The Performance Implications of Job Insecurity: The Sequential Mediating Effect of Job Stress and Organizational Commitment, and the Buffering Role of Ethical Leadership

Although previous works have examined how job insecurity affects the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of members in an organization, those studies have not paid enough attention to the relationship between job insecurity and performance or the mediating processes in that relationship. Considering that organizational performance is a fundamental target or purpose, investigating it is greatly needed. This research examines both mediating factors and a moderator in the link between job insecurity and organizational performance by building a moderated sequential mediation model. To be specific, we hypothesize that the degree of an employee’s job stress and organizational commitment sequentially mediate the relationship between job insecurity and performance. Furthermore, ethical leadership could moderate the association between job insecurity and job stress. Using a three-wave data set gathered from 301 currently working employees in South Korea, we reveal that not only do job stress and organizational commitment sequentially mediate the job insecurity–performance link, but also that ethical leadership plays a buffering role of in the job insecurity–job stress link. Our findings suggest that the degree of job stress and organizational commitment (as mediators), as well as ethical leadership (as a moderator), function as intermediating mechanisms in the job insecurity–performance link.