Cross‐lagged associations between perceived external employability, job insecurity, and exhaustion: Testing gain and loss spirals according to the Conservation of Resources Theory

Abstract

This study investigates perceived external employability (PEE) as a personal resource in relation to job insecurity and exhaustion. We advance the idea that PEE may reduce feelings of job insecurity and, through felt job insecurity, also exhaustion. That is, we probe the paths from PEE to job insecurity and from job insecurity to exhaustion. We furthermore account for possible reversed causality, so that exhaustion ! felt job insecurity and felt job insecurity ! PEE. This aligns with insights from the Conservation of Resources Theory, which is built on the assumption of resource caravans passageways and associated gain and loss spirals. We based the results on a sample of 1314 workers from two Finnish universities. Respondents participated twice in the study with a time lag of one year. We found that PEE related negatively to felt job insecurity and vice versa. Similarly, there was a reciprocal positive relationship between felt job insecurity and exhaustion. We conclude that PEE may prevent feelings of insecurity and, through reduced job insecurity, also exhaustion.

Understanding students’ motivation towards proactive career behaviours through goal-setting theory and the job demands–resources model

“…a zero-hours contract) can weaken employability gains. De Cuyper et al (2012) reported that job insecurity can threaten a person's confidence in their employability. In contrast to job resources, job demands require energy and effort to manage, while job resources enable goal achievement, reduce demands or provide opportunities for personal development.…”

“…We examine these proactive career behaviours based on the definition provided by Strauss, Griffin, and Parker (2012) because of the lack of measurement of these behaviours in previous employability studies (e.g. De Cuyper et al 2012;Van Emmerik et al 2012). We also examine students' perceptions about their employability and probe how motivational processes and proactive career behaviours shape these perceptions.…”

A reciprocal interplay between psychosocial job stressors and worker well-being? A systematic review of the “reversed” effect

“…Drawing on the conservation of resources theory (80,81), scholars are beginning to explore the relevance of gain/loss spirals in the context of the occupational stressor-strain relationship (82)(83)(84). Accordingly, this was also revealed to be a key theoretical basis/impetus for many of the studies reviewed.…”

Searching for a Job on the Contemporary Labour Market: The Role of Dispositional Employability

“…This choice reflects a greater match in specificity between the predictor and criterion that, in turn, has the potential to increase the predictive power of the results (see also Woo, Jin, & LeBreton, 2015). Third, the present study encompasses two related, yet conceptually different notions of employability-dispositional (Fugate, 2006) and perceived employability approaches (De Cuyper et al, 2012a) and thus enables empirical testing of the most recent employability models (e.g., Vanhercke et al, 2014). Fourth, while both conceptualizations of employability have thus far been predominantly studied in samples of employed individuals, the present study supplements the few existing studies that investigate either dispositional (i.e., Koen, Klehe, & Van Vianen, 2013;McArdle et al, 2007) or perceived employability (i.e., Chen & Lim, 2012;Onyishi et al, 2015) among unemployed persons.…”