Acting Proactively to Manage Job Insecurity: How Worrying About the Future of One's Job May Obstruct Future-Focused Thinking and Behavior.

Jessie Koen,Maarten J Van Bezouw

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727363

Abstract

An increasing number of people experience insecurity about the future of their job, making it more important than ever to manage this insecurity. While previous research suggests that proactive coping is a promising way to alleviate job insecurity, we suggest that, paradoxically, it may be particularly difficult to act proactively when feeling emotionally distressed about the future of one’s job. Drawing on the principle of resource scarcity and the Conservation of Resources theory, we propose that affective job insecurity ignites a scarcity mindset that inhibits workers’ future focus and cognitive functioning, thereby undermining proactive career behavior. Additionally, we examine whether income adequacy can compensate for these negative consequences of job insecurity. Results of a three-wave survey study among 108 self-employed professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that initial affective job insecurity was negatively related to cognitive functioning but unrelated to future focus. Yet, the latter relationship was moderated by income adequacy: affective job insecurity was positively related to future focus when participants reported high income adequacy. In turn, future focus was positively related to proactive career behavior, which was subsequently related to lower cognitive job insecurity. Thus, while replicating the finding that workers can proactively manage their cognitive job insecurity, we also showed that initial affective job insecurity may obstruct people’s cognitive functioning. We discuss how our results signal a Matthew effect, in which job insecure people with sufficient means are able to look ahead and proactively build resources to change their career, while job insecure people with insufficient means may fall behind.

Highlights

The current world of work is characterized by great uncertainty about the future: developments such as technological change, globalization, digitalization, and increased temporary employment have contributed to increased job insecurity and decreased well-being among workers (Shoss, 2017; Jiang and Lavaysse, 2018; Lee et al, 2018)
We argue that income adequacy will mitigate the negative effect of initial affective job insecurity on people’s future focus as well as on their cognitive functioning
For the independent variables assessed at Time 1, we compared the hypothesized five-factor model to a four-factor model and to a common-factor model

Summary

Introduction

The current world of work is characterized by great uncertainty about the future: developments such as technological change, globalization, digitalization, and increased temporary employment have contributed to increased job insecurity and decreased well-being among workers (Shoss, 2017; Jiang and Lavaysse, 2018; Lee et al, 2018). Despite the progress that has been made in research on job insecurity and its negative consequences, only a handful of studies have focused on factors directly reducing or preventing job insecurity itself Notwithstanding, these studies have provided the valuable insight that job insecurity can be managed: individual resources and behavior, as well as organizational resources and interventions, can influence the extent to which people experience job insecurity in a given work situation (e.g., Abildgaard et al, 2018; Jiang et al, 2020b; Koen and Parker, 2020). The uncertain world of work that calls for proactivity may paradoxically obstruct people’s ability to behave proactively

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Conclusion