Bending Without Breaking: A Two-Study Examination Of Employee Resilience In The Face Of Job Insecurity

Keywords

Burnout; Coping; Counterproductive work behavior; Job insecurity; Resilience

Abstract

Job insecurity is a ubiquitous threat that has been linked to a number of undesirable emotional, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes. Against this backdrop, popular and academic accounts have hailed the ability to bounce back from threats (i.e., resilience) as a crucial competency. We leverage the cognitiverelational model of stress to examine the extent to which resilience (operationalized as both dispositional tendencies and coping strategies) mitigates several negative consequences of job insecurity. We tested the moderating role of resilience in 2 studies. In a cross-sectional study with a sample of 1,071 university employees in the United States, we found resilience weakened the relationships between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and psychological contract breach. In a 2-wave study with 335 employees demographically representative of working population of the United States, we found that resilience mitigated the negative consequences of job insecurity on emotional exhaustion and interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors assessed 1 month later. Results of both studies converge to support the proposed buffering effect of resilience during times of job insecurity.

Publication Date

1-1-2018

Publication Title

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

Volume

23

Issue

1

Number of Pages

112-126

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000060

Socpus ID

84994311293 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84994311293

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