Abstract
In a new stage of booming platform economy, improving the employees’ job security is the key factor to ensure the sustainable development of a platform organization. Based on the cognitive behavior theory, this study introduces the perceived insider status as the moderator variable, and constructs the process mechanism model of job insecurity on employee engagement. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between job insecurity, emotional response and employee engagement, and provide suggestions for reducing job insecurity and improving employee engagement. Using a 2-wave time-lagged survey data of 341 workers in China firms, data were collected with a self-report questionnaire and analyzed with the statistical package for the social science (AMOS, SPSS). The research result found a negative relationship between job insecurity and employee engagement, and that this negative relationship was mediated by negative emotion or positive emotion. Furthermore, perceived insider status moderated the relationship between job insecurity and positive emotion or negative emotion; the higher the perceived insider status is, the weaker the negative impact of job insecurity on positive emotion and the weaker the positive impact on negative emotion. The research results provide theoretical guidance for organizations to improve employee engagement and help to strengthen the importance of organizations to employees’ job insecurity.
Highlights
With the rise of the digital platform economy and the reform of state-owned enterprises and institutions, the traditional employment mode of “iron rice bowl” has undergone a fundamental reversal, and new flexible employment forms with labels such as “temporary”, “mobile” and “insecure” have gradually dominated the employment stage
The current research on job insecurity is mostly based on the background of western countries, there are significant differences between Chinese and Western cultures, especially as China is in a transition stage, with a higher culture of uncertainty and a more prosperous online economy, and job insecurity may be more seriously affected in China
As a state where individuals are fully engaged in their job roles, employee engagement has always been a hot issue of human resource management, including the degree of individual resource investment in emotion, intelligence, and physical strength [9]
Summary
With the rise of the digital platform economy and the reform of state-owned enterprises and institutions, the traditional employment mode of “iron rice bowl” has undergone a fundamental reversal, and new flexible employment forms with labels such as “temporary”, “mobile” and “insecure” have gradually dominated the employment stage. Some studies believe that job insecurity has a significant negative impact on employee engagement, and job insecurity reduces employees’ participation and initiative in their work [14]. Based on the values of collectivism, China has always guided individual collaboration with collective consciousness to achieve the goal In this cultural context, whether employees have a strong sense of organizational belonging and goal identification, and perceive their internal organizational membership, will directly affect their performance at work [21]. This study, using the cognitive behavior theory, attempts to construct the internal mechanism of action between job insecurity and employee engagement through emotional expression, and studies the moderating effect of perceived insider identity on this mediating effect
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