The subjective experience of employment insecurity may be more contradictory than discourses of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘flexploitation’ suggest. For young people seeking careers in creative occupations, the expectation of insecure employment conditions has become normalised. This may be the combined effect of intergenerational changes in the youth labour market generally, and the nature of employment in creative industries at all career stages. The article draws from 80 life history interviews conducted in Western Sydney, Australia, a region with high concentrations of unemployment and low socio-economic status. Their perspectives problematise the common assumption that young creative workers seek to resist insecure patterns of work or long for the stable jobs of the past. Partly, they have accepted the injunction for ‘vocational restlessness’ in their industries. Both in their ‘day jobs’ and in their attempts to get into their chosen part of the creative industry, they feel that not staying in one position too long can be both liberating and adaptive. Union campaigns highlighting the perils of insecurity are unlikely to resonate with them.

It is often argued that job insecurity and precarious work are on the rise. However, the evidence to back these arguments remains mixed and inconclusive. In this study, we define and measure precarious work in Finland using five variables that reflect both objective and subjective insecurity: atypical employment, actually experienced unemployment, the threat of dismissal or unemployment, poor chances of finding a new job, and low earnings. Results based on Statistics Finland’s Quality of Work Life Surveys from 1984 to 2013 indicate that, from a labour market or forms of employment perspective, the proportion of precarious wage earners has increased from 11% in 1984 to 13% in 2013. From a second perspective, however, focusing on changing working conditions, growing inequality and eroding social security mechanisms, we also analyse how a precarious labour market position is related to intrinsic job quality. Precarious workers experience decreased levels of skill and discretion, and they work in a less supportive environment than other employees.

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.

This study details the possible escalation of employees' perceptions of pandemic threats into diminished job performance, while considering a mediating role of their sense of job insecurity and a moderating role of their emotion regulation and improvisation skills. Results based on multisource, three-wave data show that employees' perceived pandemic threats compromise their work-related performance, because they believe that their job is at risk. This mediating role of perceived job insecurity is mitigated by employees' greater ability to control their emotions and come up with novel ideas on the spot. This study accordingly pinpoints employees' conviction that they may not be able to keep their jobs as a crucial mechanism by which the hardships of a global pandemic generate negative performance consequences, as well as how organizations can contain this risk by helping employees hone their pertinent personal skills.

The current study investigated employees' weekly responses to experienced job insecurity. Based on appraisal theory, it was postulated that employees may adopt three coping strategies in response to job insecurity (i.e., remaining silent, adapting, or being proactive) in order to maintain or improve their weekly well-being. We introduced a multilevel moderated mediation model, explaining how weekly job insecurity would be related to well-being in the following weeks through these three behaviors. We also expected that subordinate emotional regulation and supervisor prosocial motivation (both defined as trait variables) would function as contextual factors moderating the relationships of job insecurity with employee behavior and well-being. A 5-week diary study of 149 subordinates partially supported the model. The results showed longitudinal conditional indirect effects of job insecurity on subordinate well-being depending on subordinate emotional regulation style and supervisor prosocial motivation. In doing so, the study offers two main contributions to the job insecurity literature. First, employees are not passive responders to perceived job insecurity, but active shapers through coping depending on the context. Subordinates' emotional regulation strategy and supervisors' prosocial motivation, as trait variables, impact on how subordinates respond to perceived job insecurity over weeks. From a practical point of view, the dynamic nature of perceived job insecurity suggests implications for interventions to maintain subordinates' well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors that have an impact on information technology (IT) specialists' concealment of knowledge from their supervisors. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 118 IT specialists from a large Polish software company. The data analyses were conducted using partial least-squares path modelling. The results revealed that perceived work overload (PWO) is positively related to perceived job insecurity (PJI), and that PJI is positively related to vertical knowledge withholding (VKW). Contrary to expectations, no significant relation was found between PWO and VKW. Moreover, there is a negative relationship between supervisor support (SS) and VKW. This study introduces the concept of VKW and places it in the context of the relationship between subordinates and superiors. Managers can use the results to limit knowledge withholding among IT specialists. To confirm achieved results, future research can use larger samples and be conducted in different sectors.

This article synthesizes public and private sector accumulated research regarding the relationship between job security and employee work attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). The present meta-analysis of 37 studies (including 45 independent samples) shows that the medium-sized associations between job security and each work attitude variables (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment) were found, with true score correlations (ρ) of .327 for job satisfaction, and .253 for organizational commitment. These results highlight the significance of job security at the workplace, in shaping and enhancing attitudes of employee and job security is worth retaining in some form in the public sector, contrary to the logic of at-will employment. This meta-analysis findings also call attention to several important considerations for developing effective public job security policy.

Considering the mixed results of the relationship between job insecurity and job performance, this study investigated the interaction effect of job insecurity and job embeddedness on job performance and examined the mediating role of affective commitment from the perspectives of conservation of resources theory and social exchange theory. A survey of 725 contract employees from two Chinese private manufacturing companies revealed that when employees had high levels of job embeddedness, job insecurity was significantly and positively related to job performance. In contrast, job insecurity was significantly and negatively related to job performance when there were low levels of job embeddedness. Furthermore, the results indicated that affective commitment mediated the interaction effect. The above conclusions not only illustrate the important role of job embeddedness in the relationship between job insecurity and job performance but also provide beneficial ideas and information to organisations and employees for managing job insecurity.

The present study examines an important contemporary stressor: Job insecurity, both in terms of losing one’s job as such (i.e. quantitative job insecurity) and losing one’s valued job aspects (i.e., qualitative job insecurity). Moreover, we study whether humor assists in offsetting the negative associations of these types of job insecurity with employee well-being. Specifically, by drawing up the conservation of resources theory, self-enhancing and affiliative humor are framed as personal resources buffering the detrimental relationship of both types of job insecurity with burnout (i.e., exhaustion and cynicism) and work engagement (i.e., vigor and dedication) in a large heterogeneous sample of Belgian employees (N = 3,254). Results evidenced the detrimental main effects of quantitative and qualitative job insecurity as well as the beneficial relations of self-enhancing and affilitative humor on burnout and work engagement. In addition, the buffering role of affiliative humor was supported in the relationships of both quantitative and qualitative job insecurity with burnout. Self-enhancing humor only interacted with qualitative job insecurity in the prediction of exhaustion. The discussion centers around the importance of personal resources attenuating the negative associations of quantitative and quantitative job insecurity, and highlights the different roles of humor for employees’ work-related well-being.

Most private-sector employees in the United Kingdom (UK) are automatically enrolled into individualised defined contribution (DC) pension accounts. In a DC environment, income adequacy in retirement is highly dependent on the decisions that individuals make earlier in their lives. The ease with which they move into employment, and the pension support that they then receive from their employer, can be critical in determining outcomes. This paper discusses how employees respond to workplace pension schemes and the circumstances under which they assess the suitability of their contributions. The findings are based on an embedded case study comprising qualitative interviews with 25 employees of a large UK utility company. Participants were selected on the basis of socio-economic similarity. The research concluded that fixed-term employment negatively impacted on saving for retirement, both with respect to scheme membership and to the level of saving. Furthermore, it was found that the employment context had an influence upon retirement savings behaviour. The proactive approach of the employer in providing retirement benefits, and the trust that employees had in their employer, positively influenced membership and contribution levels. In addition to employer endorsement effects, both the encouragement of older work colleagues and workplace norms had a role to play in influencing how successfully individuals prepared for retirement.

The multitude of corporate scandals has prompted research that examines factors that influence an individual’s engagement in unethical behavior. This article extends previous research by examining the psychological processes through which unethical behavior may occur. We develop and test a model that uses self-regulation theory to explain and predict how and under what circumstances individuals are likely to engage in unethical behavior. Results from data collected from 107 professionals at two points in time and 205 employees from various industries confirm that job insecurity increases emotional exhaustion, which subsequently impairs an employee’s ability to activate self-regulating processes to avoid engaging in unethical behavior. However, the link between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion as well as the mediated relationship between job insecurity and unethical behavior through emotional exhaustion are weaker for employees who have high adaptability and stronger for employees who are highly embedded in their organization.

In recent decades, transformations in organizations and the labour market have produced an increase in employee job insecurity. In response to this situation, workers present different negative reactions. However, the intensity of these reactions varies across studies that have investigated the outcomes of job insecurity. One possible explanation for this inconsistency may lie in the influence of other factors, such as the occupational group (Sverke et al., 2002). The aim of this study is to provide additional evidence about the relationship between job insecurity and its outcomes (i.e., life satisfaction, job satisfaction, perceived performance and organizational commitment), and examine the moderator role of occupational group in this relationship. The sample was composed of 321 employees from different Spanish organizations. The results showed that job insecurity was directly and negatively related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and they suggest that occupational group moderated relations between job insecurity and three studied outcomes. In the case of life satisfaction and perceived performance, this relationship was stronger among blue collar workers. The relationship between job insecurity and job satisfaction was stronger in white collar workers. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.