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Description
Job insecurity is a particularly relevant topic given the current economic climate. Over the past two years the unemployment rate in the United States has been at its highest since the recession of the early 1980's. It is useful to consider the effects that the current state of job insecurity can have on performance at work. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is of particular interest to organizations during this poor economic climate as it has been shown that OCB leads to greater organizational effectiveness. Considering the mixed results regarding the relationship between job insecurity and OCB, the present study examined the way in which an employee appraises their job insecurity as a potential moderator of this relationship. Lazarus and Folkman's stress and coping theory suggests that the manner in which a stressor is appraised will impact the behavior of the individual. Based on this, the present study hypothesized that different appraisal types (challenge or threat) will lead to higher or lower exhibitions of OCB respectively. There was also an examination of the moderating effects of core self-evaluation (CSE) and perceived organizational support on the relationship between job insecurity and appraisal type. The personality characteristics comprising CSE have been shown to be related to stress appraisal types. Furthermore, Social Exchange Theory suggests that perceived organizational support can be utilized as a resource to combat workplace stress. Participants were collected through a survey web link provided to undergraduate students at San Diego State University. The link was also posted to social networking sites and the online worker pool MTurk. Hierarchical multiple regression and correlations were used to test these hypotheses. No support was found for the moderating effects of stress appraisal types on the relationship between job insecurity and OCB. Support was found for CSE as a moderator of the relationship between job insecurity and both threat and challenge appraisals. Support was also found for perceived organizational support as a moderator of the relationships between job insecurity and both threat and challenge appraisals. These results suggest that both individual and organizational factors have an impact on the way employees perceive stress in the workplace.
