of Resources and Transformational Leadership theories, a conceptual framework was developed to examine knowledge hiding behavior and its antecedents and consequences. We collected data from 281 Vietnamese employees working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that role conflict, job insecurity, and cynicism positively impact knowledge hiding behavior. Knowledge hiding behavior negatively affects job performance and mediates the antecedents of knowledge hiding on job performance. Transformational leadership moderated the impact of role conflict on knowledge hiding.
Summary
Leader self‐serving behavior has been associated with a range of adverse outcomes in the workplace. However, much remains to be explored about why and when such leader behavior emerges in ...organizations. This research develops and tests a theoretical framework that delineates the emotional and cognitive states that give rise to leader self‐serving behavior. Specifically, we draw on uncertainty management theory to theorize that job insecurity heightens leaders' anxiety and self‐serving cognitions that subsequently trigger leader self‐serving behavior. We further argue that the overall justice of an organization effectively mitigates the indirect relationship between a leader's sense of job insecurity and leader self‐serving behavior via leader anxiety and self‐serving cognitions. Results from a three‐wave field study involving 481 leader–follower dyads provide support for our hypothesized model. We discuss the implications of our findings for leadership theory and practice.
High teacher attrition rates are an international problem. This study explores what former teachers pinpoint as their main exit reasons from teaching. Interviews were conducted with twenty-one former ...teachers in Flanders (Belgium) about push and pull factors. Our findings show that teachers mainly relate their exit to characteristics of the profession. For novices, the characteristics of the profession resulting in attrition are job insecurity and an exceeding workload, while the decisive factor for experienced teachers is the professions' flat career structure. Moreover, the school context reinforces career doubts, especially for novices who experience issues with class management and feel demoralised.
•Teachers mainly relate their exit to characteristics of the teacher profession.•Novices stress job insecurity and an exceeding work load.•Experienced teachers attribute their exit to the flat career structure.•The school context can reinforce teachers' doubts to exit.
This study examined the effects of exposure to workplace bullying on work engagement and health problems. It is one of the few studies to treat job insecurity as an explanatory factor of the ...bullying-outcome relationship. Specifically, we perceive that job insecurity unfolds through an interpersonal process in which negative experiences, such as bullying, make employees feel less valuable in their workplace. By analyzing the data from employees in Korea using the latent factor approach, the tested mediation model explained that exposure to workplace bullying decreased the work engagement of employees and increased their health problems because of their high level of perceived job insecurity. The relationship between bullying and engagement would not be established without the job insecurity variable, thereby suggesting its indirect effect. Given the partial mediating effect of health problems, job insecurity is identified as an additional underlying mechanism that explains why bullying increases health problems. This finding does not contradict the widespread arguments on the health-impairing effect of workplace bullying. This study contributes to the literature and business practices by identifying an important underlying mechanism that helps us understand the association between exposure to workplace bullying and key work outcomes.
Job insecurity reflects a threat to the continuity and stability of employment as it is currently experienced. Job insecurity has been the focus of increasing scholarly and popular attention in light ...of technological, economic, and political changes over the past few decades that have left many insecure about the future of their jobs. Yet, conceptual ambiguities exist; the literature remains fragmented; and there lacks an overarching framework through which to organize and reconcile findings. The goal of this article is to offer an integrative review and conceptual framework that addresses these challenges and provides the groundwork for future research. To that end, it proposes a definition of job insecurity that differentiates it from potential antecedents, moderators, and outcomes. The article addresses antecedents and introduces a typology of mechanisms and threat foci that links antecedents to job insecurity and suggests yet unexplored predictors. Furthermore, the framework developed here considers four overarching mechanisms—stress, social exchange, job preservation motivation, and proactive coping—through which job insecurity leads to various outcomes, and it highlights potential competing tensions inherent in individuals’ responses. Finally, the framework introduces threat features, economic vulnerabilities, and psychological vulnerabilities as three overarching categories of variables that moderate reactions to job insecurity, and it identifies factors that contribute to each. In doing so, it suggests important levers through which to influence reactions to job insecurity; it helps explain variability in past research; and it provides a foundation for future work.
As the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic causes a general concern regarding the overall mental health of employees worldwide, policymakers across nations are taking precautions for curtailing and ...scaling down dispersion of the coronavirus. In this study, we conceptualized a framework capturing recurring troublesome elements of mental states such as depression and general anxiety, assessing them by applying standard clinical inventory. The study explores the extent to which danger control and fear control under the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) threat impact job insecurity, with uncertainty phenomenon causing afflicting effect on the experiential nature of depression heightened by anxiety. With the aim to explore the job insecurity relationship with anxiety and depression, and measure the impact of EPPM threat, an empirical study was conducted in the United States on a sample of 347 white collar employees. Demographic data, EPPM threat, job insecurity, anxiety, and depression data were collected
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a standardized questionnaire during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The questionnaire consisting of multi-item scales was distributed online. All the scale items were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale. SEM software AMOS version 23 was used to perform confirmatory factor analysis with maximum likelihood estimation. In the structural model, relationships between the threat of COVID-19, job insecurity, anxiety, and depression were assessed. The findings of the study suggest that job insecurity has a significant impact on depression and anxiety, whereas the threat of COVID-19 has a significant impact on depression. Mediating effects of job insecurity and EPPM threat impact on anxiety were not established in the study. The study contributes to the apprehension of the repercussions of major environmental disruptions on normal human functioning, and it investigates the effects of self-reported protective behaviors on risk perception. The study also explains the underlying mechanisms of coping behavior as possible antecedents to mental disorders. When subjected to stressful events, heightened psychological arousal causes physical and psychological challenges of affected employees to manifest as behavioral issues.
Summary
Extant research on job insecurity (JI) largely focuses on the individual level, rather than considering the process of JI at collective, team levels. But employees' worries and anxiety about ...potential job losses create affective job insecurity (AJI), which can converge over time in teams, especially following dramatic changes such as layoffs. Drawing on a multilevel theory of emergence in teams and uncertainty reduction theory, this study offers theoretical predictions of AJI convergence, as well as its potential influences on team functioning and outcomes. A four‐wave, post‐layoff survey of 468 employees and 91 supervisors confirms two major predictions. First, AJI convergence exists within teams over time, as established by a consensus emergence model. Second, teams with members who converge at a high level of AJI experience intrateam power struggles that impair both team performance and team proactivity. By theorizing about the phenomenon of AJI convergence, this study not only expands the notion of JI from the individual to the team level, noting its harmful effects on teams, but also highlights the need for both team members and team leaders to pay close attention to such convergence and its potentially detrimental effects following layoffs.
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