My Self: the Key to Job Insecurity Predicting My Occupational and General Well-Being

We examine two types of job insecurity as stressors, focusing on (a) the underlying mechanism of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a mediator based on stress-as-offense-to-self (SOS) theory and (b) the boundary conditions or moderators of role clarity and meaningful work based on resources theories. Data were obtained from 324 full-time U.S. employees across two surveys with a 2-week lag to examine job insecurity's ability to predict both occupational and general well-being outcomes. We employed bootstrapping with PROCESS to test moderated mediation hypotheses. As predicted from SOS theory, OBSE mediated the relationships between the two types of job insecurity with employee well-being (job satisfaction, vigor, life satisfaction, and physical health). Additionally, the job resource of meaningful work moderated the relationships for both types of insecurity, and the resource of role clarity moderated the link only for affective insecurity. The conditional indirect effects of job insecurity on the four well-being outcomes via OBSE were stronger for those who have more meaningful work but less clear roles. Overall, the study found that one of the resources, role clarity, moderated the aversive effect of insecurity. Employees with insecure jobs can benefit from opportunities to boost their OBSE for their productive and healthy lives.