I think any insecurity or fear of negative things happen, job insecurity causes anxiety in people who are endangering their jobs, their welfare and their families. It is therefore logical uncertainty hanging over them for an uncertain future.

Adaptive psychological mechanisms of the human (and any other animal) make the unresolved fear and maintained over time, become anxiety and stress, which in turn can cause physical and mental illness (such as depression). Also, I think in these situations of insecurity, there is also a state of powerlessness and helplessness, of not having control over one's life, which increase the feeling of helplessness and multiplies the effects of job insecurity.

I think if employees have any kind of job insecurity in the organization it would lead to low motivation and poor performance that would affect employees' engagement in their workplace. As above it was said that powerlessness and helplessness plays an important role in inducing job insecurity and of course if employees are facing so many disturbance they will not be able to contribute in the organizational profit so it would affect organizational outcome

Tahira Probst has done a lot of good work in this area. I have posted a chapter we wrote together on my profile page (the attachment function was not working). This chapter is not completely on-topic but should have some useful references.

Sinclair, R. R., Sears, L. E., Probst, T., & Zajack, M. (2010). A multilevel model of economic stress and employee well-being. In J. Houdmont & S. Leka (Eds.) Contemporary Occupational Health Psychology: Global Perspectives on Research and Practice (pp. 1-20). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

From both personal experience and also having seen this at first hand after many years in a large FTSE 100 company the effect can be very debilitating. Taken from the personal perpspective I believe it leads to feelings of helplessness, an inability for clarity of thought, an inability to rationalise what are minor inconsequential issues (as a result these become major issues)and can also lead to physical inertia. Interestingly it can also have the opposite effect on some especially if they feel a redundancy programme might be in the offing and what once were awkward individuals become very helpfull and in unionised environments it can also be a good time to progress change.

Organizational commitment is based on the security provided by the organization to an employee. In return, the employee offers his/her time, energy and capabilities. It is a psychological contract between an organization and the employee. The financial crisis reduced the organization's ability to provide the security employees look for. Hence, it becomes natural, in this situation, to employees not to give his/her best to the organization which obviously results in poor organizational performance.

Thank you both for your answers. I'm working in my first phd paper about this topic. It's good have some personal opinions. Do you think employees can engage in counterproductive behaviors after they feel that the psychological contract is not being fulfilled? Can we see a retaliation here: less performance, more deviant behavior? thank you!

Thank you all for the comments! :)

I was working in IBM for more than 20 years and I was asked to "retire" earlier. This is what I encountered few years back. Eventually, I spent some time on reading on the breach of Psychology contract and lead to the lost of trust in management! How they can motivate their staff to remain committed to the organisation?

This is my research topic: The relationship between organisation committeemen and personality after downsizing: studies of Malaysian baking. But so far, I have yet to get a supervisor for my research proposal!

Dear Yew,

You can find the paper here: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/55/04706826/0470682655.pdf

Regards,

Sandra

Hello Sandra

It seems to me that the respondents to you inquiry so far are 'seeing what they expect to see' from employees whose sense of job security is low.

In my experience, paraphrasing Paul Ware, it is useful to 'start where the client is' when trying to empathise. If by employees you mean individuals who are enlightened enough to realise that their job security is somehow correlated with their employer's success, then such people are likely to be even more motivated to produce when they see times are difficult.

Dear Dr Sandra, Thank yo very much for your information. Regards Chin.

I think it is a question of the point of view towards life. Why do employees expect to have a 'save' job and do not expect any uncertainties coming up or think they can decide to change into another position to boost their career? Ask freelancers or employers how they get on in difficult times with their uncertainty and how they cope. Then I think you might have a clue of the differences in thinking. They have to learn a lot more to accept that in the future there will be breaks in their careers and that they will have to accept not only to work in their profession but to do jobs, e. g. for less money, less qualification, etc. before they will get back into a well-payed job. Germans are learning it slowly as laws for unemployed where changed in 2004. Of course I cannot speak for others.

Dear Skinner, Okoroafor and Smith,

Thank you for the useful comments. :)

S

My pleasure Ms Costa. :-)

Hello Okoroafor,

I only have a draft from this study i am talking about (it is my first paper for the psd thesis). What info you would like to cite?

HI,

You may have a look to this paper:

.Moral Emotions and Corporate Psychopathy: A Review.

By: Walker, Benjamin; Jackson, Chris. Journal of Business Ethics. Apr2017, Vol. 141 Issue 4, p797-810. 14p. 2 Charts. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3038-5.

Best regards