Behavioral reactions to job insecurity climate perceptions: exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20095732

Past work has extensively documented that job insecurity predicts various work- and health-related outcomes. However, limited research has focused on the potential consequences of perceived job insecurity climate. Our objective was to investigate how the psychological climate about losing a job and valuable job features (quantitative and qualitative job insecurity climate, respectively) relate to employees’ exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect behaviors, and whether such climate perceptions explain additional variance in these behaviors over individual job insecurity. Data were collected through an online survey using a convenience sample of employees working in different organizations in Türkiye (N = 245). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that quantitative job insecurity climate was associated with higher levels of loyalty and neglect, while qualitative job insecurity climate was related to higher levels of exit and lower levels of loyalty. Importantly, job insecurity climate explained additional variance over individual job insecurity in exit and loyalty. Our findings underscore the importance of addressing job insecurity in a broader context regarding one’s situation and the psychological collective climate. This study contributes to addressing the knowledge gap concerning job insecurity climate, an emerging construct in the organizational behavior literature, and its incremental impact beyond individual job insecurity. The foremost implication is that organizations need to pay attention to the evolving climate perceptions about the future of jobs in the work environment, because such perceptions are related to critical employee behaviors.