Can Gossip Buffer the Effect of Job Insecurity on Workplace Friendships?

Lixin Jiang, Xiaohong Xu and Xiaowen Hu
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Lixin Jiang: School of Psychology, University of Auckland, 23 Symonds Street, CBD, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Xiaohong Xu: Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University; 250 Mills Godwin Life Sciences Bldg, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
Xiaowen Hu: Business School, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: Although previous research has documented a host of negative consequences of job insecurity, workplace interpersonal relationships have rarely been considered. This omission might be caused by the application of broad stress theories to the job insecurity literature without taking a nuanced perspective to understand the nature of job insecurity. To address this issue, we conceptualized job insecurity as a threat to employee social acceptance by their employer. This conceptualization, therefore, allows us to apply the multimotive model of social rejection to investigate a previously-overlooked outcome of job insecurity—workplace friendships. Specifically, we investigated the relationship between both job feature insecurity and job loss insecurity with workplace friendships. Based on stress coping theory and the fundamental differences between job feature insecurity and job loss insecurity, we further proposed that employees’ tendency to engage in positive gossip buffers the negative impact of job feature insecurity on workplace friendships, whereas employees’ tendency to engage in negative gossip buffers the negative impact of job loss insecurity on workplace friendships. Data collected from 286 working adults from Mturk supported our hypotheses. Our study opens the door for future research to take a more nuanced approach when examining nontraditional consequences of job insecurity.

Keywords: job insecurity; workplace friendships; gossip; stress coping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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