Job insecurity, employee anxiety, and commitment: The moderating role of collective trust in management

Wen Wang, Kim Mather and Roger Seifert

Journal of Trust Research, 2018, vol. 8, issue 2, 220-237

Abstract: This article examines the moderating effect of collective trust in management on the relation between job insecurity (both objective and subjective) and employee outcomes (work-related anxiety and organisational commitment). This is contextualised in the modern British workplace which has seen increased employment insecurity and widespread cynicism. We use matched employer-employee data extracted from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, which includes over 16,000 employees from more than 1100 organisations. The multilevel analyses confirm that objective job insecurity (loss of important elements of a job such as cuts in pay, overtime, training, and working hours) are significantly correlated with high levels of work-related anxiety and lower levels of organisational commitment. These correlations are partially mediated by subjective job insecurity (perception of possible job loss). More importantly, collective trust in management (a consensus of management being reliable, honest and fair) significantly attenuates the negative impact of objective job insecurity on organisational commitment, and reduces the impact of subjective job insecurity on work-related anxiety. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations of these effects are discussed.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21515581.2018.1463229 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jtrust:v:8:y:2018:i:2:p:220-237

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJTR20

DOI: 10.1080/21515581.2018.1463229

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Trust Research is currently edited by Peter Ping Li

More articles in Journal of Trust Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().