How Do Agent Workers Deal with Job Insecurity? A Study from Impression Management Perspective

Abstract

Under the current economic situation and new employment relationship, employees are feeling serious job insecurity, especially for agent workers. From impression management perspective, the present study aims to explore how agent workers actively deal with the threat of job insecurity, and investigate the role of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and impression management motives among this process. Two-wave data of 393 subordinate-supervisor pairs from agent workers was collected. The results showed that: (1) there was a positive relationship between agent workers job insecurity and OCB; (2) impression management motive moderated the relationship between job insecurity and OCB. Specifically, agent workers with higher impression management motive did more OCB when facing high level of job insecurity; (3) the interaction of agent workers job insecurity and impression management motive had an indirect effect to job performance via their OCB. Specifically, for the agent workers with higher impression management motive, they would do more OCB when experiencing high level of job insecurity, and thus maintain relative high job performance. Taking agent workers as examples, the study revealed the mechanisms underlying the relationship between employees job insecurity and work behaviors from the perspective of impression management.