Davy, Kinicki, and Scheck (1997)162 define job security as the expectations an individual has about continuity in a job situation. It also extends beyond concerns over continuation of employment with an employer to include concerns over loss of diserable job features such as promotion opportunitites, favourable working conditions long term career prospects and
159 Allvin, M. (2008). New rules of work: Exploring the boundaryless job. In K. Näswall, J. Hellgren, & M. Sverke (Eds.), The individual in the changing work
(pp. 19-46). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. P. 28. 160 Burke & Cooper, 2000.
161Näswall, K., Hellgren, J., & Sverke, M. (2008). The individual in the changing
working life: introduction. In K. Näswall, J. Hellgren & M. Sverke (Eds.), The individual in the changing working life (pp.1-16): Cambridge University Press.
162Davy, Jeanette, Angelo Kinicki and Christine Scheck. "A Test of Job Security's Direct and Mediated Effects
56
opportunities and being assigned unwanted additional responsibilities163. Job security is the concern about the future permanence of a job and an employee’s perception of a potential threat to their continuity in a job164, and captures how secure a person feels in a job165. Job security “is the assurance (or lack of it) that an employee has about the continuity of gainful employment for his or her work life”166. The inverse of job security is job insecurity.
Job insecurity is significantly different from actual job loss. Whereas job loss is immediate, job insecurity is a protracted feeling of uncertainty about one’s future in a particular job. The key word in the definitions given about is perception, and this is suggestive of the subjective nature of job security. An individual’s subjective experience may be interpreted differently from of another person in the same situation because of how they percieve it167.
163 Ferrie, J E, et al. "Effects of chronic job insecurity and change in job security on self reported health, minor psychiatric morbidity, physiological measures,and health related behaviours in British civil servants: the Whitehall II study." Journal of Epidemiol Community Health 56 (2002). p. 453.
164Sverke, Magnus, Johnny Hellgren and Katharina Naswall. "No Security: A Meta-Analysis and Review of
Job Insecurity and Its Consequences." Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 7.3 (2002): 242- 264.
165Esser, Ingrid and Karen Olsen. "Percieved Job Quality: Autonomy and Job Security Within a Multi-Level
Framework." European Sociological Review (2011).
166Kolawole, Taofeek Aliyu, O A Ajani and A L Adisa. "Declining Job Security Level and Workers’
Perfomance In Selected Banks, South Western Nigeria." African Sociological Review 17.2 (2013): P.57.
167Loi , Raymond, et al. "The Interaction Between Leaber-Member Exchange and Percieved Job Security in
Predicting Employee Altruism and Work Performance." Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 84.4 (2011).
57
3.2.1. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE JOB INSECURITY
There are scholars like Klandermans and van Vuuren168 who have stated that there are two fundamental aspects to conceptualizing job insecurity; objective and subjective job insecurity. Objective job insecurity refers to the real event that threatens the job security of an employee169. It is the anticipation of unemployment which is created by the threat of actual job loss170. The origin of this type of job insecurity could be the economic situation of a given society or country or the imminent restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing and bankruptcy which has taken place within an organisation171. These material changes in work situation are the threats that cause objective job insecurity.
Subjective job insecurity on the other hand is a more personal phenomenon. It refers to the perceptions the a worker has about his/her current job situation172 The implication of this is that subjectively experienced threats are derived from objective threats by means of the individual’s perceptual and cognitive processes173. For instance, an objective situation in a workplace, say downsizing can be interpreted in numerous ways by employees. Some may have feelings of uncertainty even though there is no objective threat to their particular job
168Klandermans, B., & van Vuuren, T. (1999). Job insecurity: introduction. European Journal of Work and
Organizational Psychology, 8(2), 145-153.
169Martínez, G., De Cuyper, N., & De Witte, H. (2010). Review of the job insecurity literature: The case of
Latin America. Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana, 28(2), p. 197.
170De Witte, H., & Näswall, K. (2003). Objective'vssubjective'job insecurity: Consequences of
temporary work for job satisfaction and organizational commitment in four European countries. Economic and industrial democracy, 24(2), p. 150.
171 Martinez et al. (2010), p. 197. See also Dumbili, E. W. (2013). McDonaldization and Job Insecurity: An
Exploration of the Nigerian Banking Industry. SAGE Open, 3(2), p. 4.
172 Martinez et al. (2010), p. 197.
173Sverke, M., Hellgren, J., & Naswall, K. (2006). Job insecurity: A literature review. Stockholm: National
58
where as others may feel very secure about their jobs even though they face imminent dismissal174. The uncertainty that job insecurity creates means that workers are not able to adequately prepare for a future that they have no clarity about. They are unclear as to how to respond to this uncertainty and as Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt contend, this breeds a sense of powerlessness in them and exacerbates the experienced threat175.