Job Insecurity: An Integrative Review and Agenda for Future Research

Abstract

Job insecurity reflects a threat to the continuity and stability of employment as it is currently experienced. Job insecurity has been the focus of increasing scholarly and popular attention in light of technological, economic, and political changes over the past few decades that have left many insecure about the future of their jobs. Yet, conceptual ambiguities exist; the literature remains fragmented; and there lacks an overarching framework through which to organize and reconcile findings. The goal of this article is to offer an integrative review and conceptual framework that addresses these challenges and provides the groundwork for future research. To that end, it proposes a definition of job insecurity that differentiates it from potential antecedents, moderators, and outcomes. The article addresses antecedents and introduces a typology of mechanisms and threat foci that links antecedents to job insecurity and suggests yet unexplored predictors. Furthermore, the framework developed here considers four overarching mechanisms—stress, social exchange, job preservation motivation, and proactive coping—through which job insecurity leads to various outcomes, and it highlights potential competing tensions inherent in individuals’ responses. Finally, the framework introduces threat features, economic vulnerabilities, and psychological vulnerabilities as three overarching categories of variables that moderate reactions to job insecurity, and it identifies factors that contribute to each. In doing so, it suggests important levers through which to influence reactions to job insecurity; it helps explain variability in past research; and it provides a foundation for future work.