Catch Me If I Fall! Enacted Uncertainty Avoidance and the Social Safety Net as Country-Level Moderators in the Job Insecurity-Job Attitudes Link

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Debus, Maike E.; Probst, Tahira M.; Koenig, Cornelius J.; Kleinmann, Martin
• 署名单位: University of Zurich; Washington State University; Saarland University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/a0027832
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 690-698
• 关键词: job insecurity; cross-cultural; enacted uncertainty avoidance; Social safety net; stress

摘要

Job insecurity is related to many detrimental outcomes, with reduced job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment being the 2 most prominent reactions. Yet, effect sizes vary greatly, suggesting the presence of moderator variables. On the basis of Lazarus's cognitive appraisal theory, we assumed that country-level enacted uncertainty avoidance and a country's social safety net would affect an individual's appraisal of job insecurity. More specifically, we hypothesized that these 2 country-level variables would buffer the negative relationships between job insecurity and the 2 aforementioned job attitudes. Combining 3 different data sources, we tested the hypotheses in a sample of 15,200 employees from 24 countries by applying multilevel modeling. The results confirmed the hypotheses that both enacted uncertainty avoidance and the social safety net act as cross-level buffer variables. Furthermore, our data revealed that the 2 cross-level interactions share variance in explaining the 2 job attitudes. Our study responds to calls to look at stress processes from a multilevel perspective and highlights the potential importance of governmental regulation when it comes to individual stress processes.