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Job insecurity climate's influence on employees' job attitudes: Evidence fromtwo European countriesBeatriz Sora a; Amparo Caballer b; José M. Peiró c; Hans de Witte d

a Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Spain b University of Valencia,Spain c University of Valencia, IVIE, Spain d Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

First Published on: 01 August 2008

To cite this Article Sora, Beatriz, Caballer, Amparo, Peiró, José M. and de Witte, Hans(2008)'Job insecurity climate's influence onemployees' job attitudes: Evidence from two European countries',European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology,18:2,125— 147

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Job insecurity climate’s influence on employees’ job

attitudes: Evidence from two European countries

Beatriz SoraCentro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales

y Tecnologicas, Spain

Amparo CaballerUniversity of Valencia, Spain

Jose M. PeiroUniversity of Valencia, IVIE, Spain

Hans de WitteKatholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

An important amount of literature about job insecurity and its consequenceshas been developed during the past few decades (Sverke, Hellgren, & Naswall,2002). Most of this research has focused on an individual-analysis perspective,without taking into account social context. Although job insecurity climate hasnot been empirically examined, several authors have implicitly assumed thatjob insecurity contexts exist in some organizations where layoffs haveoccurred. Therefore, they examined layoff survivors’ reactions. From thisperspective, the aim of this study was to validate the job insecurity climateconcept and examine its influence on employees’ job attitudes. In order toprovide additional support, this objective was examined in two samples: 428employees belonging to 20 Spanish organizations and 550 employees in 18Belgian organizations. The results showed that job insecurity climate emergedwithin the organizations in both samples, and that it influenced employees’ job

Correspondence should be addressed to Jose M. Peiro, Department of Social Psychology,

Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibanez, 21, 46010 Valencia, Spain.

E-mail: Jose.M.Peiro@uv.es

This article has been supported by the Fifth framework programme of the European

Community for research, technological development, and demonstration activities, and by the

Generalidad Valenciana’s programme for RþDþ I Groups (Group 03/195). Its preparation

has been carried out under the activities supported by the CONSOLIDER Eje C project

SEJ2006-14086), from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND

ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

2009, 18 (2), 125–147

� 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

http://www.psypress.com/ejwop DOI: 10.1080/13594320802211968

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satisfaction and organizational commitment above and beyond individualperceptions of job insecurity in the Spanish sample. The implications andlimitations of this study are discussed.

Keywords: Job insecurity climate; Job insecurity; Job satisfaction;Organizational commitment.

In recent years, research has shown a growing interest in the study of jobinsecurity, defined as ‘‘the perceived powerlessness to maintain desired con-tinuity in a threatened job situation’’ (Greenhalgh & Rosenblatt, 1984, p. 438).Most of these studies have used a stress-theory approach (i.e., Barling &Kelloway, 1996; Hartley, Jacobson, van Vuuren, Greenhalgh, & Sutton, 1991;Sverke, Hellgren, & Naswall, 2002), assuming that the psychologicalanticipation of a stressful event can be perceived as being as threatening asthe event itself (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, job insecurity is highlightedas a work stressor with detrimental consequences for employees. Specifically,the psychological reactions have been the most commonly studied strains.Some of the most frequent responses to job insecurity have been theimpairment in job satisfaction, that reflects ‘‘a multidimensional positiveaffective response to one’s job’’ (Jones, Flynn, & Kelloway, 1995, p. 43), andorganizational commitment, understood as ‘‘feelings of attachment to goalsand values of the organisation, one’s role in relation to this, and attachment tothe organisation for its own sake rather than for its strictly instrumental value’’(Cook &Wall, 1980, p. 40). In fact, Sverke et al. (2002), in their meta-analysis,consider job satisfaction and organizational commitment as two of the mostoutstanding reactions to job insecurity. Both outcomes were shown to be clearexamples of the harmful impact of job insecurity, job satisfaction as anaffective response mostly oriented to the employee, and organizationalcommitment oriented towards the organization.

Despite the increasing breadth of the job insecurity literature, animportant gap can be observed: The influence of context or climate,understood as collective and shared perceptions, has not been taken intoaccount. All of the research conducted to date has focused on individualperceptions of job insecurity and their effects on individual outcomes.However, although the knowledge about individual differences in the jobinsecurity–outcomes relationship is extremely important, we cannot forgetthat individuals are embedded within groups and organizations that, in turn,influence them. Behaviours and perceptions result from the combinationbetween contextual and individual difference effects (Kozlowski & Klein,2000). Hence multilevel research is vitally important. Indeed, Bliese (2000)demonstrated that collective constructs maintains conceptual links to theirlower level counterparts despite being qualitatively different in their essence.

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The main difference is that aggregate variables reflect higher level contextualinfluences that are not captured by lower level variables. Social context, suchas organizational context, involves relational dynamics among multipleindividuals that cannot be understood in terms of independent individuals(Mossholder, Bennett, & Martin, 1998). As Kozlowski and Klein (2000,pp. 10) stated, ‘‘group and organization factors are contexts for individualperceptions, attitudes and behaviours and need to be explicitly incorporatedinto meaningful models of organizational behaviour’’. In this view, someauthors have already begun to point out the need for multilevel research thatexamines the influence of context on the stress process (Peiro, 2000, 2001).Indeed, Bliese and Jex (1999) suggested that context might affect stressprocesses of the stressor perception as well as the reaction to these stressors.Later, Bliese and Jex (2002) pointed out that a multilevel perspective couldfacilitate the integration of two divergent theoretical conceptualizations ofstressors: objective versus subjective perspectives. Based on Kasl (1987), theobjective perspective suggests the existence of universal stressors in theenvironment for all individuals, and the subjective perspective indicates thatan event is perceived as a stressor only when it is experienced as stressful.Thus, the objective perspective may be characterized by group-level analysis,and the subjective perspective by individual-level analysis. In this way, Blieseand Jex (2002, p. 272) summarized that a multilevel perspective ‘‘may beimportant for modelling how both subjective and objective conceptualisa-tions of work stressors relate to strain’’.

In this vein, the present study attempts to contribute to the study of jobinsecurity from a multilevel perspective. Thus, the aim of this article is to testthe validity of job insecurity climate and to examine how job insecurityclimate influences employees’ attitudes. In order to provide a strong basisfor our purposes, our hypotheses were tested using data collected in twodifferent European countries (Spain and Belgium). The fact of that ourhypothesis could be tested in two countries with different cultures andlabour markets may provide greater support to job insecurity climateconstruct. In particular, Spain is characterized mainly by its tendencytowards collectivism and Belgium towards individualism (see Hofstede,1984; Gouveia, Albuquerque, Clemente, & Espinosa, 2002; Gouveia,Clemente, & Espinosa, 2003; Green, Deschamps, & Paez, 2005; Johnson,Kulesa, Cho, & Shavitt, 2005; Ruiz-Quintanilla & Claes, 1996). Collectivistsocieties emphasize the group; therefore, individuals ‘‘see themselves as partsof one or more collectives’’ (Triandis, 1995, p. 2), whereas individualisticcultures place greater emphasis on independence and autonomy (Triandis,1995). Furthermore, their labour markets also present significant differences.The Spanish labour market is characterized by its instability and high jobinsecurity compared to other European countries such as Belgium. Indeed,the unemployment and temporary rates are higher in Spain than in Belgium.

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In 2004, the Spanish unemployment rate was 10.8% and the temporary onewas 32.1%, whereas these Belgian rates were both 9.2% (Statistical Office ofthe European Communities, 2006).

JOB INSECURITY CLIMATE

The concept of organizational climate has had a long history of study inindustrial and organizational psychology. Mostly, the study of climate hasbeen linked to culture, although, more recently, they have been consideredtwo distinct constructs. For example, studies by Glisson and James (2002)and Ostroff, Kinicki, and Tamkins (2003) focused on distinguishing betweenculture and climate. Culture is defined as ‘‘the normative beliefs and sharedbehavioural expectations in an organizational unit’’ (Glisson & James, 2002,p. 770) and climate as ‘‘the shared perception of the way things are aroundhere. More precisely, climate is shared perceptions of organizational policies,practices, and procedures’’ (Reichers & Schneider, 1990, p. 22). So, culturereflects the assumptions shared in an organization, and climate showsemployees’ shared perceptions about the organization. Taking intoconsideration these definitions, and given that this article deals withemployees’ perceptions about job insecurity, it seems more natural to use theterm ‘‘climate’’ to develop our study.

Climate research has assumed that climate can emerge as a higher levelproperty where individual perceptions are shared among the members of anorganization (Chan, 1998; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). This coalescenceprocess, labelled as a bottom-up process by Kozlowski and Klein (2000), isbased on several theoretical foundations that contribute to explaining how ahigher level construct is yielded through individual elements. Socializationtheory suggests that old members transmit their perceptions to newcomers;therefore, newcomers tend to assimilate the general organizational percep-tions (Schneider & Reichers, 1983). The social information processingapproach, formulated by Salancik and Pfeffer (1978), explains howindividuals use information about their own past experiences and aboutothers’ thoughts to build their own perceptions. In this way, individualsadapt their individual perceptions to their social context. Festinger (1954)also contributed to explaining the shared perceptions with the socialcomparison theory. In uncertain situations, individuals compare themselveswith close others to better understand situations, thus adapting theirperceptions. The Attraction-Selection-Attrition model (Schneider, 1987)pointed out that organizations select, attract, and attrite employees withsimilar perceptions to those of the organization. Therefore, organizationsmaintain homogeneous memberships. According to these theoreticalmodels, a considerable body of empirical research has assumed that ‘‘there

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are substantial regularities in social behaviour that transcend theapparent differences among social actors. Given a particular set ofsituational constraints and demographics, people will behave similarly.Therefore, it is possible to focus on aggregate or collective responses andto ignore individual variation’’ (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000, p. 7). Thus, theyhave studied how different kinds of climates, such as organizationaljustice climate (Liao & Rupp, 2005), safety climate (Hofmann & Stetzer,1996), burnout climate (Gonzalez-Morales, 2006), or affective climate(Gonzalez-Roma, Peiro, Subirats, & Manas, 2000), may emerge inorganizations or in work units through the bottom-up process. Moreconcretely related to our study, Peiro (2001, 2005) has emphasized the needto analyse the stress climate, considering stress as a collective phenomenon.Moreover, Lansisalmi, Peiro, and Kivimaki (2000), with a qualitativeapproach, pointed out that stress had collective properties thatwere determined by organizations. Indeed, risk of unemployment waspresented as a source of collective stress. In order to collect the data, theyconducted 32 group interviews in a sample of 90 employees, gathered ingroups of 2 or 3.

Taking into consideration these issues, it seems plausible to assume thatindividuals interact with other members of their organizations to seekinformation about employment policies and practices of the organization.So, perceptions of job insecurity could be exchanged among employeesthrough these interactions; consequently, members of the organization couldshare their perceptions of job insecurity, with a collective perception or jobinsecurity climate emerging within the organization. Indirect support forthis reasoning can be found in individual studies addressing in downsizingcontexts. An important body of research has examined how co-workers’dismissals affect survivors, finding that others’ experiences and perceptionsinfluence survivors’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours. It can supportthe idea that individuals use others’ experiences and perceptions to definetheir own perceptions, in our case, job insecurity perceptions (e.g., Kalimo,Taris, & Schaufeli, 2003). In this research line, other studies directlyassumed that downsizing contexts have a strong influence on employees.Accordingly, they investigated the state of several individual job variables inthese contexts. They demonstrated that these varied under this contextcompared to usual circumstances (e.g., Brennan & Skarlicki, 2004;Brockner, 1990; Brockner, de Witt, Grover, & Redd, 1990; Brockneret al., 1994; Brockner, Tyler, & Cooper-Schneider, 1992; Brockner,Wiesenfeld, & Martin, 1995; Brockner, Wiesenfeld, Reed, Grover, &Martin, 1993; Evans, 2000; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002). Thus, this jobinsecurity climate construct, according to Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt’s(1984) job insecurity definition, could be understood as a set of shared

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perceptions of powerlessness to maintain the continuity of threatened jobs inan organization. Thus, the following hypothesis was proposed:

Hypothesis 1: Employees of an organization will present sharedperceptions of job insecurity.

CONSEQUENCES OF JOB INSECURITY CLIMATEFOR EMPLOYEES

Generally, research has showed interest in the study of how contexts caninfluence employees’ attitudes. Diez-Roux (1998) stressed that it is not onlynecessary to analyse individual characteristics, but also social context, inorder to have complete knowledge about individual outcomes. Consistentwith this idea, climate has been highlighted as an important determinant ofindividual outcomes (Hofmann & Stetzer, 1998; James, James, & Ashe,1990; Kopelman, Brief, & Guzzo, 1990; Lindell & Brandt, 2000; Scheneider& Bowen, 1985). Indeed, a lot of stress research has focused on examininghow a stressful climate may be detrimental for employees. Glisson andJames (2002) demonstrated that a low stress climate had a positive influenceon work attitudes, such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction.Therefore, employees who worked in teams with positive climates showedhigher levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The samplewas composed of 283 case managers from 33 human service teams.Gonzalez-Morales (2006) showed that work-unit burnout climate negativelyinfluenced employees’ job satisfaction over time beyond the individualratings. So, employees reported lower job satisfaction over time when theyperceived the work-unit burnout climate as a stressor. The sample usedconsisted of 555 teachers from 100 Spanish primary and high schools.

However, no research to date has empirically tested job insecurity from acontextual perspective. Nevertheless, we have found some literatureconcerning downsizing that assumes the negative influence of jobuncertainty. Downsizing has been viewed as an important source ofuncertainty, independently of whether or not one’s job is threatened (Evans,2000; Kalimo et al., 2003; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002). Allen, Freeman,Russell, Reizenstein, and Rentz (2001) showed that the changes in roleclarity, role overload, satisfaction with top management, and satisfactionwith job security were related to changes in organizational commitment andturnover intentions. During the post immediate and post short-termdownsizing period, the most negative attitudinal reactions were reported,but after a longer period of time, the attitudes improved. The design waslongitudinal, and the sample was composed of 106 employees of a largeconsumer packaged goods organization. Vahtera, Kivimaki, and Pentti

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(1997) presented a linear increment in the risk of long-term sick leave duringthe three time periods of downsizing in a sample of 981 local-governmentemployees from Raisio, Finland. These periods were the following: 1991,before the downsizing; 1993, the worst point of the downsizing; and 1993–1995, when downsizing slowed down. In short, these results show howemployees’ attitudes and behaviours are more deteriorated when they workin contexts characterized by the threat of job loss. This, in turn, providesindirect evidence for our assumption that job insecurity climate maynegatively affect employees.

In doing so, the general conclusion that can be drawn is that employees’job attitudes may not only be affected by individual stressors but also bycontextual stressors. Therefore, if job insecurity climate is considered acontextual stressor, we could expect to find evidence of its harmful influenceon employees’ attitudes. Indeed, we expect that job insecurity climatepresents an influence on employees’ job attitudes beyond the negativeinfluence of individual perceptions of job insecurity. According to thisreasoning, we hypothesized the following:

Hypothesis 2: Job insecurity climate will negatively influence employees’job satisfaction and organizational commitment above and beyondindividual ratings of job insecurity.

METHOD

Sample

The total number of participants was 978 employees from two Europeancountries: Spain and Belgium. Specifically, the Spanish sample was made upof 428 employees embedded in 20 organizations, and the Belgian sampleincluded 550 employees nested in 18 organizations. Both samples weresimilar with regard to their labour sectors (food, education, and retail).

The Spanish sample was composed of 48% women (n¼ 204) and 51%men (n¼ 218). Forty per cent were temporary workers (n¼ 169), and 60%were permanent workers. The average age was 32.96 (SD¼ 8.38).Organizational size ranged from 9 to 48 employees, with an averagenumber of members of 21.4 (SD¼ 9.83). In the Belgian sample, 63% werewomen (n¼ 351), and 34% were men (n¼ 191), with an average age of 35.66years (SD¼ 10.44). Forty-six per cent had temporary contracts (n¼ 252),and 54% had permanent contracts (n¼ 298). Organizational size rangedfrom 10 to 62 employees, and the average number of members perorganization was 30.55 (SD¼ 16.60).

We would like to note that these samples are composed of a high numberof temporary employees. It can be considered a strong point because it not

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only reflects the current characteristics of labour market but also shows thatjob insecurity climate exists independently of employees’ type of contract(e.g., temporary and permanent workers).

Procedure

Researchers contacted the Human Resources Departments of severalorganizations in Spain and Belgium. Once the objectives of the study wereexplained and collaboration was asked for, most of the employees filled outthe questionnaires in the presence of the researchers. In some cases, when itwas not possible for the employees to fill out the questionnaires on the spot,the employees posted them to the researchers. Confidentiality andanonymity were guaranteed.

Measures

Sociodemographic variables. Employees were asked their sex and age bymeans of single items. Type of contract was measured by the following item:‘‘Do you have a permanent contract with this company?’’ The responseoptions were: 0: no, I do not have a permanent contract with this companyor 1: yes, I have a permanent contract with this company.

Job insecurity was measured using the 4-item scale by de Witte (2000).Example: ‘‘Chances are, I will soon lose my job’’. The response range wasfrom 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5 (‘‘strongly agree’’). The Cronbach’s alphaof this scale in the present study was .84 for the Spanish sample and .88 forthe Belgian sample.

Job satisfaction was assessed with the 4-item scale developed by Price(1997). It includes: ‘‘I find enjoyment in my job’’. The response range wasfrom 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5 (‘‘strongly agree’’). In the Spanish sample,the Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .80, and it was .84 in Belgian sample.

Organizational commitment was measured by a 5-item scale. One item is:‘‘I am proud to be able to tell people who I work for’’ (Cook & Wall, 1980).The response scale ranged from 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5 (‘‘stronglyagree’’). Cronbach’s alpha was .71 for the Spanish sample and .72 for theBelgian sample.

Data analysis

Descriptive data and correlations among variables were calculated.Emergent group properties of job insecurity were examined throughwithin-organization agreement and between-organization variance. Indeed,two procedures were developed to determine whether the individual data

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were sufficiently homogeneous to be aggregated: rwg(j) by James, Demaree,and Wolf (1993) and the average deviation index (AD; Burke & Dunlap,2002; Burke, Finkelstein, & Dusig, 1999). The rwg(j) index compares theactual within-group variances with the expected variance from randomresponding. In most of the cases, and as James, Demaree, and Wolf (1984)recommended, the uniform distribution was used. The AD index presents anadvantage compared to the previous index, since it does not need explicitmodelling of the random or null response distribution. This index relies onthe average of the items’ standard deviation. Between-group differences werecomputed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). According toBliese (2000), significant between-groups differences support the assumptionthat the consistency of responses within each group is greater than theconsistency across larger contexts. In addition, intraclass correlation indexes(ICC1 and ICC2) were computed to assess the group level properties of thevariable. The ICC(1) indicates the proportion of total variance that can beexplained by group membership, and the ICC(2) estimates the degree towhich group means can be reliably differentiated (Bliese, 2000). In order totest the cross-level hypothesis, multilevel random coefficient models (RCM)were computed. However, their prerequisites were first examined (Bliese,2000): Group-level properties of outcomes variables were computed usingICC(1) values; and the intercept variation in outcomes variables wascalculated using the Chi-square likelihood test, which compared a modelwith random intercept and another without random intercept.

All variables were grand-mean centred to solve the possible problem ofmulticollinearity and to facilitate the interpretability (see Hofmann &Gavin, 1998). Moreover, graphic representations were plotted to betterunderstand the data. Notice that all analyses were performed using therandom coefficient model programme ‘‘lme’’ written for S-PLUS, named Rprogram (Pinheiro & Bates, 2000).

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics, correlations among the variables and reliability arepresented in Table 1. Most variables were significantly related to each other,although the values of the correlations were not very high.

First, the prerequisites for computing the random coefficient model weretested. In order to examine the proportion of the variance in the outcomesthat was explained by organizational membership, ICC(1) were computed.The ICC(1) values obtained were .12 for job satisfaction and .13 fororganizational commitment in the Spanish sample, whereas they were .02for job satisfaction and .03 for organizational commitment in the Belgiansample. Moreover, intercept variability was calculated too. Models withrandom intercepts were significantly greater than the models without

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random intercepts in the Spanish sample (job satisfaction, –2 log likeli-hood¼ 24.44, p5 .01; organizational commitment, 2 log likelihood¼ 23.60,p5 .01). However, model with random intercept was only significant fororganizational commitment in Belgian sample (2 log likelihood¼ 5.95,p5 .05). No variability of the intercepts was presented for job satisfaction (2log likelihood¼ 3.47, p4 .05). To sum up, the prerequisites to perform themultilevel analysis were met, except for the case of job satisfaction in theBelgian sample. The no variability of the intercepts for job satisfactionmeans that the variability of employees’ job satisfaction scores do notdepended on organization to which they belong. Nevertheless, we calculatedit in an exploratory way.

Hypothesis 1 predicted that individual ratings of job insecurity wouldcoalesce within organizations, and, therefore, job insecurity climate wouldemerge. We computed the interrater agreement index rwg(j) using a nulluniform distribution for job insecurity. Both the Spanish sample and theBelgian sample obtained median and mean values of rwg(j) that were slightlyhigher than the critical value of .70 (James et al., 1993, 1984). Specifically, inthe Spanish sample, the median of rwg(j) was .72, and the mean value was .73,and in the Belgian sample, the median of rwg(j) was .75, and the mean valuewas also .75. Taking into account the limitations of using a null uniformdistribution (see Cohen, Doveh, & Eick, 2001), we calculated the averagedeviation index (ADM(j)). All the ADM(j) values were lower than therecommended value of .83 for a 5-item scale (Burke & Dunlap, 2002; Burkeet al., 1999). The Spanish sample presented a mean ADM(j) value of .82, and

TABLE 1Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and correlations

Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

Belgian sample (n¼ 550)

1. Sex (dummy) – – –

2. Age 35.66 10.44 .11* –

3. Type of contract (dummy) – – .10* .49** –

4. Job insecurity 2.29 0.90 7.10* 7.33** 7.42** –

5. Job satisfaction 4.06 0.68 7.05 7.06 7.17** 7.16** –

6. Organizational commitment 3.77 0.59 .06 .06 7.05 7.21** .65** –

Spanish sample (n¼ 550)

1. Sex (dummy) – – –

2. Age 32.96 8.38 .10* –

3. Type of contract (dummy) – – .01 .38** –

4. Job insecurity 1.98 0.86 .05 7.22** 7.38** –

5. Job satisfaction 4.04 0.79 7.07 .10* 7.04 7.31** –

6. Organizational commitment 4.18 0.65 7.02 .21** 7.09* 7.37** .64** –

*p5 .05, **p5 .01, two-tailed.

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the Belgian sample of .78. Finally, one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA)were computed to verify that shared perceptions of job insecurity wererelated to the organization and not to higher unit levels. The findingsshowed significant differences among organizations for the Spanish sample,F(19, 408)¼ 2.32, p5 .001, and the Belgian sample, F(17, 527)¼ 12.01,p5 .001. Despite these results, and according to Bliese (2000), we computedthe reliability index to provide additional support for the validity of the jobinsecurity climate construct. In the Spanish sample, the interrater reliabilityindex (ICC1) was .06, and the reliability of group mean index (ICC2) was.57. In the Belgian sample, the ICC1 was .27, and the ICC2 was .91. TheseICC indexes may be considered acceptable if they are compared to othersobserved in the literature (see Gonzalez-Morales, 2006; Liao & Rupp, 2005).In conclusion, the indexes obtained for the Spanish and Belgian samplespermit us to aggregate the individual perceptions of job insecurity at theorganizational level, in order to create the variable: job insecurity climate.

Tables 2 and 3 present the results of random coefficient models to testHypothesis 2. First, the role of type of contract is worthy in these results.This control variable is the only significant one for all attitudinal employees’reactions in both samples. Permanent workers show lower job satisfaction(p5 .01) than temporary workers in the Spanish sample. Furthermore, if weare not extremely strict, they also report lower levels of organizationalcommitment (p¼ .05). Regarding Belgian sample, permanent workers point

TABLE 2Random coefficient models predicting job satisfaction

PE SE t-value p-value

Spanish sample

Intercept 4.609 0.140 32.743 .000

Sex 70.045 0.055 70.827 .408

Age 0.008 0.004 1.809 .071

Type of contract 70.341 0.081 74.198 .000

Organization size 70.012 0.005 72.435 .026

Job insecurity 70.293 0.045 76.515 .000

Job insecurity climate 70.429 0.187 72.297 .034

Belgian sample

Intercept 4.378 0.086 50.422 .000

Sex 70.048 0.046 71.036 .300

Age 0.000 0.003 0.009 .992

Type of contract 70.402 0.069 75.803 .000

Organization size 70.001 0.002 70.975 .344

Job insecurity 70.226 0.040 75.647 .000

Job insecurity climate 0.069 0.084 0.833 .418

PE, parameter estimate; SE, standard error.

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out lower job satisfaction (p5 .01) and organizational commitment(p5 .01) compared to temporary those.

The results also confirm the negative influence of job insecurity climateon employees’ attitudes. More specifically, the Spanish data point out thatjob insecurity climate is negatively and significantly related to employees’job satisfaction (p5 .03) and organizational commitment (p5 .04), beyondthe significant influence of job insecurity at the individual level (in bothoutcomes, p5 .01). Nevertheless, the Belgian findings did not show asignificant relationship between job insecurity climate and employees’ jobsatisfaction and organizational commitment, although they indicated thatjob insecurity negatively influenced employees’ job satisfaction (p5 .01) andorganizational commitment (p5 .01).

To better understand the emergent effect of job insecurity climate aboveand beyond individual job insecurity in the Spanish sample, two graphicrepresentations were plotted. One of them represents the effect on jobsatisfaction (Figure 1), and the other the effect on organizationalcommitment (Figure 2). Both graphical representations show strongerslopes of job insecurity climate when they are compared to job insecurityslopes. So, job insecurity climate had a more negative affect on employees’job satisfaction and organizational commitment than individual perceptionsof job insecurity.

TABLE 3Random coefficient models predicting organizational commitment

PE SE t-value p-value

Spanish sample

Intercept 4.000 0.140 28.554 .000

Sex 0.043 0.043 0.997 .319

Age 0.010 0.004 2.726 .006

Type of contract 70.125 0.064 71.952 .051

Organization size 70.000 0.005 70.153 .880

Job insecurity 70.230 0.035 76.558 .000

Job insecurity climate 70.417 0.186 72.234 .039

Belgian sample

Intercept 3.980 0.083 47.964 .000

Sex 0.025 0.041 0.614 .539

Age 0.004 0.003 1.668 .095

Type of contract 70.282 0.062 74.591 .000

Organization size 70.001 0.002 70.872 .396

Job insecurity 70.194 0.035 75.507 .000

Job insecurity climate 0.046 0.083 0.556 .586

PE, parameter estimate; SE, standard error.

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Figure 1. Job satisfaction predicted by job insecurity at two levels of analysis for Spanish

sample.

Figure 2. Organizational commitment predicted by job insecurity at two levels of analysis for

Spanish sample.

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Finally, it is noteworthy that the explained variance of job satisfactionwas 15% in the Spanish sample and 10% in the Belgian sample, whereas theexplained variance of organizational commitment was 17% in the Spanishsample and 8% in the Belgian sample.

DISCUSSION

Despite a growing body of literature on job insecurity, no research hasadopted a multilevel perspective. The studies have focused on an individual-level analysis approach, overlooking contextual effects. Nevertheless, thenature of organizations, composed of systems hierarchically embedded,must be considered, as it is clearly difficult to find relations at the individuallevel that have not been influenced by the context. Thus, the aim of thisstudy was to examine job insecurity climate and its influence on employees’attitudes above and beyond individual job insecurity.

The first hypothesis, concerned with the validity of the job insecurityclimate construct, was supported in both the Spanish and Belgian samples.It suggested that employees share their perceptions of job insecurity in theirorganization. Therefore, a job insecurity climate emerged, which wasdifferent from job insecurity climates of other organizations. A newperspective seems to be added to the literature on job insecurity, as theresults support the tenet that this phenomenon is not only an individual one,but also a collective one within an organization.

In addition to the validity of the job insecurity climate construct, thisstudy also examined its influence on employees’ job satisfaction andorganizational commitment above and beyond individual job insecurity.Our results partially supported Hypothesis 2. They were consistent with thejob insecurity literature that has highlighted job insecurity as a workerstressor with detrimental effects on job attitudes (e.g., Armstrong-Stassen,1993; Ashford, Lee, & Bobko, 1989; Lim, 1996; Rosenblatt & Ruvio, 1996;Yousef, 1998). Job insecurity climate seems to be perceived as a workercontextual stressor that negatively affects employees’ job satisfaction andorganizational commitment in the Spanish sample. Indeed, Spanishemployees reported undergoing more harmful outcomes when job insecurityclimate was perceived within the organization than when they individuallyperceived job insecurity. That is, job insecurity climate affects employees’job attitudes beyond the influence of individual perceptions of jobinsecurity. Furthermore, this issue reflects that shared perceptions canexplain employees’ individual reactions to a higher extent even than theirown individual perceptions. Hence, the need for research does not only takeinto consideration individual factors but also collective phenomena to betterunderstand employees’ attitudes and behaviours.

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The Belgian results showed that job insecurity negatively affected jobsatisfaction and organizational commitment. But, counter to expectations,this experience at the collective level in the organization did not present aninfluence beyond the one produced by individual experiences of themembers. Job insecurity climate was not significantly related to employees’job attitudes. Nevertheless, the fact that this hypothesis was not replicated inthe Belgian sample may be interesting as well. Up until now, there has beencertain consistency in thinking that job insecurity generally has detrimentaleffects on employees’ job attitudes. Thus, if job insecurity climate is astressor, why the lack of a significant effect on Belgian employees’ jobattitudes?

There are various ways to interpret our results. Some of them could bebased on cultural or labour market differences, whereas others on thecharacteristics of sample or methodological aspects. Perhaps there areeven more, but we simply stress these in order to open up possibleexplications. The explanation about cultural differences would refer tocollectivism-individualism. In collectivist cultures, such as Spanish, groupgoals take priority over personal purposes, and social harmony andconformity with group norms are extremely important (Green et al.,2005; Probst & Lawler, 2006), whereas in individualist culturesindividuals behave in accordance with their own preferences, needs, andbenefit–cost analyses (Triandis, 1995). Accordingly, it seems plausible tothink that job insecurity climate will influence employees’ job attitudes toa greater extent than individual perceptions of job insecurity incollectivist cultures. However, in individualist countries job insecurityclimate will not affect or will only weakly affect employees’ job attitudescompared to the influence of job insecurity. In fact, this assumption iscongruent with several empirical studies focused on studying collectivismversus individualism. However, the fact that these studies have taken anindividual-analysis perspective cannot be considered the ideal approachfor examining this topic; perhaps a multilevel perspective could providebetter evidence. Earley (1993) showed that collectivist employees reportedlower levels of performance when they worked alone or in an outgroupthan when working in an ingroup, and individualist employees showedhigher performance when they worked alone than when they worked inan ingroup or an outgroup. Probst and Lawler’s (2006) work pointed outthat job insecurity affected collectivist employees more negatively thanindividualist employees. Given this, it is important to note that othervariables may influence the relationship between job insecurity climateand employees’ reactions. In this view, another explication would emergewith regard to different characteristics of the Spanish and Belgian labourmarkets. The Spanish market is characterized by higher unemploymentand job insecurity rates compared to the Belgium market. Accordingly,

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the Spanish circumstances may create a collective and shared concernabout work permanence and, thereby, about the possibility of job loss.However, the Belgian rates surely do not prompt a fear of job loss aswidespread as the Spanish rates do. Therefore, job insecurity probablywill be perceived as a personal situation. Furthermore, these results couldbe explained for methodological reasons as well. ICC(1) reflects theproportion of variance in individual scores that is explained by groupmembership. Applied to our study, the 6% of the variation in Spanishsubjects’ job insecurity scores could be explained by organizationmembership. In spite of this low value, Bliese (1998) demonstrated thatemergent aggregated-level relationships can be identified in cases withweaker ICC(1) (ej: ICC(1)¼ 1). Regarding Belgian sample, the 27% ofthe variation in individuals’ ratings of job insecurity is in terms of theorganization to which an individual belongs. However, according toBliese’s (1998) work too, this high percentage of individual responses canoverlap with aggregated scores, therefore making it difficult to detectemergent effects. Finally, these findings could be due to specialcharacteristics of the samples: 23.5% of the Belgian sample is frompublic organizations and 76.5% is from private organizations, whereas100% of the Spanish sample is from private organizations. Given thatpublic organizations usually have lower indexes of temporary workers,and they tend to hire permanent workers to a greater extent, it isplausible that employees of this type of organization does not perceivejob insecurity as a collective threat, but rather as an individual one.

In short, all of these results show the complexity of the relationshipbetween job insecurity and its consequences and, therefore, the need toexamine the organizational context to better understand this phenomenon.So, we may conclude that it is necessary to carry out more research on jobinsecurity climate from a multilevel perspective to shed light on thisphenomenon, as it seems that job insecurity is going to continue to bepresent in work life.

Finally, the role of worker status is noteworthy. Unlike the traditionalliterature on type of contract, our results showed that permanent workersexperienced more detrimental attitudes compared to temporary ones;particularly, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is evidencein support of research showing that temporary employment does notdirectly imply more inferior outcomes than permanent employment (e.g.,Galup, Saunders, Nelson, & Cerveny, 1997; Guest, 2004; Guest & Conway,1997; McDonald & Makin, 2000). This new trend in the literature isbased on the psychological contract approach. Permanent and temporaryworkers establish different type of psychological contracts with theiremployers (de Cuyper & de Witte, 2006); moreover, temporaries’ psycho-logical contracts seem to be narrower regarding employer obligations

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(e.g., Isaksson, Bernhard, & Gustafson, 2003; Silla, Fernandez, & Gracia,2003). Accordingly, permanent workers are more likely to experience abreach of their psychological contracts in any way than temporary workers,affecting more negatively their attitudes (de Cuyper, Isaksson, & de Witte,2005). Further research would be warranted to study the role of type ofcontract on job insecurity climate and its possible relationship.

Limitations

Despite these contributions, this study is not without limitations. First, itsdesign is cross-sectional, making it impossible to infer causal relationsbetween variables. Longitudinal studies would be necessary to detect thechanges in relationships between variables over time. Another limitation iscommon method variance, as the data were collected through self-reportedmeasures. Additional methods would be useful in future research to providefurther evidence. The sample of this study contained a high percentage oftemporary workers; therefore, generalization could be problematic. It wouldbe interesting to verify the results in representative samples. Finally,although it is interesting to study climate at the organizational level, itwould also be interesting to test it at the group level, because different workteams can have different job insecurity climates in the same organization,and studies could check the difference between levels.

Theoretical and practical implications

This study suggested a new approach for the research on job insecurity andits consequences: the multilevel perspective. In this view, job insecurityclimate is shown as a contextual variable that may act as a contextualstressor; consequently, it may negatively affect the employees’ attitudesabove and beyond individual perceptions of job insecurity. These resultsalso suggest an important practical implication, pointing out that jobinsecurity climate adds, under certain circumstances, detrimental effects tothose produced by job insecurity on employees’ attitudes. Organizationsmust take care of their climate and facilitate supportive climates foremployees. So, although employees perceive job insecurity, if the organiza-tion is able to prevent this perception from being shared by most employeesby using a clear and informative policy of employment, it will reduce thenegative effects on affective reactions.

Future research

Examining job insecurity from a multilevel perspective could help to guidefuture research attempts. A longitudinal design would be necessary to test the

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causal influence of job insecurity climate on employees and organizations; inaddition, it would be useful to understand the emergence and change in jobinsecurity climate over time. In the case that job insecurity climate varied, itcould be interesting to examine the possible determinants of these shifts.Perhaps, the antecedents of job insecurity at the individual level could alsoinfluence job insecurity climate. Moreover, we suggest that future researchattempts could focus on studying a wider range of outcomes, not only theeffects on job attitudes. According to Sverke et al. (2002), job insecurity canhave an impact on several outcomes, such as job attitudes, well-being, health,and behaviours, so it seems probable that job insecurity climate may affect abroad set of consequences as well. On another hand, we also consider whetherjob insecurity climate can play a moderator role. As mentioned, anoutstanding amount of studies have investigated several constructs incontexts with high job insecurity such as downsizing (e.g., Brennan &Skarlicki, 2004; Brockner, 1990; Brockner et al., 1990, 1994, 1995; Evans,2000; Kalimo et al., 2003; Spreitzer & Mishra, 2002). However, they have notassessed this job insecurity context and it has simply been assumed that awidespread perception of job insecurity (e.g., job insecurity climate) existed inthese organizations. Further research would be necessary to clarify if jobinsecurity climate influence relationships of other factors; for example, its roleon the relationship between individual perception of job insecurity andemployees’ reactions and on the worker status–outcomes link. Regarding thislast issue, many questions have been raised by this investigation. It is assumedthat employees’ perceptions and reactions vary in terms of their type ofcontract. Then, is it possible that it happen concerning job insecurityclimate? Can different job insecurity climates emerge within an organizationin terms of type of contract (e.g., temporaries’ job insecurity climate andpermanents’ job insecurity climate)? Type of contract can probably play a keyrole in job insecurity climate, therefore further research is warranted. Finally,alternative factors should also be investigated related to job insecurity climateconstruct. Although shared perceptions on job insecurity may emerge in anorganization, there may be substantial individual differences (Lindell &Brandt, 2000). Climate constructs may be as much based on individualdifferences as on objective characteristics of the organization (James &Tetrick, 1986; Lindell & Brandt, 2000). Accordingly, it may be possible thatthe degree of within-organization agreement varies (e.g., strength climate),and some organizations do present a higher degree of agreement than others.Hence, the characteristics of workforce must also be taken into consideration.It is, for example, the case of type of contract. Given that temporary workersseem to experience higher job insecurity levels compared to permanentworkers, type of contract could affect the degree of within-organizationagreement on job insecurity. In this view, further research is warranted toexamine not only job insecurity climate but also climate strength.

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Original manuscript received November 2006

Revised manuscript received May 2008

First published online August 2008

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