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Job insecurity trajectory based on a piecewise latent growth model. Note. The original scale of job insecurity was measured on a scale from 1 to 5. For ease of visualization, we display the scale from 1 to 3. The vertical line represents the transition point, when the stimulus bill was passed.
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Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. However, little is known about how perceived job insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899...
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... estimated mean trajectory for job insecurity is illustrated in Fig. 2. Overall, job insecurity increased during the shock phase, and then decreased during the adjustment phase, thereby providing support for Hypotheses 1 and 2. The intercept of job insecurity was not significantly related to either the shock trajectory or the adjustment trajectory. There was a negative correlation between the two slopes, ...
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COVID-19 pandemic crisis has brought extraordinary changes to almost all human activities. This unfamiliar situation has affected, among others, the working conditions, under which employees should keep doing their job while protecting themselves and preventing the coronavirus from spreading. As a result, working from home has been considered as a...
Citations
... Studies often cite macro-level factors, such as market conditions and the rapidly changing nature of work, as reasons for experienced job insecurity. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic involved threats to economic stability that exacerbated existing concerns about the continuity of employment in a variety of industries (e.g., Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022). At the same time, many workers experienced threats to their physical and mental health, which may have challenged their ability to maintain employment (Antino et al., 2022;Low et al., 2021). ...
This article reports the results of a 33-wave longitudinal study of relations between job insecurity and physical and mental health based on monthly data collected between April 2020 and December 2022 among n = 1,666 employees in Germany. We integrate dynamic theorizing from the transactional stress model and domain-specific theorizing based on stressor creation and perception to frame hypotheses regarding dynamic and reciprocal relations between job insecurity and health over time. We find that lower physical health predicted subsequent increases in job insecurity and higher physical health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. However, job insecurity did not have a significant influence on physical health. Furthermore, higher job insecurity predicted subsequent decreases in mental health, and higher mental health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. This pattern of findings suggests a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one’s average trajectory of job insecurity are associated with subsequently lower levels of mental health and vice versa. We additionally find evidence for linear trends in these within-person processes themselves, suggesting that the strength of the within-person influence of job insecurity on mental health becomes more strongly negative over time (i.e., a negative amplifying cycle). This research provides practical insights into job insecurity as a health threat and shows how concerns about job loss following deteriorations in physical and mental health serve to further threaten well-being.
... Studies often cite macro-level factors, such as market conditions and the rapidly changing nature of work, as reasons for experienced job insecurity. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic involved threats to economic stability that exacerbated existing concerns about the continuity of employment in a variety of industries (e.g., Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022). At the same time, many workers experienced threats to their physical and mental health, which may have challenged their ability to maintain employment (Antino et al., 2022;Low et al., 2021). ...
This article reports the results of a 33-wave longitudinal study of relations between job insecurity and physical and mental health based on monthly data collected between April 2020 and December 2022 among n = 1,666 employees in Germany. We integrate dynamic theorizing from the transactional stress model and domain-specific theorizing based on stressor creation and perception to frame hypotheses regarding dynamic and reciprocal relations between job insecurity and health over time. We find that lower physical health predicted subsequent increases in job insecurity and higher physical health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. However, job insecurity did not have a significant influence on physical health. Furthermore, higher job insecurity predicted subsequent decreases in mental health, and higher mental health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. This pattern of findings suggests a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one’s average trajectory of job insecurity are associated with subsequently lower levels of mental health and vice versa. We additionally find evidence for linear trends in these within-person processes themselves, suggesting that the strength of the within-person influence of job insecurity on mental health becomes more strongly negative over time (i.e., a negative amplifying cycle). This research provides practical insights into job insecurity as a health threat and shows how concerns about job loss following deteriorations in physical and mental health serve to further threaten wellbeing.
... Despite this, Al managed to reach out to his local community, offering to provide free online exercises for those with long-term health conditions during lockdown. 2 Social commentators suggest that in recent years society has been facing a 'permacrisis' (Turnbull, 2022) with substantial implications for the stability of work, job quality, career development and the navigation of work-home boundaries (Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022;Guest et al., 2022;Kossek et al., 2021;Restubog et al., 2020). At such times, workers can be thrust into spirals of resource loss, becoming psychologically distressed and uncertain about what to do to cope with the situation and return to normal functioning. ...
... It therefore now appears to be a timely concern to understand the range of ways in which workers, such as Yas and Al, respond at times of significant uncertainty, when resources are eroded and the sense of self is threatened. Focusing on self-protection 'coping' in a time of crisis, as a distinct phenomenon separate to everyday coping in response to everyday stressors (El Khawli et al., 2022;Restubog et al., 2020;Zacher & Rudolph, 2021), thus warrants exploration and elucidation. In this paper, we utilize COR theory, along with the work of Neo-Freudian Psychoanalyst Karen Horney, to understand how people respond to extreme stressors at work and whether their responses serve a functional purpose (i.e. are adaptive). ...
... Our third contribution extends knowledge around resource-related coping. By focusing on the dynamic adoption of coping strategies in self-protection mode, we address recent calls, made notably in this journal, to apply a more dynamic, longitudinal and intraindividual focus to better understand coping activity (Achnak & Vantilborgh, 2021;El Khawli et al., 2022;Langerak et al., 2022), especially in times of crisis (Restubog et al., 2020). These calls have been made because, despite it being well-known that different coping strategies applied to deal with different stressors will functionally reduce distress (Carver et al., 1989;Cheng, 2001;Folkman et al., 1986;Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004;Sheppes, 2020;Zacher & Rudolph, 2021), studies often fail to examine how people switch between and combine different coping strategies in response to the same stressor (Bonanno & Burton, 2013;El Khawli et al., 2022). ...
... A dispositional perspective on coping emphasizes how individual coping preferences over time are shaped and consolidated into habitual coping responses (Joseph et al., 1992). Thus, different coping strategies may appear beneficial in different phases of adjustment, such as when facing the risk of job insecurity during the pandemic (El Khawli et al., 2022). Coping styles, in terms of relatively stable behavioral preferences, could inform our understanding of how age and experience with previous hardships may explain age related differences in adaptive responses to a quarantine situation. ...
This study explores the psychological reactions to being placed in quarantine during the early stage (March and April 2020) of the COVID-19 lockdown in Norway. We interviewed a sample of nineteen Norwegian citizens aged 21–64 years who were quarantined for 14 days in the early period of the pandemic before testing and vaccination were available to the general population. A semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct in-depth interviews about stress, coping, and adaptation to quarantine. A thematic analysis approach was used. Four main themes emerged in the interviews: (a) Being responsible, in terms of addressing the fear of being infected and infecting others, (b) The stress of the situation, in terms of highlighting worries, loss and loneliness, (c) Ways of coping, in terms of elaborating on cognitive, behavioral, and affective strategies to adapt to the quarantine, and (d) Social support and gratitude, in terms of appreciating interpersonal relations and the social context of the quarantine situation. The study contributes to our understanding of how differences in stress, appraisal, and coping may influence adaptation to a radically changed living condition in the early stage of the pandemic. These findings may inform health service providers and promote public health advise to support coping and resilient response in future health crises.
... Finally, it largely remains unclear what organizations can do to reduce AAJI of and the associated negative impact on health and work outcomes of affected employees. Therefore, we encourage the development and evaluation of interventions (e.g., increasing state CSE) and the role of coping (El Khwali et al., 2022) to help employees with high levels of AAJI in organizational practice in the long run. ...
The rising distribution of smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, algorithms, and automation (STARA) in today’s world of work has the potential to revolutionize what, how, where, and when humans work by supplementing and substituting work processes. However, it is largely unclear how these technological changes affect employees. While employees may benefit from the substitution of tedious and dangerous, they may suffer from STARA creating micro-jobs, polarizing required skill levels, and evoking job insecurity. Although these rapid technological changes have crucial implications for employee outcomes, empirical evidence of their effects on employees is surprisingly scarce. Neglecting to investigate these effects could result in poorly designed, demotivating workplaces of the future.
Building on the integration of numerous theoretical models and frameworks, this dissertation examines how the introduction of intelligent assistance systems (IASs) modifies motivational work characteristics in modern assembly. It considers various scenarios, such as the assembly of simple products, the assembly of more complex products, and the assembly with intensified product changes. Applying online experiments with vignette methodology, we experimentally manipulated hypothetical assembly workstations and instructed participants to rate them regarding motivational work characteristics. In the first online experiment (N1 = 203 German and British blue-collar workers) participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (work without vs. work with vs. work with voluntary use of IASs). Results indicated enhanced feedback from job and information processing when working with IASs in the assembly of simple products. Thus, they highlight the purely positive effects of IASs on motivational work characteristics.
Transferring these findings to the assembly of more complex products in the second online experiment (work without vs. work with IASs, N2 = 169 German workers) was limited. Findings illuminated that IASs restrict work scheduling, decision-making, and work methods autonomy besides increasing feedback from job and information processing. Therefore, they indicate the contradictory effects of IASs on motivational work characteristics. In a third online experiment (N3 = 176 German workers) we also manipulated the extent of task rotation (no task rotation vs. task rotation after one hour). We fully replicated the results highlighting the contradictory role of IASs, regardless of the extent of task rotation.
This dissertation further illuminates how employees appraise STARA to threaten their employment by contributing a thorough construct validation of affective automation-related job insecurity, a refinement of the STARA Awareness construct (Brougham & Haar, 2018). Findings from two cross-sectional studies (N4 = 215, N5 = 224 German employees) and one longitudinal study with a total time lag of one year (N6 = 233 German employees) demonstrated a fluctuating fit of the measurement model of STARA Awareness between independent samples. With the exclusion of cognitive elements and the inclusion of the substitution of core tasks within jobs, we reconceptualized the construct, renamed it to affective automation-related job insecurity, and adapted its measurement. While affective automation-related job insecurity is weakly associated with cognitive and affective job insecurity, and negatively with core self-evaluations, it exhibits unique associations with indicators of technological change (positive relations with objective substitution potential and use of STARA). Moreover, we identified rising levels of affective automation-related job insecurity over time for employees with moderate use of STARA, and decreasing levels for employees with low and high use of STARA.
Overall, this dissertation provides vital empirical evidence on the beneficial and detrimental effects of STARA on workplaces and employees in today’s world of work. Its findings represent a firm foundation for fruitful research in digital work design, human-machine interaction, and related fields. Finally, considering these findings contributes to the human-centered development, implementation, and use of STARA to maintain a healthy and motivated workforce.
... From the reviews, there were several indications emphasizing the changes of the human capital or human values of firms during economic crisis compared to non-crisis situations in the tourism sector and other industries [39,40]. The negative changes of human capital in the crisis period mainly came from an employee layoff [41,42], as well as a significant decline in the wages of workers [43,44]. Therefore, the findings presented above support the development of the third hypothesis (H3) of our study. ...
The tourism industry has grappled with the challenges posed by the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) since the start of 2020, experiencing a complete lockdown that profoundly affected travel activities. This viral outbreak had a critical impact on both the financial and non-financial aspects of life, including the intellectual capital (IC) of the tourism and hospitality sectors. However, there is a scarcity of studies addressing this issue within the context of tourism-related businesses. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the changes in the overall IC and its components before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on understanding the transformation of IC in the tourism industry of Thailand, a country that is highly dependent on tourism. The study involved 37 tourism-related companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Organizational data from financial and annual reports published between 2019 and 2020 were collected for analysis. The assessment of value added intellectual capital (VAICTM) was employed to evaluate the performance of the overall IC and its components during the pandemic. The results, based on the testing of four hypotheses, indicated that most hypotheses were accepted, signifying a substantial transformation in the overall IC performance of tourism-related companies during the pandemic crisis. This transformation was observed in the IC components of physical and human capitals. However, the structural capital was the only IC component that did not experience a significant impact from COVID-19. To comprehend the reasons and effects of the IC transformations during the pandemic, this study delved into the relevant literature. Additionally, the paper includes implications to support firms in preparing for future challenges.
... stressors, leading to long-term negative consequences (Zapf et al., 1996), the perspective of adaptation or adjustment (Bowling et al., 2005;Zapf et al., 1996;Zhu et al., 2016) suggests that workers adjust to significant changes in two phases: a shock phase marked by a deterioration of the work experience and an adaptation phase during which individuals progressively return to their initial well-being levels (El Khawli et al., 2022;Sheldon, 2011). This research aims to evaluate how each perspective may explain newly transitioned remote workers' individual trajectories of three important facets of the work experience: belongingness at work, meaningful work, and emotional exhaustion. ...
... First, we found that, during the study period, pandemic high-intensity telecommuters responded to their new work context in a manner consistent with the stressor-reaction model rather than the adaptation perspective. Given the timing of our data collection (between September 2020 and March 2021), employees in our sample could have entered an adaptation phase (following the shock of March 2020's lockdown), characterized by higher predictability and controllability (El Khawli et al., 2022) and thus exhibit an overall improvement of their work experience. This is not what we observed as the declining trajectory for belongingness drove durable changes in meaningful work and emotional exhaustion. ...
The COVID‐19 pandemic has thrust millions of workers into high‐intensity telecommuting. While much research has examined the first months of the pandemic, little is known about how workers have responded to this new work arrangement over time. The stressor‐reaction perspective suggests that any strain related to the physical separation from coworkers may persist as long as the stressor is present, while the adaptation perspective implies that individuals adopt new behaviours that help them adjust once the initial shock is over. This research examines the changes in work belongingness, meaningful work, and emotional exhaustion following a shift to high‐intensity telecommuting, between September 2020 and March 2021. We conducted a four‐wave study among an organizational sample of 716 workers who transitioned to high‐intensity telecommuting during the pandemic. Latent growth modelling analyses showed that new high‐intensity telecommuters experienced declines in work belongingness over time, which in turn led to decreased perceptions that their work was meaningful and increased emotional exhaustion, supporting the stress‐reaction perspective. Contrary to theoretical predictions, trajectories were worse for those with a higher initial affective commitment to coworkers. We discuss how our findings can inform scholars and practitioners about the unfolding consequences of a collective shift to high‐intensity telecommuting.
... The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought many uncertainties, such as rising unemployment, altered working conditions, and heightened job stressors [14], posing a significant threat to employees' job security. In the post-pandemic, employees may encounter even more challenging work environments, necessitating greater time and expertise to adapt to workplace changes, manage work pressure, to maintain a normal pace of life and work. ...
... In the postpandemic era, the severe ramifications of COVID-19 have stimulated organizations to utilize digital technologies and modify work processes and organizational structures, all presents challenges to employees [20]. As a consequence, job insecurity perception is enhanced and poses a threat to people's work-related resources, such as financial security, social embeddedness, social status, and identity [14]. ...
... Secondly, workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between job insecurity and work-life conflicts. Job insecurity stands as a prominent work stressor [14], significantly impacts employees' performance [63], leading to a decline in job satisfaction, grievances towards the organization, and reducing organizational identification [6]. Also, it triggers negative work-related emotional experiences [19], leaving individuals constantly anxious and preoccupied with workrelated worries, further depleting their limited self-control resources. ...
... According to ISCT, some events or activities necessitate greater emotional, mental, and physical self-regulatory resources than others. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in the severity of the pandemic and the resulting economic conditions have immediate effects on service employees' perceptions of job insecurity (El Khawli et al., 2022), which incurs the exertion of self-control regularly. Furthermore, Muraven (2012) showed that individuals exposed to unpredictable or uncontrollable events exhibit poor self-regulation and performance. ...
The economic recession in the service sector during the COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized service employees’ job security. While the daily fluctuations of perceived job insecurity may have implications for service employees’ emotional labor, the day-to-day relationship between these two variables and their mediating and moderating mechanisms in the pandemic context remain unknown. To fill this gap, our research examined the day-level relationship between job insecurity perceptions, ego depletion, and emotional labor, as well as the moderating effects of overnight off-job control and work-related smartphone use. To assess these relationships, we conducted two daily studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In study 1 (March–April 2020), 135 service employees responded to morning and evening online surveys for five workdays. In study 2 (June 2022), which administered morning and evening online surveys to 90 flight attendants for five workdays, work-related COVID-19 exposure risk was controlled in the analyses. The results of the two studies demonstrated that on a day when service employees perceived a high level of job insecurity, they felt ego-depleted, which, in turn, was associated with decreased deep acting and increased surface acting. Post hoc findings indicated a significant three-way interaction between off-job control, off-job work-related smartphone use, and daily job insecurity, such that the job insecurity–ego depletion–emotional labor was most pronounced when off-job control was low and off-job work-related smartphone use was high.
