Antecedents and Health Consequences of Job Insecurity among Teachers

Abstract

Job Insecurity is emerging as a growing threat to the careers of aspiring, meritious and hardworking employees in our country due to various reasons such as high demand of jobs, and government’s inability to meet such a high demand in a short period of time. This results in hiring of employees on temporary/contractual basis. This situation is especially bad among the teachers belonging to various government schools and colleges in Delhi. Our study investigated certain psychological causes for the feeling of Job Insecurity among teachers. Perceived Organizational Change and Role Ambiguity were studied as the potential antecedents of Job Insecurity. Detrimental impact of Job Insecurity on the Mental and Physical Health of such employees were also studied. A sample of 110 temporary/contractual/ad-hoc teachers belonging to MCD schools and several colleges from University of Delhi was used for this study. ‘Partial Least Square’ technique of ‘Structural Equation Modeling’ was applied using ‘SmartPLS 2.0.M3’ to understand the proposed relationships. Results show both Perceived Organizational Change and Role Ambiguity significantly contribute towards Job Insecurity, where the effect of Perceived Organizational Change was particularly high. Job Insecurity was found to negatively affect Mental and Physical Health of the employees. Mental effect in terms of stress and anxiety was found to be especially prominent.