Comunicarea Organizationala Si Nesiguranta Jobului

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2014 35: 557 originally published online 16 July 2013Economic and Industrial DemocracyLixin Jiang and Tahira M Probst

Organizational communication: A buffer in times of job insecurity?

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Organizational communication: A buffer in times of job insecurity?

Lixin Jiang and Tahira M ProbstWashington State University, USA

AbstractUsing Hobfoll’s 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.

KeywordsConservation 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 2007–2009 may raise the salience of job insecurity in the popular press, a growing body of data indicates that the fear of losing one’s job is a persistent and increasingly common stressor for many of today’s 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 satis-fied 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: [email protected]

489356 EID0010.1177/0143831X13489356Economic and Industrial DemocracyJiang and Probst2013

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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 atti-tudes, 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 pos-sibly serving as an effective intervention strategy to attenuate the negative conse-quences 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 pos-sess 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 miti-gate its effects.

Second, we directly measured employee satisfaction with job insecurity and percep-tions 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



Jiang and Probst 559

refers to perceptions regarding the extent to which the future of one’s job is at risk. On the other hand, affective job insecurity refers to the employee’s evaluative/affective reac-tion 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 (König 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 affec-tive 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 per-ceived 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 out-comes 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 vari-ables not previously examined in earlier research. Specifically, our outcomes are drawn from three major dimensions of outcomes including employee attitudes (i.e., job satis-faction), 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., König et al., 2010; Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991).

In the sections below, we first utilize COR theory to support our predictions regard-ing the negative consequences of job insecurity and briefly summarize empirical research on employee reactions to job insecurity focusing on job satisfaction, work-place accidents, and physical health. Next, we describe research on the effects of organizational communication on these same outcomes. Finally, we develop hypoth-eses regarding the expected buffering role that such positive organizational




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 out-comes 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 insecu-rity often leads to adverse outcomes and suggests possible mechanisms for how to effec-tively 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 charac-teristics 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 senior-ity. 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 uncer-tainty to maintain one’s job – implies a threat to employees’ resources in the form of lost employment and income or loss of valued aspects of one’s 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 summa-ries of dozens of studies indicate that job insecurity has a consistent negative rela-tionship 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 mini-mize net loss of resources. In the case of job insecurity, employees confront the potential




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 per-ceived 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 insecurity’s 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 con-ducted in Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Africa (Quinlan, 2005) found evidence of consistent adverse associations between precarious employment, job insecu-rity, and occupational safety outcomes such as injury rates, safety knowledge, and safety compliance. Moving beyond those correlational studies, Probst (2002) designed a labo-ratory 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 labora-tory 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 one’s 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 cre-atinine 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 physi-cal 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 percep-tions of good health across 10 European countries (László et al., 2010). By examining episodic and persistent job insecurity and job loss over extended periods of time rang-ing 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 pre-vious research, we predicted that:

Hypothesis 1c: Job insecurity is positively associated with health complaints.




Positive effects of organizational communication

Organizational communication is defined as a process through which information about the workplace and employee’s job itself is transmitted by the organization to its employ-ees (Price, 1997). The purpose of organizational communication is to disseminate infor-mation 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), ener-gies, 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 organiza-tional 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, Carrière and Bourque (2008) found that organizational communication practices were positively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment while organizational communication satisfaction fully medi-ated such a relationship. Conversely, poor organizational communication has been dem-onstrated 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 employ-ee’s perceptions of communications and his or her job satisfaction.’ Therefore, we pre-dicted that:

Hypothesis 2a: Positive organizational communication practices are positively asso-ciated 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 organi-zational 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,




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 rela-tionship with safe working after controlling for the prior level of this variable. In a simi-lar 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 demon-strate 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 asso-ciated 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 unfa-miliarity with policies during organizational entry (Mignerey et al., 1995) and job trans-fers (Kramer, 1996), unknown likelihood of effectively implementing innovation and change (Lewis and Seibold, 1996), or uncertainty about job security following organiza-tional downsizing (Casey et al., 1997). Information resources provided by organizational communication practices help employees to make sense of the specific working environ-ment (Sias and Bartoo, 2007), better understand and predict their situations (Kramer, 1999), and therefore reduce the uncertainty and increase predictability in times of organi-zational 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 experi-ence positive well-being. Therefore, it is conceivable that employees who are equipped with such information resources might be healthier compared to those with fewer infor-mation resources. Indeed, research has demonstrated that role ambiguity characterized by information deficiency was a significant predictor of psychological strain (O’Driscoll 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 commu-nication 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 asso-ciated with health complaints.




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 organiza-tional 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 stressor–strain relationship. According to COR theory, individuals already lacking in resources will be more suscep-tible 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 com-munication 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 one’s job. In other words, the uncertainty about the continuance of one’s job motivates individuals to seek information from their immediate workplace (Kramer, 1999); however, poor organizational commu-nication practices limit the possibility to gain information from the organization and management, thereby potentially exacerbating the consequences resulting from job inse-curity 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 impair-ments 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 employ-ees 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




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 announce-ment. 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 con-firmatory conclusion about the underlying mechanisms of realistic merger previews.

Similarly, based on data from nine case studies, Appelbaum and Donia (2001) devel-oped a model for providing a ‘realistic downsizing preview’ to counter the negative effects associated with surviving an organizational downsizing, known as survivor syn-drome. 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 commu-nicate with employees during every stage of the organizational change process. However, both Appelbaum and Donia’s study and Baruch and Hind’s study did not directly meas-ure 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 differ-ent 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, König 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 buff-ering effect, the authors argued that this may have been due to the low reliability of the perceived communication measurement (Cronbach’s alpha was. 62), which was meas-ured 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 impor-tant to continue to explore whether positive organizational communication might attenu-ate the negative consequences of job insecurity based on the aforementioned strong theoretical basis. Specifically, we predicted that:

Hypotheses 3a–c: 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.




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 major-ity 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 35–39. 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 meas-ures 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). Partici-pants 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 Cronbach’s 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

Table 1. Demographic characteristics across data sites.

Variable Site 1 Site 2 Site 3 Site 4 Site 5 Site 6

Overall N 94 136 47 22 128 212Gender Male 52 106 19 15 104 173 Female 41 21 25 5 20 38Median age category (years) 35–39 35–39 35–39 30–34 45–49 40–44Median education category (years)a 3 2 2 2 3 3Tenure (years) 3.09 4.44 7.36 5.56 18.46 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.




ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, employees responded to the following items: ‘When plans at work change unexpectedly, my supervisor tells me why,’ ‘Man-agement 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. Cronbach’s 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 exam-ple, 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 “Don’t know” if you cannot decide.’ The Cronbach’s alpha reli-ability 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 Hanisch’s (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 com-pute a Cronbach’s alpha.

Results

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, and zero-order product-moment correlations among the variables of interest. As can be seen, job insecurity was nega-tively related to job satisfaction and positively related to the number of accidents and health complaints. On the other hand, organizational communication practices were




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 coeffi-cients, 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 mul-tiple 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, η2 = .094, p < .001, and for organizational communica-tion, F (3, 407) = 3.62, η2 = .026, p = .013, and a significant interaction between job insecurity and organizational communication, F (3, 407) = 3.20, η2 = .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 sat-isfaction (β = –.33, p < .001), more workplace accidents (β = .09, p = .092), and more physical health complaints (β = .18, p < .001).

Outcomes of organizational communication

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

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

Variable N M SD α 1 2 3 4 5

1. Job insecurity 606 1.44 .89 .92 – 2. Organizational communication 619 4.17 1.37 .83 –.49** – 3. Job satisfaction 638 2.01 .62 .92 –.47** .57** – 4. Number of accidents 580 1.62 6.48 – .11** –.16* –.13* – 5. Health complaints 603 2.15 2.27 – .29** –.35** –.36* .25** –

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




Table 3. Regression analysis results: beta weights and equation statistics.

Step and variable Job satisfaction Number of accidents Health complaints

Step 1 (dfs = 7, 558) (dfs = 7, 514) (dfs = 7, 534)Site 1 –.36*** .02 –.11*Site 2 –.17*** .01 –.03Site 3 –.38*** .04 –.05Site 4 –.07 –.02 –.02Site 5 –.44*** .01 –.12*Gender –.06 –.07 –.08+

Age .06 –.06 –.05 R2 .213 .010 .043 F 21.63 .73 3.42 p .000 .644 .001Step 2 (dfs = 9, 565) (dfs = 9, 512) (dfs = 9, 532)Site 1 –.36*** .02 .11Site 2 –.16*** –.00 –.03*Site 3 –.39*** .04 –.04Site 4 –.08** –.02 .03Site 5 –.29*** –.05 .03Gender –.03 –.07 .07Age .05 –.05 .05Job insecurity –.33*** .09+ .18***Communication .35*** –.13* –.22***Δ R2 .319 .033 .111Δ F 190.04 8.91 35.04 p .000 .000 .000Step 3 (dfs = 10, 555) (dfs = 10, 511) (dfs =10, 531)Site 1 –.36*** .02 .11*Site 2 –.17*** .01 –.03Site 3 –.39*** .04 –.04Site 4 –.08** –.02 .03Site 5 –.28*** –.06 .02Gender –.03 –.08+ .06Age .05 –.06 .05Job insecurity –.54*** .37** .40**Communication .23*** .03 –.09Job insecurity × Com-munication

.19* –.27* –.21+

Δ R2 .005 .010 .006Δ F 5.82 5.29 3.69 p .016 .022 .055

Notes: +p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. Site 6 and male served as the reference group in the dummy coding.




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 (β = .19, p = .016), the number of workplace accidents (β = –.27, p = .022), and health impairment (β = –.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 com-munication, 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 1–3). 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 commu-nication condition. A similar pattern of findings was seen for interactions on the safety-related behaviors and health outcomes.

Discussion

Although a substantial body of literature has consistently documented the adverse con-sequences associated with employee job insecurity, our results suggest that organiza-tional interventions to enhance communication efforts may help attenuate some of these adverse effects. Specifically, the results of this study are consistent with previous research

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




(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 com-munication on these variables, comporting with Chen et al.’s (2006) results.

More importantly, as theorized by König 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 measur-ing 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 indi-cated 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

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Figure 2. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased number of accidents resulting from job insecurity.




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 sup-ported 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 affec-tive job insecurity reported lower job satisfaction, eight times as many workplace acci-dents, 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 suc-cessfully respond to challenges. Our results indicate that in order to attenuate the nega-tive 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, leader–member exchange, and organi-zational 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 valu-able for employees and which are also applicable in the workplace.

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Figure 3. Buffering effects of organizational communication on increased health complaints resulting from job insecurity.




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 theo-retical standpoint, this distinction between job insecurity perception and job insecurity satisfaction may be important, because not everyone who perceives job insecurity neces-sarily 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 inse-curity) 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 today’s 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 out-comes 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 perti-nent 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 reac-tions 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 communi-cation is required to address this limitation.

Moreover, due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, our ability to make infer-ences of causality is limited. Organizational communication is a process rather than a static variable (Roberts and O’Reilly, 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.




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 com-munication 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 multi-level approach, nevertheless, the consistent effects across the wide variety of organiza-tions lend support to the external generalizability of our findings.

Future research should also investigate whether the medium used to transmit informa-tion to employees has an impact on the effectiveness of organizational communication. Based on the theory of media richness processes (Daft and Lengel, 1984), communica-tion 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 dur-ing 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 conveni-ent. Otherwise, employees might be overwhelmed by ongoing meetings. Hence, we sug-gest that future studies measure which communication channels are employed when employers transmit to employees information about changes which directly and indi-rectly 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 organization’s 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 meas-urement 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 neg-ative 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




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 com-munication 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 organiza-tional 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 interven-tions 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 informa-tion (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.



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Comunicarea Organizationala Si Nesiguranta Jobului