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Does Positive Affect Buffer the Associations between Job Insecurity and Work Engagement and Psychological Distress? A Test among South African Workers
Author(s) -
Vander Elst Tinne,
Bosman Jacqueline,
De Cuyper Nele,
Stouten Jeroen,
De Witte Hans
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
applied psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.497
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1464-0597
pISSN - 0269-994X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1464-0597.2012.00499.x
Subject(s) - job insecurity , affect (linguistics) , psychology , psychological distress , work engagement , test (biology) , government (linguistics) , distress , social psychology , work (physics) , clinical psychology , mental health , psychiatry , mechanical engineering , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , communication , engineering , biology
This study aims to respond to earlier calls to study well‐known concepts, more specifically, job insecurity, in less traditional (i.e. non‐European, non‐US) settings, as well as factors that may mitigate the aversive consequences of job insecurity for employees' work‐related functioning. We investigate (1) the relationship between job insecurity and work engagement and psychological distress, and (2) the moderating role of positive affect in these relationships. Cross‐sectional data from 296 employees in a South African government organisation were used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that job insecurity was negatively related to work engagement and positively to psychological distress. These relationships were buffered by positive affect.