Dual-Channel Effect of Job Insecurity on Knowledge Workers’ Innovative Behavior

Job insecurity reflects the desire and expectation of organizational managers for employees’ exhibition of innovative behavior. Ubiquitous and inevitable, it has gradually become a concern psychological problem for job survival and stability. As a key driver of innovation, employee innovation depends heavily on knowledge workers, who are best able to spot problems and identify and capture opportunities. Based upon the transactional theory of stress and coping (TTSC), this paper discusses the influencing mechanism of knowledge workers’ job insecurity and innovative behavior in enterprises, emphatically analyzes the mediating effects of two coping strategies, i.e., proactive work behavior and working withdrawal behavior, and verifies the moderating effect of organizational climate for innovation. With the data from 665 questionnaires of enterprise knowledge workers, this paper shows that job insecurity can influence knowledge workers’ innovative behavior either positively through proactive work behavior or negatively through working withdrawal behavior, thus forming a dual-channel effect model of influencing their innovative behavior, and that organizational climate for innovation has a moderating effect on the relationship between job insecurity and proactive work behavior/working withdrawal behavior. The organizational innovation climate played a moderating role between job insecurity and proactive work behavior and work withdrawal behavior and detected the value of the boundary where the organizational innovation climate played a mediating role.