Temporary employment,job insecurity and their extraorganizational outcomes

Abstract

Research on job insecurity has traditionally focused on organizational consequences. The present study explores potential extraorganizational outcomes (employees’ consumption and life projects) of job insecurity in terms of both subjective perception and objective condition. Results are based on the secondary analysis of two large data sets: a tracking study with representative samples and a survey, both conducted on Italian employees. The findings suggest that job insecurity (especially the subjective perception, rather than the objective condition) may be associated with sacrifices of daily consumption (e.g. buying groceries, apparel, or entertainment) and life projects (e.g. buying a home, marrying, or having children).

Keywords

Consumption job insecurity temporary employment

Introduction

During the past 20 years researchers have studied widely the construct of job insecurity and its effects (for reviews see De Witte, 2005; Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt, 2010; Sverke et al., 2002, 2006), although several different definitions of job insecurity exist in the literature. For instance, Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt (1984), in their seminal study on the topic, defined it as a ‘perceived powerlessness to maintain desired continuity in a threatened job situation’ (1984: 438), whereas others scholars defined job insecurity as ‘a discrepancy between the level of security a person experiences and the level she or he might prefer’ (Hartley et al., 1991: 7). Furthermore, some authors (e.g. Borg and Elizur, 1992) distinguish between cognitive and affective job security, whereas others (e.g. Hellgren et al., 1999) have pointed out the distinction between quantitative and qualitative facets of job insecurity.

However, many scholars (in particular psychologists) agree on differentiating between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ job insecurity (De Witte and Näswall, 2003), where the former stems from the specific features of the job and is mainly associated with temporary work (e.g. fixed-term contracts) as a contextual phenomenon that is largely independent of the individual’s experiences and interpretation of the situation, and the latter refers to the subjective perception of threat to job continuity and to the fear of job loss. This distinction is fundamental, but, as we will see later in this article, it is not universally acknowledged (e.g. outside the field of psychological research).

As for the effects of job insecurity, most of researchers’ attention has focused on its ‘organizational’ outcomes, such as job satisfaction (e.g. De Cuyper and De Witte, 2006; Sora et al., 2009), organizational commitment (e.g. Chirumbolo and Hellgren, 2003; Sora et al., 2010), job performance (e.g. Staufenbiel and König, 2010), absenteeism (e.g. Chirumbolo and Areni, 2005), turnover (e.g. Berntson et al., 2010) and organizational citizenship behaviours (e.g. Feather and Rauter, 2004; König et al., 2010). These studies deal mainly with subjective job insecurity; nevertheless, similar organizational consequences have also been reported for the objective condition (i.e. temporary employment), such as employee–organization relationship (Chambel and Castanheira, 2007), organizational commitment (e.g. Veitch and Cooper-Thomas, 2009), work effort (e.g. Engellandt and Riphahn, 2005), work group processes (Vough et al., 2005) and cooperative behaviour (Koster and Sanders, 2007).

On the contrary, social researchers (and psychologists in particular) have paid scarce attention to the extraorganizational outcomes of both subjective and objective job insecurity, with the notable exception of the effects on employees’ health and well-being (i.e. physical and psychological consequences such as strain, depression, or cardiac pathologies; Chirumbolo and Areni, 2010; De Cuyper et al., 2010; De Witte, 1999; Hellgren et al., 1999; Lázló et al., 2010; Mauno et al., 2005).

Only recently have researchers started to study some of the extraorganizational outcomes of job insecurity, such as its relation to work–family conflict (e.g. Richter et al., 2010) and its effect on consumption decisions: for the latter, some researchers (mainly economists) have pointed out some effects of job insecurity on household consumption (Benito, 2006; De Lucia and Meacci, 2005; Stephens, 2004) as well as outcomes related to saving decisions (job insecurity as a motivation to save monthly income: Bessho and Tobita, 2008; Klemm, 2010).

However, the majority of the studies on the consequences of job insecurity on consumption, besides working mainly from an economic perspective on macro-aggregate data, have the common tendency to overlap temporary work and perceived job insecurity (see in particular Benito, 2006; De Lucia and Meacci, 2005), neglecting the distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ job insecurity.¹ Furthermore, several economic studies in the field have focused only on the effect of the ‘objective’ job insecurity (i.e. temporary employment) without considering its subjective dimension (e.g. Shire et al., 2009; Vidal and Tigges, 2009).

As a consequence, further research could effectively focus on these extraorganizational effects of job insecurity (beyond health-related outcomes) by considering the distinction between temporary work and (perceived) job insecurity. In the present study we aim to start an exploration in this direction, approaching the consequences of the interplay between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ job insecurity on some possible extraorganizational outcomes, such as consumption and employees’ personal life projects. Exploring these relationship could be important in order to more effectively identify potential effects on quality of life of the uncertain employment relations that are constantly increasing and to develop suitable social policies (e.g. Burgoon and Dekker, 2010). Furthermore, differentiating between subjective and objective job insecurity may be crucial for those who want to better understand and redress their negative consequences.

Rationale and hypotheses

Based on these premises, this study’s objectives are twofold. Preliminarily, we seek to analyse the relationship between objective (i.e. temporary work) and subjective job insecurity to verify the overlap and the interaction between the two concepts. As we have shown, most of the economic literature on the extraorganizational outcomes of job insecurity tends to overlap the subjective perception and the objective condition. On the other hand we know (Dekker, 2010; De Witte and Näswall, 2003; Klandermans et al., 2010; Saldarre et al., 2011) that the two, although clearly connected (i.e. employees with fixed-term contracts experience lower levels of job security), are not the same phenomenon. Therefore, this first analysis will be useful to better understand the extent of their overlap and to measure their association:

H1: Objective job insecurity is positively related – although not completely overlapping – with subjective job insecurity.

Second, this study aims to explore the effects of job insecurity (both subjective and objective) on extraorganizational contexts such as: (1) consumer behaviour; and (2) long-term life projects (getting married, having children, etc.). Exploring these two contexts could be useful because they represent two specific extraorganizational outcomes with different features: effects on consumption may be short-term and repetitive, whereas life projects (i.e. decisions that represent discontinuity in an employee’s life cycle) could stand for long-term but less recurring outcomes.

There are good reasons to believe that job insecurity and these potential ‘extraorganizational’ outcomes are related, both theoretically and empirically. From an empirical perspective, macro-economic research reviewed in the Introduction has pointed out that these behaviours could be related with temporary employment (and consequently with perceived job insecurity). From a theoretical perspective, insecurity about continuity in a job situation threatens valued resources such as salary or social status (Jahoda, 1982). According to the Conservation of Resource Theory (CRT; Hobfoll, 1989), people strive to keep a balance of resources and, when these resources are threatened, individuals tend to reduce activities that further demand their resources. Since job insecurity is a threat to a valuable resource (employment), insecure employees may withdraw from other activities that demand their resources, reducing their consumption or sacrificing/postponing some of their life projects. Furthermore, the CRT assumes that both perceived and actual loss are sufficient for producing stress, emphasizing that resources have both objective and subjective components, and this is crucial for the distinction between subjective and objective job insecurity.

H2A: Objective job insecurity (i.e. temporary employment) is positively associated with two kinds of ‘extraorganizational’ outcomes: sacrifices of (1) daily consumption; and (2) employees’ life projects.

H2B: Subjective job insecurity is positively associated with two kinds of ‘extraorganizational’ outcomes: sacrifices of (1) daily consumption; and (2) employees’ life projects.

Figure 1 shows a potential theoretical rationale that combines the two hypotheses: if we expect that both objective and subjective job insecurity are related with the extraorganizational outcomes under scrutiny, and we suggest a positive relationship between objective and subjective job insecurity, then the latter may be seen as a mediator between temporary employment and the extraorganizational outcomes.

Figure 1.

Rationale of the expected relations between temporary/permanent employment, job insecurity and their extraorganizational outcomes.

Method

Materials and samples

Results presented in this study derive from secondary analysis of two data sets (DB1 and DB2). DB1 is a tracking study conducted by a marketing research agency via CATI (computer-assisted telephone interview) with quantitative surveys repeated every three months since 2001 on representative samples of the Italian population. Each wave’s independent sample (1000 subjects) is controlled for gender, age, level of education and residence. The following analysis focuses on data from 2009, drawing a representative sample of employees (n = 1944), and among them a subsample of permanent workers (n = 1151) and one of temporary workers (n = 257). It is worth noting that studies on job insecurity with representative samples are quite scarce and that such representativeness will allow us to estimate the dimensions and the sociodemographic profile of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ job insecurity in Italy.

DB2 derives from a survey conducted by a network of Italian universities (see Lozza et al., 2009, 2010), and carried out on a large casual sample (n = 2717) of Italian employees about job-related and family issues with self-administered paper questionnaires. We focus in particular on the subsamples of permanent workers (n = 722) and of temporary workers (n = 1995). Although the samples of this second database are not representative of the Italian population, we use it only to explore the relationship of the variables under analysis (i.e. for associative purposes and not for a descriptive estimation of their dimensions/profiles) so that full representativeness is not necessarily required (Sturgis, 2006).

Measures

Both data sets (DB1 and DB2) offered the following two variables that will be under analysis to test the first hypothesis:

Objective job insecurity, i.e. employees’ contract: permanent vs temporary (dummy variable, where 0 = permanent and 1 = temporary). In the present study temporary employment is defined as dependent employment of limited duration and includes fixed-term employment, temporary agency work, seasonal employment and traineeships, whereas permanent employment is defined as dependent employment without any fixed term and includes types such as permanent full- and part-time job contracts.

Subjective job (in)security: answers on a 0–10 scale to the question, ‘How do you evaluate your job security?’ where values ranging from 6 to 10 represent increasing levels of (positive) security, values 4 to 0 represent greater levels of insecurity and 5 means ‘neither secure nor insecure’. Although the use of a single item variable may be criticized, we are sufficiently confident about the reliability and the validity of this measure because several previous studies (e.g. Hartley et al., 1991; Klandermans et al., 2010) have used single item measures for job insecurity.

Furthermore, the second data set (DB2) presented two different inventories of potential extraorganizational outcomes of job insecurity (H2):

Sacrifices of daily consumption: answer to the question, ‘Which of the following purchases have you had to sacrifice? (that is you cannot easily afford, but you consider very important)’ (27 items);

Sacrifices of life projects: answer to the question, ‘Which of the following would you not be able to afford?’ (9 items).

The items constituting these inventories and their reliability are presented in the Results section (see Tables 4 and 6). An inter-correlation table for DB2 is presented in the Appendix.

Data analysis

First, an exploration of the representative data set (DB1) was provided in order to estimate the penetration of temporary work and job insecurity (percentages for sociodemographic profiles) and their overlap (cross-tabulation). A regression analysis was then conducted to estimate the relationship between subjective and objective job insecurity (H1). To check if H1 is independent of sociodemographic influences, we performed a hierarchical regression analysis using three control variables (gender, age and education) that may be associated with job insecurity (Sverke et al., 2006), entered at step 1 to establish their baseline effects; and employees’ contract as a dummy variable entered at step 2. This analysis was performed on both data sets to test the stability of results.

In order to test H2A and H2B, after an exploration of the potential extraorganizational outcomes (cross-tabulation of sacrifices by contract type and job insecurity) on DB2, a 2 × 2 ANOVA was performed, with objective and subjective job insecurity as independent variables and each of the two inventories as a dependent variable. Beside controlling the same sociodemographic variables used in the previous regression analysis (sex, age and education), here we included income as a further covariate, since this variable may clearly be related with consumption and life projects. Moreover, a multiple regression and Sobel test were conducted to assess the indirect relationship described in Figure 1.

Results

Temporary employment and job insecurity

Table 1 shows the percentages of temporary employment and insecure workers ² in the whole sample and in the sociodemographic stratifications. At first glance, the dimensions of the two phenomena under scrutiny look similar: in 2009 both temporary work³ and subjective job insecurity involved nearly 13%, suggesting that the two phenomena could in fact overlap. However, there are some differences based on respondents’ age. In particular, whereas temporary employment is more frequent among the youngest employees, subjective job insecurity appears to increase among the eldest ones.

Table 1.

Penetration of temporary workers and insecure workers among employees in Italy.

	n	Percentage penetration
		Temporary workers	Insecure workers
		%	%
Sex
Total sample	1944	13.2	13.3
Male	1308	11.4	11.4
Female	637	16.8	17.1
Age
18–24	153	39.2^*	11
25–34	469	16.4	18.7
35–44	638	7.7	10.6
45–54	454	11.2	9.5
55 and over	232	8.6	20.1^*
Education
University	266	13.5	16.3
Senior high school	744	13.7	11.4
Junior high school	800	11	12.3
Primary school	134	23.1	23.6

* = statistically significant (p < .05 positive differences vs the reference group).

Source: DB1.

A simple cross-tabulation (Table 2) between the two variables suggests that temporary work and subjective job insecurity are clearly connected (the latter is stronger among temporary workers), but they appear to differ and do not directly coincide, as some permanent workers feel insecure and many temporary workers feel secure.

Table 2.

Cross-tabulation between job security and contract.

	Permanent workers(n = 1151)	Temporary workers(n = 257)
Job security mean (0–10 scale)	7.06	5.94
SD	2.34	2.62
Insecure (answers 0–4)	9.5%	22.6%
Neither insecure nor secure (answer 5)	8.8%	12.8%
Secure (answers 6–10)	81.7%	64.6%

Source: DB1.

A regression analysis (Table 3) conducted on both the databases, where objective job insecurity (temporary vs permanent contract) stands as the independent variable and subjective job insecurity as the dependent one, shows that the former accounts for an important (p < .001 in both analyses) but minor share of variance (less than 10%), supporting the fact that much of the subjective impression of insecurity originates elsewhere, outside the ‘atypical work’ dimension. It is worth noting that the very same parameters in terms of standardized β and of R² were obtained from two different data sets, therefore confirming the consistency of this result.

Table 3.

Regressing objective on subjective job insecurity.

	DB1						DB2
	β	Sig.	ΔR²	Sig.	R²	Sig.	β	Sig.	ΔR²	Sig.	R²	Sig.
Step 1: Control variables			.04	^***	.04	^***			.06	^***	.06	^***
Sex (0 = men; 1 = women)	.03	NS					.13	^***
Age (18–71)	.12	^***					.09	^***
Education level (0 = low; 1 = high)	.05	^*					-.03	NS
Step 2: Objective job insecurity			.09	^***	.13	^***			.09	^***	.15	^***
(0 = permanent; 1 = temporary )	.32	^***					.32	^***

β = standardized beta-coefficient from the final step; ΔR² = change in explanation rate in each step; R ² = explanation rate; Sig.: tests of significance (NS = not significant; ^* p ≤ .05; ^** p ≤ .01; ^***p ≤ .001).

Extraorganizational outcomes of temporary employment and job insecurity

The analysis of the two inventories, available in DB2, allows to explore the relations of objective and subjective job insecurity with two extraorganizational contexts: everyday consumption and life projects.

Everyday consumption

Table 4 shows the percentages of sacrifices in everyday consumption, comparing permanent vs temporary employees (the first two columns on the left) and (the two columns on the right) secure vs insecure subjects (where secure = answers 6–10 to the question, ‘How do you evaluate your job security?’ and insecure = answers 0–4). Results suggest that, whereas differences in sacrifices provided by temporary vs permanent workers are weak and limited to specific categories of consumption, insecure employees (compared to secure ones) tend to sacrifice the majority of the items in the inventory in a much more regular and widespread way.

Table 4.

Contract and job insecurity association with daily consumption (‘Which of the following purchases have you had to sacrifice? (that is you cannot easily afford, but you consider very important)’.

	Percentage of respondents who indicated sacrifice (%)
	Permanent(n = 717)	Temporary(n = 1954)	Secure(n = 1248)	Insecure(n = 957)
Good-quality groceries	11.5	15.6^*	10.2	19.7^*
Ordinary clothing	15.9	19.6^*	13.1	26.5^*
Fashion	17.9	15.8	15	17.8
Jewellery	15.6	14.2	15.3	12.7
Hairdresser’s	10.0	9.6	8.5	12.8^*
Cosmetics	6.8	8.1	6.0	10.0^*
Beauty products/body care	16.9	16.3	13.7	20.2^*
Computer	11.0	16.6^*	11.5	20.8^*
Mobile phone	7.4	10.6^*	8.3	12.2^*
White goods	9.2	10.1	9.2	12.2^*
Ordinary household consumption	10.0	10.5	8.3	13.4^*
TV/DVD /home theatre	9.5^*	6.4	7.1	7.5
Cinema	5.9	7.3	5.4	9.6^*
Theatre/concerts	11.2	11.5	9.0	14.5^*
Holidays and weekends	38.3	39.3	34.7	43.6^*
Education travels	17.8	18.7	13.8	23.1^*
Use of private vehicles	12.9	17.6^*	13.7	21.1^*
Restaurants	14.7	14.0	12.6	16.1^*
Home help (e.g. cleaning)	15.8^*	10.7	12.8	11.2
Help of a babysitter	8.8	6.9	7.0	7.9
Help of a nurse	5.8	4.3	4.4	4.9
Clubs	6.1^*	3.8	3.9	5.2
Internet	5.9	9.4^*	6.6	11.9^*
Books	9.6	14.8^*	10.4	19.6^*
Newspapers/journals	6.8	6.9	5.5	10.1^*
CDs	4.9	6.8	4.3	10.0^*
Sport	6.8	7.0	6.6	8.8
Average no. of sacrifices	3.1	3.3	2.8	4.1^*
(α = .79)

* = statistically significant (p < .05 positive differences vs the reference group).

Source: DB2.

To explore more rigorously these associations, we developed a scale of ‘sacrifices of everyday consumption’, measuring the number of sacrifices that respondents have stated. This scale, ranging from 0 to 27 sacrifices, presents a good reliability (α = .79) and (using a factor analysis for dichotomous variables) appears to be mono-dimensional.

We performed a 2 × 2 ANOVA to test the effect of temporary work and job insecurity (as independent variables) on this scale (as a dependent variable). To deal with the non-experimental nature of the study, respondents’ gender, age, education level and income were included as covariates. The results for the covariates show a significant effect of age (F = 13.939, p < .001) and income (F = 19.989, p < .001), whereas gender and education show no significant effect. Table 5 shows raw means from the original data and the estimated marginal means after inclusion of the covariates. Results show a significant main effect only by subjective job insecurity (F = 814.9, p < .001), whereas the contract (F = 2.16, p = 155) and the interaction between the two (F = 0.1, p = 922) show no significant effect on sacrifices of daily consumption.

Table 5.

2 × 2 ANOVA: effect of temporary employment and job insecurity on daily consumption scale.

		Secure employees	Insecure employees
Descriptives without inclusion of covariates
Permanent employees	M	2.89	4.03
	(SD)	(3.52)	(3.47)
	n	480	92
Temporary employees	M	2.74	4.09
	(SD)	(3.09)	(3.54)
	n	666	772
Estimated marginal means after inclusion of covariates
Permanent employees	M	2.82	3.96
	(SE)	(.35)	(.16)
	CI 95%	2.5–3.13	3.27–4.65
Temporary employees	M	2.86	4.04
	(SE)	(.13)	(.13)
	CI 95%	2.6–3.12	3.78–4.3

Notes: Scale ranges from 0 to 27 (mean: 3.35, SD: 3.45). Covariates were evaluated at gender = 0.67 (1 = F); age = 33.41; education level = 0.74 (1 = high); income = €1045.8.

The analysis of direct and indirect effects (considering the influence of contract on job insecurity showed above) is presented in Figure 2. Although temporary employment (alone) does not have an impact on daily consumption, higher levels of subjective job insecurity are significantly associated with sacrifices of everyday consumption (Sobel test:⁴ −2.82, p < .01). This means that subjective job insecurity works as a mediator between objective job insecurity and sacrifices of daily consumption.

Figure 2.

Job insecurity and daily consumption: analysis of direct and indirect effects.

Life projects

DB2 also presented another interesting inventory of sacrifices regarding types of expensive consumption (buying a house, a car, etc.) and important decisions related to family and life cycle (getting married, having children, etc.), that in this exploration of the effect of temporary work and job insecurity we can label as ‘life projects’. Table 6 shows the percentages of sacrifices in the items of this inventory, again comparing permanent vs temporary employees and secure vs insecure subjects. It is easy to observe that sacrifices are higher among temporary workers, compared to permanent workers; this difference, however, increases comparing insecure vs secure respondents.

Table 6.

Contract and job insecurity association on life projects (‘which of the following would you not be able to afford?’).

	Percentage of respondents indicating sacrifice (%)
	Permanent(n = 717)	Temporary(n = 1954)	Secure(n = 1248)	Insecure(n = 957)
Living on my own	18.9	34.6^*	20	41.9^*
Living together	5.3	12.4^*	5.8	17.6^*
Getting married	17.8	31.7^*	21.8	35.6^*
Getting separated	7.7	8.2	7.4	9.4
Having children	19.7	34.8^*	22.2	42.4^*
Buying a house	48.3	62.7^*	50.8	66.5^*
Reorganizing a house	24.9	28.9^*	24.6	32.5^*
Renewing furniture	23.2	23.2	19	29.1^*
Buying a car	23.5	32.3^*	19.7	42.6^*
Average no. of sacrifices	1.9	2.7*	1.9	3.2*
(α = .68)

* = statistically significant (p < .05 positive differences vs the reference group).

Source: DB2.

As in the case of ‘sacrifices of everyday consumption’, we developed a scale of ‘sacrifices of life projects’, measuring the number of items that respondents have cited. This scale, ranging from 0 to 9 sacrifices, presents an acceptable reliability (α = .68) and a factor analysis for dichotomous variables suggests one main underlying dimension.

A 2 × 2 ANOVA was performed as well, including again the covariates: gender (F = 21.221, p < .001), age (F = 84.661, p < .001), education (F = .354, NS) and income (F = 71.518, p < .001), to test the effect of temporary work and subjective job insecurity on this scale (Table 7). We found no significant main effect both of objective (F = 1.17, p = 474) and of subjective job insecurity (F = 5.72, p < .251), whereas the interaction between the two variables showed a significant effect on the number of sacrifices (F = 7.14, p < .01).

Table 7.

2 × 2 ANOVA: effect of temporary employment and job insecurity on life projects scale.

		Secure employees	Insecure employees
Descriptives without inclusion of covariates
Permanent employees	M	1.76	2.48
	(SD)	(1.68)	(1.74)
	N	486	94
Temporary employees	M	2.1	3.27
	(SD)	(1.74)	(2.21)
	N	678	781
Estimated marginal means after inclusion of covariates
Permanent employees	M	2.06	2.48
	(SE)	(.09)	(.19)
	CI 95%	1.89–2.23	2.11–2.85
Temporary employees	M	2.08	3.11
	(SE)	(.07)	(.07)
	CI 95%	1.94–2.22	2.98–3.24

Notes: Scale ranges from 0 to 9 (mean: 2.49, SD: 2.02). Covariates were evaluated at gender = 0.67 (1 = F); age = 33.4; education level = 0.74 (1 = high); income = €1046.92.

Figure 3 presents a model of these relationships showing that temporary employment is slightly associated with sacrifices of life projects, but its impact is highly enhanced by the intermediation of subjective job insecurity (Sobel test: −3.09, p < .001).

Figure 3.

Job insecurity and life projects: analysis of direct and indirect effects.

Discussion

Although exploratory and based on a secondary analysis, results presented here show several points of interest.

First, the analysis of the relationship between temporary employment and job insecurity confirms the latter as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be attributable only to temporary work, enhancing the relevance of the distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ job insecurity. The fact that objective job insecurity does not necessarily result in subjective job insecurity is congruent with previous works (e.g. Dekker, 2010; De Witte and Näswall, 2003; Klandermans et al., 2010) that have analysed this relation when studying (intra)organizational outcomes of job insecurity. Consequently, further research on the economic and social (i.e. ‘extraorganizational’) effects of job insecurity/temporary employment should take this distinction into account since the interplay between the two constructs might show very different effects.

Second, this study provides some insight into the extraorganizational outcomes of job insecurity that research on the topic has not yet considered in any depth. In fact, job insecurity seems to play a crucial role in orienting:

daily consumption, as ‘subjectively’ insecure workers, independently of their ‘objective condition’, show a higher degree of sacrifice of several goods and services; and

life projects (such as getting married, having children, or buying a house), where subjective and objective job insecurity seem to interact, so workers who are at the same time temporary and insecure tend to sacrifice such projects more often.

It is important to notice that subjective job insecurity appears more associated than the objective contract condition with these extraorganizational outcomes. Therefore, studies which have considered only the objective component when analysing the economic outcomes of job insecurity (e.g. Benito, 2006; Shire et al., 2009) could be considerably enriched by taking into account the subjective component too. On the other hand, researchers (in particular work and organizational psychologists, as shown in the Introduction) who distinguish between objective and subjective job insecurity could widen their traditional focus on organizational effects (commitment, turnover, satisfaction, etc.), so that further lines of research could deepen the consequences of those crucial phenomena.

These new lines of research on extraorganizational outcomes, furthermore, could help to overcome some of the apparent paradoxes in the literature, such as the fact that the consequences of job insecurity seem to affect permanent workers more heavily than temporary ones (De Witte and Näswall, 2003). This might be true – and theoretically explicable – when considering intraorganizational outcomes, but when we turn to extraorganizational ones, as the present study does, we could find that job insecurity may affect temporary workers more severely (see again the results of the effects on life projects) than permanent ones.

From a theoretical perspective, these preliminary findings may be interpreted following Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989). The theory argues that ‘people strive to retain, protect and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of valued resources’ (Hobfoll, 1989: 516). Obviously job insecurity may be described as a threat to a highly valued resource (employment), and people who feel threaten tend to withdraw from activities – such as consumption and life projects – that make further demands on their resources.

Moreover, taking a pragmatic perspective, these findings support a call for social policies aimed to reduce job insecurity, because its effects may rebound on citizens’ extraorganizational life too (beyond health), impacting on their quality of life and on their life goals. Contemporary working life needs more security, particularly – but not only – where there is temporary employment. These findings, combined with the fact that not all objective job insecurity is necessarily detrimental, suggest that policy-makers and support agencies should adapt their policies accordingly to who are the more vulnerable targets (i.e. subjectively insecure employees, both temporary and permanent).

This study has, of course, several limitations. First, it is exploratory and cross-sectional, so that we cannot draw conclusions about causality. Second, it relies on self-report data in all variables studied, which means – especially for sacrifices in consumption and life projects – that people may perceive making these sacrifices regardless of actual behaviour. Moreover, results derive from secondary data analysis, which prevented us from using more reliable measures, especially regarding the operationalization of (subjective) job insecurity and its extraorganizational outcomes. In this study we used the single item measure that was available in the two databases; further research could effectively deepen these findings using a more reliable (multi-item) indicator (e.g. Lee et al., 2006, 2008),⁵ possibly including multi-dimensional measures, e.g. distinguishing between the perceived probability and the perceived severity of job loss. As for the use of simple additive scales for consumption and life projects, we must acknowledge that they may be useful to explore the scope of extraorganizational outcomes but they cannot take into account the intensity of those consequences.

Again, we have not included in the analysis a measure of respondents’ ‘employability’ (De Cuyper and De Witte, 2007) and the distinction between probability vs severity of job loss (Hartley et al., 1991), which could account for some results, such as the subjective job security found among some temporary workers. In fact, their subjective job security might be viewed: (1) in terms of the expected probability of finding a replacement job (‘employability’): those temporary workers whose skills are in demand or where many jobs are offered on a temporary basis might feel very secure about staying employed (although with a different job) and therefore experience less extraorganizational outcomes; and/or (2) in terms of the severity of job loss, so that the consequences of job loss might be considerably fewer in situations where temporary employees can easily find alternative employment, and consequently a low severity might not affect expenditure and life projects.

Nevertheless, these preliminary findings may be important because, despite these limitations, they offer an original contribution to the field of job insecurity research, starting to investigate new consequences of job insecurity and temporary employment such as extraorganizational outcomes. Given the growing position that uncertain employment relations have in contemporary working life, understanding these new potential outcomes may be highly valuable both for researchers and for policy-makers or support agencies.

Concluding remarks

This study represents a first exploration of potential extraorganizational outcomes of job insecurity, and shows how the latter, interplaying with the objective job situation, may be associated with employees’ spending decisions and their life projects, such as getting married or having children. This means that job insecurity may affect citizens’ quality of life in different and less explored ways, beyond the traditional focus on organizational or health-related issues.

Further research on this topic is advisable, so that both the objective and the subjective dimension of job insecurity should be considered when studying its wider (i.e. not referring only to the organizational context) consequences.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix:

Inter-correlations for DB2

	Objective JI	Subjective JI	Sacrifices of daily consumption	Sacrifices of life projects
Objective JI	1.00
Subjective JI	.35^**	1.00
Sacrifices of daily consumption	.03	.19^**	1.00
Sacrifices of life projects	.17^**	.32^**	.32^**	1.00

p < .001. JI = job insecurity.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

1.

There are, of course, notable exceptions of economic studies that refer explicitly to this distinction; see, for instance, Koutentakis (2008) or .

2.

In the present analysis, we have considered as ‘insecure workers’ those respondents who answered within the range 0−4 (the negative points of the 0–10 scale) to the question, ‘How do you evaluate your job security?’

3.

The penetration of temporary employment is consistent with the 13.2% reported by Eurostat (2009, see ) for Italy.

4.

have shown the usefulness of the Sobel test to analyse the indirect effect of an intervening variable even when there are no direct effects from the independent variable.

5.

Some authors (e.g. Reisel and Banai, 2002), on the other hand, consider one global measure of job insecurity more effective than a scale (multi-item indicator).

Author biographies

Edoardo Lozza, psychologist, PhD in Social Psychology, is assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. His research interests range over the field of mixed methods, applied research methods, consumer behaviour and economic psychology.

Chiara Libreri is a PhD student at the Faculty of Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan. Her research interests are: qualitative health research and health communication, online communities, communities of practice and consumer and marketing psychology.

Albino Claudio Bosio is Full Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, where he is coordinator of the Doctoral School of Psychology and scientific director of the Master Programme in Qualitative Research Methods applied to social survey and marketing. Currently, his interests centre on psychosocial research applied to organizations and marketing, and the development of advanced training programmes for research professions in psychology.

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