The Consequences of Job Insecurity for Employers and Unions: Exit, Voice and Loyalty

Magnus Sverke and Sjoerd Goslinga

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2003, vol. 24, issue 2, 241-270

Abstract: Although job insecurity has received growing recognition in connection with the transformation of working life, little is known about how unionization affects its consequences. This study addresses how unionized workers cope with job insecurity and examines the extent to which they respond with reactions of exit, voice and loyalty. Of special interest is whether such reactions tend to affect primarily the employer or the union. Survey data from four European countries (Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden) suggest that job insecurity is primarily related to exit and loyalty reactions, but not to voice. The results replicate previous findings of adverse effects of job insecurity on organizational loyalty and employees' propensity to turnover from the job. Although the findings were less consistent across countries with respect to union-related outcomes, the study suggests that job insecurity may lead to reduced union loyalty and withdrawal from union membership.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X03024002005 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:24:y:2003:i:2:p:241-270

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X03024002005

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().