The Influence of Job Insecurity on Employee Safety Behavior: The Mediating Effect of Meaningfulness of Work and, the Buffering Role of Ethical Leadership: Three Wave Time-Lagged Web-Based Self-report Survey (Longitudinal Approach) (Preprint)

Abstract

Although many previous studies examined the influence of job insecurity on organizational outcomes, research gaps remain. First, the existing research focused less on the importance of safety behavior. Second, previous studies underexplored the importance of positive psychology-associated mediators and moderators. Third, we need extant studies to investigate leaders’ critical roles in job insecurity.

To supplement the above research gaps, we aim to explore the mediator and moderator in the relationship between job insecurity and safety behavior from the perspective of positive psychology

With three-wave time-lagged data from 235 South Korean workers, we built a moderated mediation model by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Based on Anderson and Gerbing’s (1998) suggestion, we took a two-step approach that consisted of the (1) measurement and (2) structural model. In the first step, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the validity of the measurement model. In the second step, based on SEM, we performed a moderated mediation model analysis with the maximum likelihood estimator using the AMOS 23 program to test the structural model.

We empirically demonstrated that the meaningfulness of work mediates the job insecurity–safety behavior link. In addition, ethical leadership plays a positive moderating role which diminishes the negative impact of job insecurity on the meaningfulness of work.

This result indicates that the meaningfulness of work (as a mediator) and ethical leadership (as a moderator) are the critical underlying mechanisms and contingent variables in the relationship between job insecurity and safety behavior.