Proactive responses to job insecurity: why and when job-insecure employees engage in political behaviors

Purpose Drawing upon ego depletion theory, the authors developed a serial mediation model linking job insecurity with employee political behavior in which resource depletion and moral disengagement operated as two sequential mediators. The authors further identified employee moral identity as an important boundary condition that impacts the strength of this serial mediation effect. Design/methodology/approach Multilevel analyses were utilized to test the proposed hypotheses by analyzing a sample included 306 employees nested in 71 groups. Findings Results revealed that job insecurity induced resource depletion that activated moral disengagement, which in turn instigated political behavior. Furthermore, employee moral identity weakened this serial indirect effect. Specifically, this indirect effect was positive when moral identity was low, whereas did not present when moral identity was high. Originality/value Prior studies have primarily concentrated on the detrimental effects of job insecurity. However, less study has investigated how individuals proactively cope with job insecurity. The authors contribute to this stream of research by exploring whether and how job insecurity facilitates employee political behavior.