Voice and silence as immediate consequences of job insecurity

Behavioral Reactions to Job Insecurity Climate Perceptions: Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect

Past work has extensively documented that job insecurity predicts various work- and health-related outcomes. However, limited research has focused on the potential consequences of perceived job insecurity climate. Our objective was to investigate how the psychological climate about losing a job and valuable job features (quantitative and qualitative job insecurity climate, respectively) relate to employees' exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect behaviors, and whether such climate perceptions explain additional variance in these behaviors over individual job insecurity. Data were collected through an online survey using a convenience sample of employees working in different organizations in Türkiye (N = 245). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that quantitative job insecurity climate was associated with higher levels of loyalty and neglect, while qualitative job insecurity climate was related to higher levels of exit and lower levels of loyalty. Importantly, job insecurity climate explained additional variance over individual job insecurity in exit and loyalty. Our findings underscore the importance of addressing job insecurity in a broader context regarding one's situation and the psychological collective climate. This study contributes to addressing the knowledge gap concerning job insecurity climate, an emerging construct in the organizational behavior literature, and its incremental impact beyond individual job insecurity. The foremost implication is that organizations need to pay attention to the evolving climate perceptions about the future of jobs in the work environment, because such perceptions are related to critical employee behaviors.

Role conflict, need frustration and supervisor support: a moderated-mediation model of employee voice and silence

Purpose

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether role conflict is associated with frustration of employees’ basic needs and whether need frustration is associated with withdrawal in the form of reduced voice and increased silence. This paper also investigates if supervisor support mitigates potential detrimental outcomes of need frustration.

Design/methodology/approach

In this survey-based study, 201 full-time employees participated. Self-reports regarding voice and silence behaviors at work were collected as were perceptions of role conflict, need frustration and supervisor support.

Findings

The results of this study support the proposed moderated mediation relationships for both employee voice and silence behaviors. Specifically, need frustration mediates the relationship between role conflict and the two outcome variables. Perceived supervisor support moderates the path between need frustration and both voice and silence behaviors.

Practical implications

Employees are an organization’s first line of defense against potential accidents, inefficiencies and other organizational crises. When they perceive their needs are not met and they are not supported by their supervisors, employees are likely to seek to protect themselves from further resource loss by withholding feedback even if such feedback may enhance organizational effectiveness and prevent organizational crises.

Originality/value

Given that voice and silence are not opposites of each other, it is important to study both in a single study, as this study does. This study proposes and tests a heretofore untested explanation for the relationship between role conflict and voice and silence. The authors identify a buffer with potential to mitigate the negative effects of need frustration.

The effect of job insecurity on knowledge hiding behavior: The mediation of psychological safety and the moderation of servant leadership

As the global economy deteriorates because of the great shocks such as COVID-19 pandemic and wars among nations, the business environment is suffered from uncertainty and risk. To deal with it, several firms have attempted to maximize its efficiency via downsizing and restructuring to diminish costs. Thus, the degree of anxiety is increased among employees who worry about the loss of their job. The current research hypothesizes that job insecurity increases employees' knowledge hiding behavior by diminishing the degree of their psychological safety. In other words, psychological safety functions as the underlying process (i.e., mediator) in the job insecurity-knowledge hiding behavior link. Furthermore, this paper tries to examine the boundary condition of how to decrease the detrimental influence of job insecurity, focusing on the moderating effect of servant leadership. Utilizing a 3-wave time-lagged data from 365 Korean employees, we empirically demonstrated that employees who perceive job insecurity are less likely to perceive psychological safety, eventually increasing their knowledge hiding behavior. We also found that servant leadership functions as a positive moderator which buffers the negative impact of job insecurity on psychological safety. Theoretical and practical contributions are described.

Do Workers Speak Up When Feeling Job Insecure? Examining Workers' Response to Precarity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that union membership and confidence in organized labor are positively associated with voice, insecure workers are less likely to speak up than secure workers as confidence in organized labor increases. Last, we find that insecure nonstandard workers are less likely to use voice than their secure counterparts.

How organizational politics and subjective social status moderate job insecurity–silence relationships

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory and self-determination theory, this study examines the subjective social status (SSS) of employees and how it moderates the two-way interaction effect of job insecurity and perceived organizational politics on the types of silence (i.e., acquiescent, and defensive silence [DS]). Using data of about 350 employees in South Korea, it was found that the relationship between job insecurity and employees' acquiescent silence (AS) was stronger for individuals who perceived their organizations as highly political. The results also indicated a three-way interaction between job insecurity, perceived organizational politics, and employees' SSS on employees' AS, such that in a highly political work environment, the relationship between job insecurity and employees' AS was stronger especially for employees with low social status. However, the same pattern did not exist between job insecurity and DS.

Basic Psychological Needs in the Work Context: A Systematic Literature Review of Diary Studies

According to the self-determination theory, individuals' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness should be satisfied for optimal psychological growth. The satisfaction of these needs seems to vary due to changes in a person's social context, and the outcomes of the satisfaction of these needs also vary along with the needs. Despite several studies investigating daily and weekly variations in need satisfaction and its correlates, no systematic investigation exists. This study aimed to conduct a narrative synthesis of existing quantitative diary studies of basic psychological needs in the work context. We specifically aimed to evaluate if psychological need satisfaction varies daily and weekly and judge whether they vary more daily or weekly. Additionally, we also aimed to review the literature regarding the relations between daily or weekly variations in need satisfaction and its assumed antecedents and outcomes. We included peer-reviewed articles in English that measured work-related basic psychological needs using a quantitative diary study design. Database searching (Web of Science, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and Scopus) led to the extraction of 2 251 records by February 2020. Duplicates were removed, the remaining records were screened (n = 820), and 30 articles were assessed using eligibility criteria. Two authors individually conducted the screening and eligibility processes to manage selection bias. In total, 21 articles were included in the final review. The review indicated that basic psychological need satisfaction showed considerable within-person variation and was more dynamic daily (compared to weekly). Job demands, job resources, organisational resources, and individual characteristics appeared to associate with these variations. The organisational context seemed to matter the most for need satisfaction. Variations in need satisfaction were also related to employee well-being, performance, and motivation. Despite the small number of published studies (particularly for weekly studies), our results indicate that researchers should pay attention to within-person variations in need satisfaction. Measuring daily need satisfaction could be prioritised. Different antecedents and outcomes seem to be associated with different needs. Thus, when needs are viewed as distinct constructs instead of unidimensional ones, one can derive greater insights. The study is funded by the National Research Foundation.

Can do and reason to: when are proactive employees willing to share negative information?

Purpose

Information sharing is vital to organizational operations, yet employees are often reluctant to share negative information. This paper aims to gain insight into which employees will be reluctant to share negative information and when by drawing from the proactive motivation literature examining effects of proactive personality and motivational states on individuals’ willingness to share negative information.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional design was used, with data collected from a final sample of 393 individuals via an online survey. Hypotheses were tested using correlation and hierarchical multiple regression analyses.

Findings

Interactive effects indicate proactive individuals with accompanying high levels of role breadth self-efficacy (“can do”) or high levels of felt responsibility for constructive change (“reason to”) were less likely to be reluctant to share negative information. However, findings also suggest proactive individuals with lower levels of proactive motivation avoid sharing negative information.

Originality/value

The findings extend what is known about personality factors and employee willingness to share information to highlight which employees may be likely to avoid sharing negative information. The authors also examine the moderating influence of proactive motivational states on the relationships between proactive personality and reluctance to share negative information.

Multiple foci of commitment and employee silence: A role theory perspective

Voice enhances whereas employee silence compromises organizational effectiveness and efficiency. We assert that individuals with different foci of commitment vary in their conceptualization of voice behaviors as integral to their roles, which in turn, influences voice behaviors. Integrating silence and voice literatures under the overarching framework of role theory, we investigated the mediating role of voice role conceptualization in the relationship between multiple foci of commitment and employee silence and whether this mediation was moderated by perceptions of organizational politics. Data collected from 437 working adults from United States and China were used to test our moderated mediation model. Results indicated support for mediation and moderated mediation for the team commitment and silence relationship through its impact on voice role conceptualization, controlling for career commitment, and organizational commitment. We discuss implications of results for theory and practice, and offer suggestions for future research.

Caught between Scylla and Charybdis: How Economic Stressors and Occupational Risk Factors Influence Workers' Occupational Health Reactions to COVID-19

Workers and their families bear much of the economic burden of COVID-19. Even though they have declined somewhat, unemployment rates are considerably higher than before the start of the pandemic. Many workers also face uncertainty about their future employment prospects and increasing financial strain. At the same time, the workplace is a common source of transmission of COVID-19 and many jobs previously seen as relatively safe are now viewed as potentially hazardous. Thus, many workers face dual threats of economic stress and COVID-19 exposure. This paper develops a model of workers' responses to these dual threats, including risk perception and resource depletion as mediating factors that influence the relationship of economic stress and occupational risk factors with COVID-19 compliance-related attitudes, safe behavior at work, and physical and mental health outcomes. The paper also describes contextual moderators of these relationships at the individual, unit, and regional level. Directions for future research are discussed.

Job Insecurity and Employee Engagement: A Moderated Dual Path Model

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.

Silent Counterattack: The Impact of Workplace Bullying on Employee Silence

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between workplace bullying (WB) and employee silence (ES) as well as its mechanism. This paper collects data from 322 employees of three Chinese enterprises in two waves, with a 2 months interval between the two waves. Moreover, this paper uses confirmatory factor analysis, a bootstrapping mediation test, a simple slope test, and other methods to verify the hypothesis. We find that: (1) WB is positively correlated with ES; (2) psychological safety (PS) and affective commitment mediated the relationship between WB and ES, respectively, and these two variables have a chain mediating effect in the above relationship; and (3) a forgiveness climate moderates this chain mediating effect by weakening the negative impact of WB on PS. Our findings can effectively guide organizations to ultimately adjust their management style, pay attention to employees’ cognitive and emotional resources, and formulate some measures to curb WB in organizations.