Unstable Jobs Cannot Cultivate Good Organizational Citizens: The Sequential Mediating Role of Organizational Trust and Identification.

Byung-Jik Kim

doi:10.3390/ijerph16071102

Abstract

Although existing works have investigated the influence of employee’s job insecurity on his or her perceptions or attitudes, those studies relatively have paid less attention to the influence of it on employee’s behaviors, as well as to its intermediating mechanisms of the relationship between job insecurity and the behaviors. Considering that employee’s behaviors substantially influence various organizational outcomes, I believe that studies which examine the impact of job insecurity on the behaviors as well as its underlying processes are required. Grounded on the context–attitude–behavior framework, I delved into the intermediating mechanism between job insecurity and organizational citizenship behavior with a sequential mediation model. In specific, I hypothesized that employee’s organizational trust and organizational identification would sequentially mediate the job insecurity–organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) link. Utilizing 3-wave time-lagged data from 303 employees in South Korea, I found that organizational trust and organizational identification function as sequential mediators in the link. The finding suggests that organizational trust and organizational identification are underlying processes to elaborately explain the job insecurity–OCB link.

Highlights

As global competition and uncertainty have been intense, many firms are experiencing considerable pressures to maximize the efficiency of its operation
This paper suggests that organizational trust and organizational identification would sequentially mediate the relationship between job insecurity and organizational citizenship behavior
This paper suggests that organizational trust and organizational identification sequentially mediate the relationship between job insecurity and organizational citizenship behavior

Summary

Introduction

As global competition and uncertainty have been intense, many firms are experiencing considerable pressures to maximize the efficiency of its operation. Considering that maintaining a stable job is very important for employees’ lives and that the employees function as a critical resource to a firm, the issue of job insecurity is very important for both the employees and the company. To adequately deal with the issue, many scholars and practitioners have paid much attention to the job insecurity in an organization. Job insecurity means “the anticipation of this stressful event in such a way that the nature and continued existence of one’s job are perceived to be at risk” Scholars have found that the fundamental feature of job insecurity is the degree of uncertainty about an employee’s job continuity [4]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion