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Previous research on the effects of organizational restructuring has primarily been conducted using self-report cross-sectional data. These forms of data are vulnerable to several threats to both internal and external validity. Using a Solomon four-group design, this study examined the effects of an organizational restructuring while simultaneously testing for the effects of pretesting, history, and interactions between pretesting and the organizational restructuring. Results suggest the organizational restructuring had consistent negative effects on employee levels of job security, organizational commitment, perceptions of time pressure, psychological well-being, and turnover intentions. Effects on job satisfaction, physical health, and perceptions of role ambiguity were less consistently noted. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed and directions for future research are proposed.

Using data from 1071 staff and administrative professionals at a large university experiencing repeated rounds of budget cuts, this article examines the attenuating effect of trust in management on the negative consequences of job insecurity. Results show that job insecurity was associated with increased burnout and psychological distress as well as decreased work and supervisor satisfaction and affective commitment. However, trust in management was negatively related to burnout and psychological distress but positively related to work and supervisor satisfaction and affective commitment. More importantly, trust in management was found to consistently buffer the relationships between job insecurity and these job-related outcomes. Implications for successfully managing job insecurity during times of organizational or economic upheaval are discussed.

Using Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources (COR) theory as the theoretical framework, this study explored the effectiveness of organizational communication in attenuating the negative effects associated with job insecurity on employee attitudes, behaviors, and physical health. Data were collected from 639 employees in six different companies. As predicted by COR theory, results suggest that high job insecurity is related to lower job satisfaction, more workplace accidents, and more health complaints. However, employees who perceived higher levels of positive organizational communication practices reported fewer negative consequences of job insecurity compared with employees who reported lower levels of organizational communication. Taken together, it is suggested organizations that make a greater effort to communicate with employees may effectively buffer the potentially negative consequences of job insecurity.

This study examines how organizational context affects employee reactions to perceived psychological contract breach. Using Conservation of Resources and Social Comparison theories, the authors develop competing hypotheses regarding the potential exacerbating vs. buffering effects of organizational context on the relationships between psychological contract breach and job security satisfaction, job satisfaction, work–family conflict, and burnout. They collected a multi-source, multilevel data set composed of faculty and departmental administrators at a university experiencing repeated budget reductions. It was found that psychological contract breach was related to detrimental job outcomes (i.e., decreased job security satisfaction and job satisfaction, increased work–family conflict, and burnout). However, this relationship was stronger among faculty in departments reporting low rather than high departmental budget cuts, thus supporting Social Comparison theory rather than Conservation of Resources theory. Social comparison matters when it comes to psychological contract breach.

The present study investigates how and when qualitative job insecurity influences subjective well-being (i.e., life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect). Specifically, this article examines the mediating role of work–family conflict and the moderating role of work centrality in the association between qualitative job insecurity and subjective well-being. Based on a sample of 500 Chinese employees, the mediating and moderating hypotheses were examined using path analyses and further tested with the bootstrapping method. The results indicated that qualitative job insecurity was negatively related to subjective well-being, and that work–family conflict partially mediated this link (except for positive affect). Surprisingly, the negative effect of qualitative job insecurity on subjective well-being was more pronounced for individuals with low (as opposed to high) work centrality. This study provides preliminary evidence for the spillover effect of qualitative job insecurity on work–family conflict and identifies a group of employees (i.e., those with low work centrality) who may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of qualitative job insecurity on well-being.

Despite unprecedented cuts to public funding of state universities, little research has examined economic stressors in academia. This study addresses this gap in research by examining the direct and indirect relationships of pay stagnation and job insecurity to performance among a sample of 355 faculty members from a public university in the United States undergoing major budget cuts. In line with job stress and psychological contract breach theories, among tenured faculty, both job insecurity and pay stagnation were indirectly related to lower performance via job satisfaction. Among non-tenured faculty, only pay stagnation had a significant adverse relationship with job satisfaction. Given the difficulty of guaranteed job security or pay raises during times of austerity, organizational interventions designed to improve job satisfaction may be more efficacious. Such interventions might help ameliorate the negative impact of economic stressors on the performance of tenured faculty.

As more businesses have newly adopted or expanded flexible work arrangements (FWA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study aimed to investigate whether flexibility backlash (e.g., workers' negative perceptions of promotion opportunities and work-to-life conflict) occurs in response to the use of FWA. Moreover, we tested if perceptions of flexibility backlash vary across subgroups of employees (i.e., as a function of gender, family responsibilities, and race), as well as their intersection. Using a lagged dataset of N = 414 currently employed U.S. workers collected at three-time points during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that FWA use was not significantly associated with the subsequent perception of career opportunities, and no group differences were found in this relationship. Similarly, no main effect of FWA use on work-to-life conflict was found. However, among workers with more family care responsibilities, greater FWA usage was associated with more work-to-life conflict. Further, intersectionality analyses revealed men with greater family responsibilities and men who are racial minorities perceived more work-to-life conflict as they used more FWA than their counterparts. We discuss these findings through the lens of diversity in light of the ongoing need to reduce the backlash associated with the use of FWA.

AbstractWhile a growing body of literature links the stressor of job insecurity (JI) with poor employee well‐being and increased work‐to‐family conflict (WFC), the current study specifically tests WFC as an explanatory mechanism of the relationships between affective JI (i.e., emotional reactions to the perceived threat to one's job) and poor health outcomes (i.e., mental and physical health). Moreover, this study uniquely examines how family–work stereotype threat (FWST; i.e., fears of confirming negative stereotypes about workers with family obligations) may exacerbate the relationship between perceived threats to one's job and employee reports of WFC. Using a cross‐country design, data from 707 employees in the United States (two‐wave) and 763 employees nested within 100 organizations in Italy (multilevel, cross‐sectional) largely supported the hypothesized mediation model. Specifically, WFC explains the association of JI with individual mental and physical health in both countries. Moreover, FWST exacerbates the direct relation of JI with WFC in the United States, but not in Italy. These findings suggest that the fear of losing one's job may prompt employee experiences of WFC and subsequent poorer physical and mental health; additionally, in the United States, this effect is even stronger among employees who reported higher levels of FWST. We interpret these heterogeneous findings in the light of nation‐related factors in managing increasingly insecure employment markets, especially after the COVID‐19 pandemic. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for improving both health and work–life boundary management of post‐pandemic workers.