Comunicarea Organizationala Si Nesiguranta Jobului

Economic and Industrial
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Organizational communication: A buffer in times of job insecurity?

Lixin Jiang and Tahira M Probst
Economic and Industrial Democracy 2014 35: 557 originally published online 16 July 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X13489356
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EID0010.1177/0143831X13489356Economic and Industrial DemocracyJiang and Probst
Article
Organizational communication:
A buffer in times of job
insecurity?
Economic and Industrial Democracy

2014, Vol. 35(3) 557579
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0143831X13489356
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Lixin Jiang and Tahira M Probst

Washington State University, USA
Abstract
Using Hobfolls Conservation of Resources (COR) theory as the theoretical framework, this study
explored the effectiveness of organizational communication in attenuating the negative effects
associated with job insecurity on employee attitudes, behaviors, and physical health. Data were
collected from 639 employees in six different companies. As predicted by COR theory, results
suggest that high job insecurity is related to lower job satisfaction, more workplace accidents,
and more health complaints. However, employees who perceived higher levels of positive
organizational communication practices reported fewer negative consequences of job insecurity
compared with employees who reported lower levels of organizational communication. Taken
together, it is suggested organizations that make a greater effort to communicate with employees
may effectively buffer the potentially negative consequences of job insecurity.
Keywords
Conservation of Resources theory, information resources, job insecurity, organizational
communication
While economic crises such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the more recent
Great Recession of 20072009 may raise the salience of job insecurity in the popular
press, a growing body of data indicates that the fear of losing ones job is a persistent
and increasingly common stressor for many of todays workers. For example, as early
as 1997 (a time of great economic growth in the United States), a study commissioned
by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that
52% of workers in the US perceived their jobs were insecure and only 48% were satisfied with their security. More than a decade later and in the immediate aftermath of the
Great Recession, a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association
(2010) found nearly identical numbers with 49% of respondents reporting worries
Corresponding author:
Lixin Jiang, Department of Psychology, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek
Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA.
Email: lixin.jiang@email.wsu.edu
558
Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)
about the future stability of their job. Such findings are certainly not confined to the
US. That same OECD study found a 12% decline in the proportion of European
employees who felt their jobs were secure. Similar trends have also been observed in
Asia (Rust et al., 2003), where market reforms have had a significant impact on
employment security.
Research has consistently linked job insecurity to adverse negative job-related attitudes, safety, and employee health (Cheng and Chan, 2008; Probst and Brubaker, 2001).
Despite this, there is far less research suggesting effective organizational mechanisms for
attenuating these negative consequences. Much of the past research on moderators of job
insecurity has focused on personal characteristics, such as self-efficacy (e.g., Probst,
2001), locus of control (e.g., Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt, 1984), and personality (e.g.,
Chan et al., 2004), which are not easily modifiable. As early as 1990, the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health began recommending that organizations
reduce ambiguity regarding the future of employee jobs by informing employees in a
timely fashion of impending organizational changes that may affect their job security or
their opportunities for career development and advancement (Sauter et al., 1990). Despite
this call, little research has examined whether such efforts are effective in dealing with
the stressor of job insecurity.
Relying on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 1998, 2001),
which not only emphasizes individuals perceptions but also takes into consideration
objective environmental contingencies, the purpose of the current research was to
determine whether such an organizationally based resource positive organizational
communication efforts might serve as a buffer in times of job insecurity, thereby possibly serving as an effective intervention strategy to attenuate the negative consequences of job insecurity. Our research provides multiple unique contributions to the
extant literature.
First, we contribute to COR theory by exploring its application to workplace stress
prevention. COR theory emphasizes the importance of objective environments and
claims that changes in objective circumstances have a bearing on successfully meeting
challenges. According to COR theory, in attempts to protect against resource loss,
recover from losses, and gain resources, people must invest resources, which they possess or which are available to them from their environment. The workplace which
employees inhabit might be able to provide valued resources to help employees to cope
with stress. Therefore, COR theory makes it possible to look at both employees and the
organizations simultaneously and inform preventive interventions designed to help
employees increase their resource pools, ward off the threat of resource loss, and mitigate its effects.
Second, we directly measured employee satisfaction with job insecurity and perceptions of organizational communication, rather than assuming that organizational events
(such as a layoff; see Baruch and Hind, 2000) serve as a proxy for job insecurity or that
organizational practices (such as providing realistic downsizing previews; see Appelbaum
and Donia, 2001) equate to positive perceptions of organizational communication.
Moreover, using job insecurity satisfaction as one of the predictors is especially
important as job insecurity researchers are increasingly recognizing the distinction
between cognitive and affective job insecurity. Specifically, cognitive job insecurity
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Jiang and Probst
refers to perceptions regarding the extent to which the future of ones job is at risk. On
the other hand, affective job insecurity refers to the employees evaluative/affective reaction to that cognitive perception, i.e., whether that perception causes them anxiety, worry,
etc. Not everyone who perceives job insecurity necessarily has a negative evaluation or
affective response to that level of insecurity; it is job security satisfaction that is more
closely (more proximally) related to the relevant employee outcomes (e.g., Probst, 2003).
However, past studies (Knig et al., 2010; Vander Elst et al., 2010; see below for a more
detailed description of these studies) have focused mainly on cognitive rather than affective insecurity.
In this study, we specifically focused on those individuals who are dissatisfied with
their job security (i.e., those who have a negative stress arousal response to their perceived level of job security). Specifically, we tested whether the negative consequences
of such dissatisfaction would be buffered by positive organizational communication
efforts. Therefore, this study makes a theoretical contribution to job insecurity literature
and represents an extension beyond earlier studies.
Third, by exploring the effect of organizational communication on the negative outcomes of job insecurity, our research contributes to the literature on workplace stress
intervention. Workplace stress prevention researchers (e.g., Cooper and Cartwright,
1997) have long called for more research on interventions that are designed to either
eliminate exposure to a stressor (i.e., primary prevention) or minimize the level of stress
arousal once one has been exposed to a stressor such as job insecurity (i.e., secondary
prevention). Organizational communication not only could reduce workers exposure to
job insecurity (Bordia et al., 2004; Vander Elst et al., 2010), but also the extent to which
an organization makes an effort to increase positive communication and information
flow with its employees might reduce the negative consequences due to ambiguity in the
workplace.
Fourth, while both COR theory and some previous research in this area (e.g., Baruch
and Hind, 2000; Konig et al., 2010; Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991; Vander Elst et al.,
2010) are suggestive of the moderating role of communication in the job insecurity
outcome relationship, our study builds upon previous work by examining outcome variables not previously examined in earlier research. Specifically, our outcomes are drawn
from three major dimensions of outcomes including employee attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction), behaviors (i.e., experiences of workplace accidents), and physical well-being
(i.e., physical health complaints).
Finally, using data from six diverse organizations, we examine the generalizability of
the proposed hypotheses across organizations and overcome the generalization problem
that can occur when making inferences based on a single organization (e.g., Knig et al.,
2010; Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991).
In the sections below, we first utilize COR theory to support our predictions regarding the negative consequences of job insecurity and briefly summarize empirical
research on employee reactions to job insecurity focusing on job satisfaction, workplace accidents, and physical health. Next, we describe research on the effects of
organizational communication on these same outcomes. Finally, we develop hypotheses regarding the expected buffering role that such positive organizational
560
communication efforts will play in attenuating the relationship between job insecurity
and these outcomes.
Negative effects of job insecurity

Given the increasing prevalence of job insecurity, it is not surprising that much recent
research has focused on identifying the attitudinal, behavioral, and health-related outcomes of such insecurity, the majority of which are negative in nature (see Cheng and
Chan, 2008; see also Sverke et al., 2002 for meta-analytic findings). In the current study,
we focused on three important employee outcomes: job satisfaction, safety-related
behaviors, and physical health conditions.
COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provides an excellent explanation as to why job insecurity often leads to adverse outcomes and suggests possible mechanisms for how to effectively cope with it. COR theory argues that people strive to retain, protect, and build
resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these
valued resources (Hobfoll, 1989: 516). Psychological stress might occur under three
conditions: (1) resources are lost; (2) resources are threatened with loss; and (3) there is
no resource gain after resource investment. In COR theory, resources are categorized as
objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies, which are valued in their own
right or which serve as a means for attainment of other objects, personal characteristics,
conditions, or energies. Object resources include items with a physical presence such as
housing, clothing, food, and items indicative of status, such as jewelry. Personal characteristics include learned skills and traits such as self-esteem and optimism. Condition
resources are states that allow access to other resources and include marriage and seniority. Last, energy resources, such as time, money, or knowledge, can be exchanged or used
in an attempt to acquire other resources.
Based on COR theory, stable employment can be considered as a condition resource,
which is valued by employees not only for its own purpose (Jahoda, 1981; Warr, 1987) but
also for its ability to facilitate the attainment of other valuable resources (e.g., housing,
food, clothing, income, social status, and respect). Therefore, job insecurity the uncertainty to maintain ones job implies a threat to employees resources in the form of lost
employment and income or loss of valued aspects of ones job (Hellgren et al., 1999).
When employees feel their job is threatened with loss, they might suffer from
negative job-related outcomes (Hobfoll, 1989). Indeed, two meta-analytic summaries of dozens of studies indicate that job insecurity has a consistent negative relationship with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, trust in management,
and job involvement (Cheng and Chan, 2008; Sverke et al., 2002). Therefore, based
on the theoretical basis above and consistent with previous research, we expected
that:
Hypothesis 1a: Job insecurity is negatively associated with job satisfaction.
According to Hobfoll (1989), when faced with an actual or a potential loss of highly
valued resources or a lack of gain after investment of resources, people strive to minimize net loss of resources. In the case of job insecurity, employees confront the potential
561
Jiang and Probst
loss of employment, income, and social status; in order to minimize the net loss of
resources, employees might withdraw from activities that further consume their
resources. Therefore, during times of job insecurity, employees desiring to retain their
jobs may choose to focus less on safety because unsafe behaviors may actually be perceived to be rewarding (i.e., maintain and even gain more resources) (Hofmann and
Stetzer, 1996) if they allow employees to perform work tasks more quickly (Slappendal
et al., 1993). As such, when employees have high job insecurity, it is expected that safety
activities will be adversely affected.
Indeed, an emerging body of literature indicates that job insecurity has a negative
effect on safety-related behaviors of employees. Probst and Brubaker (2001) found that
the effects of job insecurity on safety compliance were mediated by insecuritys effects
on safety knowledge and safety motivation. In turn, lower compliance resulted in more
accidents and injuries. A subsequent comprehensive review of more than 90 studies conducted in Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Africa (Quinlan, 2005) found
evidence of consistent adverse associations between precarious employment, job insecurity, and occupational safety outcomes such as injury rates, safety knowledge, and safety
compliance. Moving beyond those correlational studies, Probst (2002) designed a laboratory experiment in order to examine the effects of threatened job loss on employee
adherence to safety policies, work quality, and productivity levels in a controlled laboratory setting. By manipulating the presence or absence of layoff decisions, she found that
job insecurity can have a causal negative impact on employee safety behaviors. In line
with these earlier findings, we expected that:
Hypothesis 1b: Job insecurity is positively associated with workplace accidents.
Within the framework of COR theory, the potential loss of valued resources (e.g.,
the permanence of ones job) might lead to heightened psychological strain, which is
predicted to be linked with many problems of physical health. Indeed, job insecurity
has been shown to have negative physical health implications for employees that are
on par with the health effects of a serious illness (Burgard et al., 2009). One of the
earliest studies on this topic found that the stress of possible termination is associated
with physiological responses such as increased norepinephrine excretion, serum creatinine levels, serum uric acid levels, and serum cholesterol levels (Cobb, 1974). More
recent studies have shown that job insecurity is linked to decrements in general physical health (Cheng and Chan, 2008; Sverke et al., 2002), poor eating habits (Hannerz et
al., 2004), high blood pressure, high cholesterol (Pollard, 2001), and negative perceptions of good health across 10 European countries (Lszl et al., 2010). By examining
episodic and persistent job insecurity and job loss over extended periods of time ranging from three to ten years, Burgard et al. (2009) found that persistent job insecurity is
consistently associated with significantly worse self-rated health than episodic or no
job insecurity even after controlling for objective job loss over time, prior health, job
characteristics, and sociodemographic characteristics. Therefore, consistent with previous research, we predicted that:
Hypothesis 1c: Job insecurity is positively associated with health complaints.
562
Positive effects of organizational communication

Organizational communication is defined as a process through which information about
the workplace and employees job itself is transmitted by the organization to its employees (Price, 1997). The purpose of organizational communication is to disseminate information to employees so that all employees have timely, important, and relevant
information regarding their job and the workplace (e.g., merger and acquisitions, layoffs,
takeover attempts, new company policies). Based on COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989), energies, as one of the aforementioned four resource categories, include time, money, and
knowledge, and allow access to other resources. In the workplace, valuable and relevant
information transmitted by the organization and upper management through organizational communication practices might serve as an energy resource. According to Hobfoll,
individuals value such informational resources because they can aid in attainment or
protection of other valued resources. For example, in an organizational setting, advanced
notice of impending job loss may provide employees with enough time to find a new
employer. Information can be a valuable resource in that such information increases the
predictability of a working situation, makes it more understandable, and helps employees
to regain a sense of control.
As noted earlier, COR theory would suggest that people with greater resources (such
as access to information) are likely to experience a higher level of job satisfaction.
Conversely, in a workplace where the organizational communication is perceived to be
poor, employee job attitudes might be negatively affected. Such a positive relationship
between organizational communication and employee job satisfaction has found support
in numerous empirical studies (e.g., Giri and Kumar, 2010; Goris, 2007; Pincus, 1986;
Rodwell et al., 1998; Wheeless et al., 1983). For example, based on 91 paramedics from
a large Canadian municipal land ambulance service, Carrire and Bourque (2008) found
that organizational communication practices were positively related to job satisfaction
and affective commitment while organizational communication satisfaction fully mediated such a relationship. Conversely, poor organizational communication has been demonstrated to be related to lower organizational commitment, reduced production, greater
absenteeism, increased industrial unrest, and higher turnover (Hargie et al., 1999). In
fact, after a review of the literature since the mid-1970s, King et al. (1988: 36) conclude
that there is a consistently clear and positive pattern of relationships between an employees perceptions of communications and his or her job satisfaction. Therefore, we predicted that:
Hypothesis 2a: Positive organizational communication practices are positively associated with job satisfaction.
Organizational communication might also help employees to gain other resources
such as physical safety by motivating and promoting employees to follow safety policies
and take safety actions (Barling and Zacharatos, 1999). Indeed, the importance of organizational communication in promoting safer working has already been identified by prior
theoretical models (e.g., Barling and Zacharatos, 1999) and many empirical studies (e.g.,
Griffin and Neal, 2000; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996; Hofmann et al., 1995). For instance,
563
Jiang and Probst
in a longitudinal study of 161 employees in a glass manufacturing setting, Parker et al.

(2001) found that organizational communication quality had a significant positive relationship with safe working after controlling for the prior level of this variable. In a similar vein, Mearns et al. (2003) conducted safety climate surveys on 13 offshore oil and gas
installations and found that communication measurement was significantly correlated
with self-reported accident proportions and the rate of dangerous occurrences, and the
rate of reporting of injuries, diseases, and dangerous occurrences provided by the official
installation managers. In addition, Zohar (2002) argues that supervisors who demonstrate greater individualized consideration in their supervisory practices support open,
informal safety communication, which, in turn, influences injury rates. Therefore, we
predicted that:
Hypothesis 2b: Positive organizational communication practices are negatively associated with workplace accidents.
Organizational life includes uncertainty about what rules, norms, and procedures to
follow, how to perform a task, and what to anticipate in performance appraisals (Teboul,
1994). The examples of uncertainties in the organization include role ambiguity and unfamiliarity with policies during organizational entry (Mignerey et al., 1995) and job transfers (Kramer, 1996), unknown likelihood of effectively implementing innovation and
change (Lewis and Seibold, 1996), or uncertainty about job security following organizational downsizing (Casey et al., 1997). Information resources provided by organizational
communication practices help employees to make sense of the specific working environment (Sias and Bartoo, 2007), better understand and predict their situations (Kramer,
1999), and therefore reduce the uncertainty and increase predictability in times of organizational change (Kramer et al., 2004). As proposed by COR theory, when individuals
accrue such resource surpluses as a result of the increased information resources provided
by conditions such as positive organizational communication, they are likely to experience positive well-being. Therefore, it is conceivable that employees who are equipped
with such information resources might be healthier compared to those with fewer information resources. Indeed, research has demonstrated that role ambiguity characterized by
information deficiency was a significant predictor of psychological strain (ODriscoll and
Beehr, 1994) and burnout (Schwab and Iwanicki, 1982), which has been shown to cause
diseases and health complaints (Maslach et al., 2001). Further, Vander Elst et al. (2010)
found that more positive perceptions of organizational communication were related to
greater work engagement and less need for recovery from job demands. To our best
knowledge, however, there have been no studies specifically investigating the link
between organizational communication/information sharing and employee physical
health complaints. Nevertheless, information transmitted through organizational communication practices helping employees to better understand their situation and reduce their
uncertainties can serve as an energy resource and therefore might help employees to reap
the benefit of physical well-being. As such, we predicted that:
Hypothesis 2c: Positive organizational communication practices are negatively associated with health complaints.
564
Buffering effects of organizational communication

Based on the growing body of research documenting the adverse effects of job insecurity
coupled with the pervasiveness of such insecurity, it would seem imperative to identify
organizational interventions that might attenuate the relationship between job insecurity
and these negative consequences. Although organizations may not be able to guarantee
lifetime job security, the current research sought to examine whether positive organizational communication efforts might be a promising candidate for such an intervention.
COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) predicts that not only a lack of resources can cause stress,
but that access to resources can potentially buffer the stressorstrain relationship.
According to COR theory, individuals already lacking in resources will be more susceptible to resources loss and those with plenty resources will have more opportunities for
resource gain. Specifically, the obtainment of one major resource is typically related to
greater resources gain and the initial resource promotes future resource gain, thereby
leading to gain spirals. On the contrary, loss spirals occur when resources are
expended, and are therefore not available to cope with future loss threats, thus potentially
resulting in future loss. Moreover, Hobfoll posited that in attempts to offset resource loss,
individuals call on resources available to them from their environment.
In the organizational settings, therefore, information sharing via organizational communication may counter some of the negative effects experienced under conditions of
job insecurity. The combination of a fear of job loss and a lack of information from the
organization, in contrast, may be particularly stressful. The increased vulnerability
results from information deficiency to offset loss, weakening an already compromised
resource reservoir caused by the perceived threat of losing ones job. In other words, the
uncertainty about the continuance of ones job motivates individuals to seek information
from their immediate workplace (Kramer, 1999); however, poor organizational communication practices limit the possibility to gain information from the organization and
management, thereby potentially exacerbating the consequences resulting from job insecurity experienced by employees within the organization. Conversely, employees having
access to information resources via positive organizational communication could gain
more resources to cope with the adverse consequences of job insecurity. Taken together,
organizational communication might serve as a buffer against such adverse consequences
as decreased job satisfaction, more workplace accidents, and increased physical impairments caused by job insecurity.
In a first attempt to assess whether enhanced organizational communication could
dampen the dysfunctional effects of an organizational merger, Schweiger and DeNisi
(1991) examined the effectiveness of a realistic merger preview in reducing employee
uncertainty. Analogous to a realistic job preview, a realistic merger preview provides
detailed information regarding the timeline of the merger, how the merger will affect
employees and other pertinent information. In a rare longitudinal field experiment in this
context, Schweiger and DeNisi were able to provide realistic merger previews to employees in one plant while having a control plant where the merger was managed in a more
traditional format. Although both plants experienced initial negative effects as a result of
the announced upcoming merger, the plant that was offered a realistic merger preview
rebounded more quickly from the negative effects, whereas employees in the control
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Jiang and Probst
plant continued to report negative job attitudes, a lack of trust toward the company, and
lower levels of self-reported performance four months following the merger announcement. Thus, as the authors noted, A realistic merger preview seems to function at least
as an inoculation that makes employees resistant to the negative effects of mergers and
acquisitions, and its effects may go beyond that (Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991: 129).
Although the results from the realistic merger previews were promising, this study did
not measure employee perceived job insecurity and the extent to which employees were
exposed to organizational communication. Therefore, it was difficult to make any confirmatory conclusion about the underlying mechanisms of realistic merger previews.
Similarly, based on data from nine case studies, Appelbaum and Donia (2001) developed a model for providing a realistic downsizing preview to counter the negative
effects associated with surviving an organizational downsizing, known as survivor syndrome. Based on their analysis, they concluded that it is critical to continuously inform
employees when downsizing is being considered in order to ward off the negative effects
and to ensure that employees understand and are able to adapt to their new psychological
contract with the organization. In line with these assertions, Baruch and Hind (2000)
contrary to their original expectations found no evidence for the survivor syndrome
in their study of layoff survivors. In follow-up interviews and surveys, they concluded
that the reason so few negative outcomes were seen among employees in their study was
due to a concerted effort on the part of management to consistently and openly communicate with employees during every stage of the organizational change process. However,
both Appelbaum and Donias study and Baruch and Hinds study did not directly measure job insecurity and organizational communication.
Two recent empirical studies have directly investigated the moderating effect of
organizational communication on the consequences of job insecurity (albeit with different dependent variables of interest). Specifically, Vander Elst et al. (2010) tested whether
organizational communication might buffer the negative effects of job insecurity on
work engagement and need for recovery. Although they found evidence for positive main
effects of communication, they did not find the anticipated interaction effects. In a Swiss
study, Knig et al. (2010) found that organizational communication had a beneficial
effect on employee outcomes (i.e., self-reported task performance), but this effect was
only present when the employee job insecurity level was low. Although the form of the
interaction suggested a boundary effect of communication, rather than the expected buffering effect, the authors argued that this may have been due to the low reliability of the
perceived communication measurement (Cronbachs alpha was. 62), which was measured by three items drawn from an original eight items (Borg, 1989) and adapted to the
specific company. Despite the mixed empirical findings to date, we argue that it is important to continue to explore whether positive organizational communication might attenuate the negative consequences of job insecurity based on the aforementioned strong
theoretical basis. Specifically, we predicted that:
Hypotheses 3ac: Employees who perceive organizational communication efforts to
be positive have higher job satisfaction, experience fewer workplace accidents, and
fewer physical health conditions in times of job insecurity compared with employees
who have negative perceptions of their organizational communication.
566
Table 1. Demographic characteristics across data sites.

Variable
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Site 5
Site 6
Overall N
Gender
Male
Female
Median age category (years)
Median education category (years)a
Tenure (years)
94
136
47
22
128
212
52
41
3539
3
3.09
106
21
3539
2
4.44
19
25
3539
2
7.36
15
5
3034
2
5.56
104
20
4549
3
18.46
173
38
4044
3
2.94
Notes: Site 1 = food-processing plant; Site 2 = light manufacturing company; Site 3 = food-processing facility;
Site 4 = heating and cooling company; Site 5 = pulp and paper mill; Site 6 = copper mine.
a2 = high school diploma or equivalent; 3 = high school diploma plus some tech training or apprenticeship.
Method
Participants and procedures
In order to test our hypotheses, data were collected from 639 employees working in six
different organizations located in the northwestern and southwestern United States
(food-processing plant N = 94; light manufacturing company N = 136; food-processing
facility N = 47; heating and cooling company N = 22; pulp and paper mill N = 128; and
copper mine N = 212).
Examination of the demographic characteristics of the sample revealed that the majority of participants were male (73%) and Caucasians (79%) with an average 3.76 years
(SD = 5.01 years) on that job. The mode of the education category of employees (34.4%)
was a high school education or equivalent. The median (and modal) age category of
employees was 3539. Nineteen per cent of respondents were racial/ethnic minorities.
Detailed employee demographics are reported in Table 1.
Measures
Job insecurity. The Job Security Satisfaction (JSS) scale (Probst, 2003) was used to
measure employee attitudes regarding their job insecurity. The Probst JSS scale measures the extent to which individuals are dissatisfied with their job security (i.e., have a
negative affective response to their perceived level of job security). Previous studies
using this scale have found the scale to be reliable and valid (e.g., Probst, 2004). Participants responded on a three-point scale (yes, ?, no) measuring the extent to which nine
adjectives or phrases described their affective reactions to their perceived level of job
security (e.g., never been more secure, never-wracking, cause for concern).
Responses were scored such that higher numbers reflect more affective job insecurity.
The Cronbachs alpha reliability of the scale was .92.
Organizational communication. Nine items were written for this study to tap employee
perceptions of communication within their organization. Using a seven-point scale
567
Jiang and Probst
ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, employees responded to the following
items: When plans at work change unexpectedly, my supervisor tells me why, Management is effective at communicating new company policies, I get the information I
need about the company, Management keeps us informed about how the company is
doing, The lines of communication between management and employees are always
open, I am informed when changes are going to be made that will affect my job, I
believe what I hear from management, Management and labor do not communicate
well with each other, and Future plans for this organization are communicated to and
discussed with all affected employees. An exploratory factor analysis extracted a single
dominant factor accounting for 56.33% of the variance with item loadings ranging from
.49 to .84. Responses were scored such that higher numbers reflect positive perceptions
regarding organizational communication practices. Cronbachs alpha reliability of the
organizational communication scale was .83.
Job satisfaction. The Job Descriptive Index (Smith et al., 1969) scale was used to measure
employee job satisfaction. Participants responded on a three-point scale (yes, ?, no) to
assess their satisfaction with pay, promotions, co-workers, supervisor, and the work
itself. Sample items from each of the five attitude scales, respectively, were barely live
on income, dead end job, responsible, hard to please, and rewarding. As an example, the instructions for the employee pay satisfaction scale read as follows: What is
your pay like? Check YES if the item describes your pay; NO if the item does not
describe your pay, and Dont know if you cannot decide. The Cronbachs alpha reliability of the job satisfaction scale was .92.
Workplace accidents. Workplace accidents were measured with two items developed by
Smecko and Hayes (1999) to assess the number of reported and unreported accidents
experienced by employees. The exact items are How many safety accidents have you
experienced and reported to your supervisor in the last 12 months? and How many
accidents have you experienced but not reported in the last 12 months? These two
indices were summed to obtain the total number of experienced workplace accidents.
Health complaints.Psychosomatic health of respondents was measured using
Hanischs (1992) Health Conditions Index, which tallies the total number of 12
health conditions (e.g., severe headaches, high blood pressure) experienced by
respondents. Employees responded yes or no to these 12 health conditions. Higher
numbers reflect more health-related problems ranging from 0 to 12. Because this is
a summed index of distinct physical health conditions, it is not appropriate to compute a Cronbachs alpha.
Results
Table 2 presents descriptive statistics, Cronbachs alpha, and zero-order product-moment
correlations among the variables of interest. As can be seen, job insecurity was negatively related to job satisfaction and positively related to the number of accidents and
health complaints. On the other hand, organizational communication practices were
568
Table 2. Descriptive statistics and interscale correlations of study variables.

Variable
SD
1. Job insecurity
2. Organizational communication
3. Job satisfaction
4. Number of accidents
5. Health complaints
606
619
638
580
603
1.44
4.17
2.01
1.62
2.15
.89
1.37
.62
6.48
2.27
.92
.83
.92
.49**
.47**
.11**
.29**
.57**
.16* .13*
.35** .36* .25**
*p < .05, **p < .01.
positively related to job satisfaction and negatively related to the number of workplace
accidents and health complaints.
Because job insecurity, organizational communication, and employee outcomes may
differ across different companies, we performed a one-way ANOVA to explore the effect
of site. It was found that the dummy-coded site variable did significantly differ in employee
job satisfaction, F (5, 632) = 30.99, p < .001, and health complaints, F (5, 597) = 4.57, p <
.001, but not in the number of workplace accidents. Similarly, a one-way ANOVA was
performed to explore the effect of gender on outcomes. It was found that gender produced
significant effects on job satisfaction, F (1, 616) = 4.85, p = .028, and health complaints, F
(1, 583) = 6.29, p = .012, but not on the number of workplace accidents. In addition, age
also had a significant effect on health complaints, F (8, 581) = 1.99, p = .045, but not on job
satisfaction or the number of workplace accidents. Therefore, we included sites, gender,
and age in our subsequent analyses as control variables. Table 3 presents the beta coefficients, equation statistics, and estimates of effect size for each of the regression analyses.
In order to control for Type I error rates, we performed an omnibus multivariate multiple regression analysis in which job satisfaction, health complaints, and accidents were
included as criterion variables while job insecurity, organizational communication, and
their interaction were included as predictors. This revealed a significant main effect for
job insecurity, F (3, 407) = 14.13, 2 = .094, p < .001, and for organizational communication, F (3, 407) = 3.62, 2 = .026, p = .013, and a significant interaction between job
insecurity and organizational communication, F (3, 407) = 3.20, 2 = .023, p = .023.
Therefore, univariate multiple regression results were examined next.
Outcomes of job insecurity

In support of Hypothesis 1, higher levels of job insecurity were related to lower job satisfaction ( = .33, p < .001), more workplace accidents ( = .09, p = .092), and more
physical health complaints ( = .18, p < .001).
Outcomes of organizational communication

More positive perceptions of organizational communication were significantly related to
higher job satisfaction ( = .35, p < .001), fewer workplace accidents ( = .13, p = .010),
and fewer reported health complaints ( = .22, p < .001), thus providing support for
Hypothesis 2.
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Jiang and Probst

Table 3. Regression analysis results: beta weights and equation statistics.
Step and variable
Job satisfaction
Number of accidents
Health complaints
Step 1
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Site 5
Gender
Age
R2
F
p
Step 2
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Site 5
Gender
Age
Job insecurity
Communication
R2
F
p
Step 3
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Site 5
Gender
Age
Job insecurity
Communication
Job insecurity Communication
R2
F
p
(dfs = 7, 558)
.36***
.17***
.38***
.07
.44***
.06
.06
.213
21.63
.000
(dfs = 9, 565)
.36***
.16***
.39***
.08**
.29***
.03
.05
.33***
.35***
.319
190.04
.000
(dfs = 10, 555)
.36***
.17***
.39***
.08**
.28***
.03
.05
.54***
.23***
.19*
(dfs = 7, 514)
.02
.01
.04
.02
.01
.07
.06
.010
.73
.644
(dfs = 9, 512)
.02
.00
.04
.02
.05
.07
.05
.09+
.13*
.033
8.91
.000
(dfs = 10, 511)
.02
.01
.04
.02
.06
.08+
.06
.37**
.03
.27*
(dfs = 7, 534)
.11*
.03
.05
.02
.12*
.08+
.05
.043
3.42
.001
(dfs = 9, 532)
.11
.03*
.04
.03
.03
.07
.05
.18***
.22***
.111
35.04
.000
(dfs =10, 531)
.11*
.03
.04
.03
.02
.06
.05
.40**
.09
.21+
.005
5.82
.016
.010
5.29
.022
.006
3.69
.055
Notes: +p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. Site 6 and male served as the reference group in the dummy
coding.
570

3
Job satisfaction
2.5
2
1.5
1
Low organizational communication

High organizational communication
0.5
0
Low job insecurity
High job insecurity
Figure 1. Buffering effects of organizational communication on decreased job satisfaction

resulting from job insecurity.
Interaction effects
Of primary interest to this study were the interaction results. As predicted by Hypothesis
3, the present results revealed consistent interaction effects between job insecurity and
organizational communication on all dependent variables: job satisfaction ( = .19, p =
.016), the number of workplace accidents ( = .27, p = .022), and health impairment (
= .21, p = .055). We also conducted simple slopes analyses (Aiken and West, 1991). The
simple slopes of the regressions of job satisfaction (simple slope = .22, t = 7.08, p <
.001), the number of workplace accidents (simple slope = .59, t = 2.03, p = .043), and
health impairments (simple slope = .45, t = 4.06, p < .001) onto job insecurity under high
levels of organizational communication were significant. With low organizational communication, the relationships between job insecurity and job satisfaction (simple slope =
.56, t = 4.89, p < .001), the number of workplace accidents (simple slope = 3.61, t =
2.60, p = .010), and health impairments (simple slope = 1.39, t = 2.66, p = .008) were also
significant. Moreover, the form of the interactions was consistent with our predictions
(see Figures 13). Specifically, organizational communication attenuated the negative
effects of high job insecurity on job satisfaction such that size of the relationship between
job insecurity and job satisfaction was smaller under the positive organizational communication condition. A similar pattern of findings was seen for interactions on the safetyrelated behaviors and health outcomes.
Discussion
Although a substantial body of literature has consistently documented the adverse consequences associated with employee job insecurity, our results suggest that organizational interventions to enhance communication efforts may help attenuate some of these
adverse effects. Specifically, the results of this study are consistent with previous research
571
Jiang and Probst

5.5
Number of accidents
4.5
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0.5

1.5
2.5
Low job insecurity
High job insecurity
Figure 2. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased number of accidents

(e.g., Cheng and Chan, 2008; Probst and Brubaker, 2001) demonstrating the negative
effects of job insecurity on employee job satisfaction, experienced workplace accidents,
and physical health. We also demonstrate the positive outcomes of organizational communication on these variables, comporting with Chen et al.s (2006) results.
More importantly, as theorized by Knig at al. (2010) and Vander Elst et al. (2010),
the consistent interactive effects reveal that positive organizational communication may
attenuate the negative consequences of job insecurity. Although that earlier research did
not find such interactive effects for work engagement, job performance, or need for
recovery, our data suggest that the effects of job insecurity on employee attitudes (i.e.,
job satisfaction), employee safety (i.e., the number of accidents), and physical health
outcomes may be attenuated under conditions of positive organizational communication.
One possible explanation for these disparate findings may be that we focused on measuring affective job insecurity, whereas those earlier studies used measures of cognitive job
insecurity. It may be that organizational communication only has interactive effects with
job insecurity when specifically measuring employee levels of affective insecurity (i.e.,
the extent to which individuals have negative affective evaluations of their perceived
level of job insecurity) rather than cognitive insecurity (i.e., the perceived level of job
security). Our findings suggest that among individuals who are dissatisfied with their job
security (i.e., those who have a negative affective response to their perceived level of job
security) the negative consequences of such dissatisfaction are attenuated by positive
organizational communication efforts.
Our results are also consistent with the propositions set forth by COR theory.
According to Hobfoll (1989), when facing with the threat of perceived resource loss,
people suffer from psychological strain. This is consistent with our results, which indicated that under the circumstance of the threat of job loss, employees have lower levels
of job satisfaction, experience more workplace accidents, and report more health-related
complaints. Moreover, as predicted by COR theory, employees with information passed
572

4
Health complaints
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1

0.5
0
Low job insecurity
High job insecurity
Figure 3. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased health complaints

by organizational communication acting as a resource tend to experience positive results.

Indeed, this study indicated that organizational communication could not only increase
employee evaluations of job satisfaction, but also enhance employee safety-related
behaviors and physical health.
Additionally, COR theory posits that in the face of the threat of a net resource loss,
people strive to minimize such loss. Therefore, if they can gain other available resources
to compensate the perceived potential resource loss, individuals might rebound to their
original state. Information shared by organizational communication might be one such
valuable resource when individuals are confronted with job insecurity. Our results supported our prediction that employees could reap benefits from positive organizational
communication in times of job insecurity. However, when employees had more negative
perceptions of the organizational communication, employees with higher levels of affective job insecurity reported lower job satisfaction, eight times as many workplace accidents, and nearly five times as many physical complaints than employees with lower
levels of affective job insecurity.
This study highlights both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, we
built our hypotheses on COR theory and therefore expanded the application of COR
theory. COR theory delineates the importance of objective environments and claims
that changes in objective circumstances exert an impact on individuals ability to successfully respond to challenges. Our results indicate that in order to attenuate the negative outcomes of job insecurity, such an environmental change as enhanced positive
organizational communication practices might be a promising avenue. Other examples
of organization-oriented stress interventions include participative decision making
(Probst, 2005), perceived organizational support, leadermember exchange, and organizational justice (Zhao et al., 2010). Applying COR theory in the area of work stress
prevention is quite encouraging as researchers identify more resources which are valuable for employees and which are also applicable in the workplace.
573
Jiang and Probst
Past research has largely focused on perceived (i.e., cognitive) job insecurity and its
negative outcomes. This study contributed to job insecurity literature by extending this
research to explore affective job insecurity, its adverse consequences, and whether
organizational communication might mitigate its negative consequences. From a theoretical standpoint, this distinction between job insecurity perception and job insecurity
satisfaction may be important, because not everyone who perceives job insecurity necessarily has a negative evaluation or affective reaction to that level of insecurity. Moreover,
as research has found (e.g., Probst, 2003), job insecurity satisfaction (i.e., affective insecurity) is more proximally related to employee outcomes than cognitive insecurity.
The results of the present study suggest that organizational communication may play
a potentially important role in attenuating the relationship seen between job insecurity,
downsizings, and mergers and employee psychological and physical outcomes and
safety-related behaviors. Job insecurity, coupled with its negative consequences, is likely
to remain common in todays working life plagued with organizational uncertainty.
Moreover, enhanced organizational communication may not be able to reduce employee
exposure to such insecurity. However, as demonstrated by this study, the negative outcomes of job insecurity may potentially be offset if organizations make a greater effort to
enhance the communication between management and employees. Practically speaking,
the attractiveness of this intervention is enhanced when one considers that providing
increased communication within an organization is a relatively low-cost endeavor. For
example, face-to-face meetings are convenient, email is free, and bulletin board postings
are inexpensive. Thus, organizations may consider providing employees with brief daily
or weekly updates regarding the urgent news, future organizational changes or events to
help avoid the negative effects of workplace stress on employees. The positive main
effects of organizational communication suggest that this recommendation is also pertinent even under conditions of relative job security and organizational stability.
Limitations and future research directions

While the results of the present research were supportive of our hypotheses, there are
several limitations to this study that should be noted and addressed in future research.
First, our results are based on correlational self-report data. As a result there is always the
risk that the relationships observed may be spurious resulting from some unknown
third variables that are related to both organizational communication and employee reactions to job insecurity. While our findings suggest that organizational communication
might buffer the relationship between job insecurity and adverse outcomes, in the future,
a field experiment that manipulates (and measures perceived) organizational communication is required to address this limitation.
Moreover, due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, our ability to make inferences of causality is limited. Organizational communication is a process rather than a
static variable (Roberts and OReilly, 1974). Given that some causal processes take
longer to unfold than others, in the future, greater efforts should be made to conduct
longitudinal investigations that incorporate time as an independent variable of interest. It
is also important to specify beforehand, and confirm empirically, the temporal intervals
required for these inferred causal processes to unfold.
574
In addition, since organizational communication is essentially an organizational-level

activity and employees across different organizations may differ in their perceptions of
organizational communication, future studies would benefit from utilizing a multilevel
modeling approach to investigate the effects of organizational-level differences in communication on individual-level outcomes of job insecurity. With a large number of
organizations, employing a multilevel modeling approach could partition the variance
between organizations and variance within organizations. Unfortunately, in the current
study, we were limited to six organizations. While this did not allow us to use a multilevel approach, nevertheless, the consistent effects across the wide variety of organizations lend support to the external generalizability of our findings.
Future research should also investigate whether the medium used to transmit information to employees has an impact on the effectiveness of organizational communication.
Based on the theory of media richness processes (Daft and Lengel, 1984), communication media can be categorized based on their capacity to convey non-verbal cues, both
visual and auditory. Therefore, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, or written memos
provide different amounts of information (Daft and Lengel, 1984; Lengel and Daft,
1988). Although it seemed that the richer the media, the more information is shared during the communication process (Daft and Lengel, 1984; Lengel and Daft, 1988), it was
found that with regard to information about their job and the business unit individuals
belong to, rich communication channels such as face-to-face meetings with their bosses,
phone conversations, and departmental meetings account for a large amount of employee
communication satisfaction (Byrne and LeMay, 2006). On the other hand, when it comes
to information about the organization as a whole, employees are more satisfied when it
is delivered via lean communication media such as the quarterly meetings, the employee
newsletter, or email (Byrne and LeMay, 2006). Byrne and LeMay suggest that because
company information does not have an immediate influence on individual employees
they prefer it to be delivered via lean media so that they could attend to it when convenient. Otherwise, employees might be overwhelmed by ongoing meetings. Hence, we suggest that future studies measure which communication channels are employed when
employers transmit to employees information about changes which directly and indirectly affect them to determine the boundary conditions of the effects observed in the
current study.
Future research might also consider the distinction between measuring the quality of
the communication and employee satisfaction with their organizations communication
efforts. Past research has shown that more is better; no matter how much information
the organization gives to employees, employees always want more (Zimmerman et al.,
1996). Therefore, in the future, researchers might consider including an evaluative measurement of organizational communication satisfaction in order to determine if employee
satisfaction with the quantity and quality of information and communication channels is
predictive over and above measures of the organizational communication efforts
themselves.
Following the consistent moderating effects of organizational communication on negative outcomes of job insecurity in our study, a valuable follow-up research question is
to determine why organizational communication functions as a buffering moderator, i.e.,
to identify mediating mechanisms responsible for the observed effects. For example, it is
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Jiang and Probst
unclear whether positive organizational communication is beneficial solely due to

increased informational resources (as might be posited by COR theory) or if these effects
are also due to positive organizational communication being seen as a sign to employees
that they are trusted and valued by management. Therefore, future studies should explore
these mediating variables as potential explanatory variables linking organizational communication to the observed positive outcomes.
Finally, although this present study was taken from multiple organizations and used
diverse dependent variables (e.g., attitudinal, behavioral, and health-related), there are
many other known outcomes of job insecurity. Thus, future research should extend the
current findings to examine other outcomes such as turnover intentions, work withdrawal
behaviors, and organizational citizenship behaviors.
Conclusion
In summary, based on the observed buffering effects of organizational communication on
the negative consequences of job insecurity, we suggest that increasing positive organizational communication might be fruitfully used as a secondary intervention technique to
counter the negative effects of job insecurity. We argue that the benefits of organizational
communication may accrue via minimizing the potential uncertainty inherent in the work
environment during times of job insecurity, thereby attenuating its negative influence on
employees (Cooper and Cartwright, 1997). When assessing the effectiveness of interventions to increase positive organizational communication, future research should measure
both employee perceptions of and satisfaction with organizational communication. It is
important to examine the actual organizational penetration (Cox et al., 2000) and
employee evaluation of organizational communication, because employees as message
receivers might differ in the extent to which they are exposed to and digest such information (for an example, see Randall et al., 2005). Further, even when organizations make
great efforts to provide information to employees, employees might still want more
(Zimmerman et al., 1996). Despite the need for follow-up research, the current findings
suggest that enhancing organizational communication may lead to increased employee job
satisfaction, workplace safety, and employee well-being. Further, such an organizational
practice would benefit not only employees but also employers in times of job insecurity.
Funding
This research was funded in part by a WSU College of Liberal Arts Research Mini-Grant awarded
to the second author.
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Author biographies
Lixin Jiang is a PhD student at Washington State University and will graduate in May 2013. Her
research interests have focused on work stress prevention and positive organizational scholarship.
Specifically, she is interested in using resources at the individual, positional, and organizational
levels to combat the negative consequences of work stress.
Tahira Probst is Professor of Psychology at Washington State University, Vancouver, where she
conducts research primarily in the areas of job insecurity and economic stress. She is currently
Associate Editor of Stress and Health and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Occupational
Health Psychology, Military Psychology, and the Journal of Business and Psychology.

Comunicarea Organizationala Si Nesiguranta Jobului

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Comunicarea Organizationala Si Nesiguranta Jobului

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Economic and Industrial

Organizational communication: A buffer in times of job insecurity?

>> Version of Record - Aug 11, 2014

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EID0010.1177/0143831X13489356Economic and Industrial DemocracyJiang and Probst

Economic and Industrial Democracy

Lixin Jiang and Tahira M Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

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Jiang and Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Negative effects of job insecurity

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Jiang and Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Positive effects of organizational communication

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Jiang and Probst

in a longitudinal study of 161 employees in a glass manufacturing setting, Parker et al.

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Buffering effects of organizational communication

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Jiang and Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Table 1. Demographic characteristics across data sites.

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Jiang and Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Table 2. Descriptive statistics and interscale correlations of study variables.

.35** .36* .25**

*p < .05, **p < .01.

Outcomes of job insecurity

Outcomes of organizational communication

Jiang and Probst

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Low organizational communication

High job insecurity

Figure 1. Buffering effects of organizational communication on decreased job satisfaction

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Jiang and Probst

Low organizational communication

High job insecurity

Figure 2. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased number of accidents

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

Low organizational communication

High job insecurity

Figure 3. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased health complaints

by organizational communication acting as a resource tend to experience positive results.

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Jiang and Probst

Limitations and future research directions

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Economic and Industrial Democracy 35(3)

In addition, since organizational communication is essentially an organizational-level

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Jiang and Probst