Intra-Individual Variation in Felt Job Insecurity: Exploration of the Reciprocal Relationship Between Quantitative and Qualitative Dimension of Job Insecurity

Job insecurity is an important hindrance stressor that negatively affects both, employees, and organizations. In order to prevent and hamper negative consequences of job insecurity, we need to fully understand why and how employees experience these threats. This study aims to shed more light into these processes by exploring the relationship between two pivotal dimensions of job insecurity: quantitative (threat of job loss) and qualitative job insecurity (threat to job characteristics). Based on Jahoda’s deprivation theory and the conservation of resources theory (COR), we construct a theoretical research model, in which we respectively argue that the relationship between quantitative job insecurity and qualitative job insecurity is possible in either direction. Thus, we further propose a bidirectional relationship, in which quantitative and qualitative job insecurity mutually influence each other over time. We conducted a three-wave study and surveyed 3694 Belgian employees. Using a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) we investigated the causal associations between quantitative and qualitative job insecurity at the within-person level. Our results confirmed large heterogeneity in the experience of job insecurity; above 60% of the variance in both quantitative and qualitative job insecurity is due to stable between-person differences. When controlled for these differences, we observed consistent within-person associations at each measurement wave. Stability effects were found for quantitative job insecurity; employees who experienced higher than their average threats to job loss at one point in time also experienced higher threats to job loss later in time. In contrast, we found no carry-over effects for qualitative job insecurity. However, the individuals’ deviation from the expected qualitative job insecurity score was predicted by deviations from their expected score in quantitative job insecurity. Therefore, in line with Jahoda’s deprivation theory, we found that quantitative job insecurity leads overtime to qualitative job insecurity, not reverse. Overall, the results at the person-level suggest that the experience of quantitative job insecurity is largely dependent on individuals' past experience of these threats, whereas the individual experience of qualitative job insecurity is more dependent on other time-varying factors, including the higher experience of overall threat of job loss.