title: Catch me if I fall! Enacted uncertainty avoidance and the social safety net as country-level moderators in the job insecurity-job attitudes link.
abstract: Job insecurity is related to many detrimental outcomes, with reduced job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment being the 2 most prominent reactions. Yet, effect sizes vary greatly, suggesting the presence of moderator variables. On the basis of Lazarus's cognitive appraisal theory, we assumed that country-level enacted uncertainty avoidance and a country's social safety net would affect an individual's appraisal of job insecurity. More specifically, we hypothesized that these 2 country-level variables would buffer the negative relationships between job insecurity and the 2 aforementioned job attitudes. Combining 3 different data sources, we tested the hypotheses in a sample of 15,200 employees from 24 countries by applying multilevel modeling. The results confirmed the hypotheses that both enacted uncertainty avoidance and the social safety net act as cross-level buffer variables. Furthermore, our data revealed that the 2 cross-level interactions share variance in explaining the 2 job attitudes. Our study responds to calls to look at stress processes from a multilevel perspective and highlights the potential importance of governmental regulation when it comes to individual stress processes.
authors.affiliation: Universität Zürich, Arbeits- & Organisationspsychologie, Binzmühlestrasse 14/12, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland. m.debus@psychologie.uzh.ch
authors.forename: Maike E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Debus
authors.forename: Tahira M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Probst
authors.forename: Cornelius J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: König
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kleinmann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004651:Employment / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D035501:Uncertainty