Three-Way Interaction Effect of Job Insecurity, Job Embeddedness and Career Stage on Life Satisfaction in A Digital Era.

Muhammad Rafiq,Tachia Chin

doi:10.3390/ijerph16091580

Abstract

Along with the severe global employment challenges caused by the rapid rise of digital technologies, the job insecurity (JI)–life satisfaction (LS) association has attracted increasing attention. However, there is still a dearth of studies investigating the crucial boundary conditions of JI–LS relationships in non-Western contexts. To fill this gap, we choose China, the world’s largest emerging economy, which is undergoing a radical digital transformation, as our research setting. Building on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, we focus on exploring two critical buffers of the JI–LS mechanism, of which job embeddedness (JE) characterizes a significant psychological resource and career stage embodies the time dynamics of this model. Data were collected from a sample of 317 Chinese media organization employees and were analyzed by the moderated hierarchical multiple regression approach. Our results show that JI is negatively related to LS and this relationship becomes stronger when employees have low JE (vs. high). Further, this two-way interaction is moderated by career stage; the impact of JI on LS is (1) stronger only for mid–late career stage employees who experienced low JE, and (2) weaker also only for mid–late career stage employees who experienced high JE. This study enriches the existing body of knowledge on the JI–LS model by highlighting the three-way interaction effect of JI, a critical psychological resource (i.e., JE), and time effect (i.e., career stage) on LS; it implies that older people with a certain amount of career experience and resource accumulation may perceive the effect of JI on LS differently than younger people.

Highlights

Global organizations as the primary providers of jobs and careers have not recovered from the sharp economic decline triggered by the 2008 financial crisis; they are facing severe employment challenges caused by radial technological innovation that encourages the use of smart machines and robots over human workers [1,2]
This study enriches the existing body of knowledge on the job insecurity (JI)–life satisfaction (LS) model by highlighting the three-way interaction effect of JI, a critical psychological resource (i.e., job embeddedness (JE)), and time effect on LS; it implies that older people with a certain amount of career experience and resource accumulation may perceive the effect of JI on LS differently than younger people
Taking together the foregoing arguments, we further propose that career stage will moderate the two-way interaction effect of JI and JE on LS, such that the interaction effect will be (1) strongest for the mid–late career stage with low JE compared to early career stage employees and (2) weakest for the mid–late career stage with high JE compared to early career stage employees

Summary

Introduction

Global organizations as the primary providers of jobs and careers have not recovered from the sharp economic decline triggered by the 2008 financial crisis; they are facing severe employment challenges caused by radial technological innovation that encourages the use of smart machines and robots over human workers [1,2]. Apart from the less-skilled occupations, more and more middle-class jobs are becoming obsolete due to the high-speed advancement of science and technology [3,4]. Along with this new wave of unemployment across the globe, job insecurity and its impacts on people’s overall well-being have been drawing increasing attention [5,6,7]. As indicated earlier, given the rising popularity of digitalization and automation is intensifying job losses in various occupations, JI will continue to have a significant and complex impact on most workers’ lives, which requires further investigation [10]. While European scholars tend to analyze the influence of JI on

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Discussion

Conclusion