Job insecurity, employee anxiety, and commitment: The moderating role of collective trust in management
Abstract
This article examines the moderating effect of collective trust in management on the relation between job insecurity (both objective and subjective) and employee outcomes (work-related anxiety and organisational commitment). This is contextualised in the modern British workplace which has seen increased employment insecurity and widespread cynicism. We use matched employer-employee data extracted from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, which includes over 16,000 employees from more than 1100 organisations. The multilevel analyses confirm that objective job insecurity (loss of important elements of a job such as cuts in pay, overtime, training, and working hours) are significantly correlated with high levels of work-related anxiety and lower levels of organisational commitment. These correlations are partially mediated by subjective job insecurity (perception of possible job loss). More importantly, collective trust in management (a consensus of management being reliable, honest and fair) significantly attenuates the negative impact of objective job insecurity on organisational commitment, and reduces the impact of subjective job insecurity on work-related anxiety. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations of these effects are discussed.Citation
Wang, W., Mather, K., Seifert, R. (2018) 'Job insecurity, employee anxiety, and commitment: The moderating role of collective trust in management', Journal of Trust Research, (2017) 8 (2), pp. 220-237. doi: 10.1080/21515581.2018.1463229Journal
Journal of Trust ResearchAdditional Links
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21515581.2018.1463229Type
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
2151-5581ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/21515581.2018.1463229
Scopus Count
Collections
The following licence applies to the copyright and re-use of this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/