Research on job insecurity and well-being in the workplace from triple perspectives of HRM, leader and coworker

Abstract

This research aims to investigate how organizational high-commitment HRM, leader's trust, and coworker support influence well-being in the workplace. Based on signaling theory and conservation of resources theory, we first posit that high-commitment HRM is positively related to work well-being through reducing job insecurity. We also assume that leader’s trust in subordinates and coworker support serve as important moderators in this relationship. We adopt a multilevel, multisource field survey with 1369 supervisors and 6975 employees from 128 firms in China. Results support our hypotheses, indicating that job insecurity mediates the relationship between high-commitment HRM and work well-being. Leader’s trust in subordinates and coworker support moderate the mediating effect of job insecurity; specifically, the effect of job insecurity is stronger when leader’s trust is high rather than low, and when coworker support is low rather than high. These findings provide a finer-grained understanding of how organizational HRM, leaders, and coworkers interact to affect employee job insecurity and, finally, work well-being.