Unpacking the Missing Links of Job Insecurity and Affective Commitment through Perceived Organizational Politics and Role of Job Control

Abstract

Organizations have been restructuring, downsizing, and merging in recent times. In such circumstances, job insecurity has become high in the employees working in a competitive environment. Moreover, the current pandemic has urged organizations to implement uncertain changes to neutralize economic challenges. These changes have led to a heightened sense of job insecurity worldwide with various adverse outcomes. Employing the lens of social exchange theory, the present study investigates the effect of job insecurity on employees' affective commitment through perceived organizational politics. Further, we identified job control as a boundary condition that weakens the relationship between perceived organizational politics and affective commitment. The data was cross-sectional in nature and was collected from 189 employees from the education sector of Pakistan via Google form. SPSS 21 was used to analyze correlation and regression, while Hayes PROCESS macro (model 14) was used to check mediation and moderation. Results show that the negative relationship between job insecurity and affective commitment is mediated by perceived organizational politics. Further, our moderation results reject the proposed hypothesis and depict that high-level job control exerted a significant moderating effect on perceived organizational politics and affective commitment relationship such that at high level of perceived organizational politics, employees' affective commitment decreases. Therefore, we posit that job insecurity and perceived organizational politics are the core reasons for reducing employees' affective commitment in the education sector. Employers should take various steps to minimize job insecurity and perceived organizational politics to enhance employees' affective commitment. Motivation tools like high wages, social support, and job security can be handy to minimize the adverse outcomes of job insecurity and perceived organizational politics in employees.