“Explaining the Relationship between Job Insecurity and Organizational Discretionary Behaviours: Breach of Psychological Contract and Organizational Justice as Mediators”

Job insecurity has become an important concern for organizations in the last decade mainly due to uncertain economic conditions and global competition. In this study, we integrate Psychological Contract Theory and Organizational Justice Theory to explain employees behavioural responses to job insecurity, as these outcomes did not receive much research attention thus far. We propose and test a model examining the mediating processes underlying the relationship between job insecurity and two opposite organizational discretionary behaviours, namely Organizational Citizenship Behaviours and Deviant Behaviours. In particular, we argue that job insecurity is positively related to breach of the psychological contract and negatively associated to organizational justice perceptions. Furthermore, we assume that psychological contract breach and organizational justice mediate the relationship between job insecurity and organizational discretionary behaviours (OCB and DB). A total of 322 blue collar workers in Italy are used to test the hypotheses derived from our framework. The results showed that job insecurity is related to OCB and DB indirectly (full mediation) through both Breach of the Psychological Contract and the perception of Organizational Injustice. The consequences of these findings for theory and practice are highlighted in the discussion