Lin Weipeng is Professor of the School of Management of Shandong University. His accolades include the awards of Qilu Young Scholar, Young Top Talent of Tianjin Talents Special Support Program, and a joint PhD from the Department of Psychology of Peking University and the Department of Psychology of the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the Chinese Professional Committee of Applied Social Psychology and of the Professional Committee of Positive Psychology of the Chinese Psychological Association, Adjunct Professor of the China Institute of Corporate Governance of Nankai University, researcher at the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Center of Nankai University, researcher at the Entrepreneurship and Leadership Research Center of Northeastern University, and visiting scholar of the Warrington School of Business, University of Florida. The Professor’s research interests include employee innovation, initiative, organizational citizenship behavior, leadership, and work stress.
Professor Lin has published research in leading management journals both at home and abroad, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and Nankai Management Review. As project leader, he has presided over numerous national and provincial projects. He is currently serving as Review Editor of Frontiers in Psychology, an Editorial Board member of Work, Aging and Retirement, an Editorial Board member of China Human Resources Development, and has long been a reviewer of leading management journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology.
The International Labor Organization recently estimated that up to 340 million people around the globe were likely to lose their jobs in the second half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden crisis and the severe situation it engendered are extremely likely to lead to job insecurity, as many workers may feel that their jobs or pay are not secure. Professor Lin’s team published a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the top international journal of Management and Applied Psychology (Lin et al., 2021), which reveals the detrimental effects of this situation and how organizations can help alleviate them.
The detrimental effects of an unpredictable crisis
In the study, Professor Lin’s team surveyed 306 Chinese employees from various industries to identify how employees’ perceptions of the novelty, disruption, and criticality of the unpredictable global crises (COVID-19) affected their work attitudes and behaviors.
Novelty refers to the degree to which COVID-19 was unique and unexpected when compared with previous work events; disruption refers to the extent to which the work content, processes, or methods changed due to COVID-19; and criticality refers to the extent to which COVID-19 hindered employees’ long-term success at work.
The results of the study indicated that novelty and disruption were associated with job insecurity (i.e., fear of losing jobs), and thus if employees perceive high levels of novelty and disruption due to COVID-19, they will experience higher levels of job insecurity. Job insecurity further predicted emotional exhaustion (i.e., being emotionally drained due to work), organizational deviance (i.e., leaving early and avoiding work), and saving behavior (i.e., reducing unnecessary spending and increasing levels of saving). Thus, the higher the level of employee job insecurity, the more likely employees are to feel emotionally exhausted, the more likely they are to deviate from their roles in their organizations, and the more frugal they will be in daily life.
The buffering effects of organization adaptive practices
Through qualitative interviews, the study also identified the effects of organization adaptive practices and how these can help employees.
These practices refer to the policies or measures adopted by organizations to help employees cope with crisis events. For example, offering epidemic prevention, flexible work hours, teleworking, and paid leave are types of adaptation practices that organizations can apply to respond to COVID-19.
The study further found that organization adaptive practices can alleviate the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 event (novelty and criticality) on employees’ feelings of job insecurity. By considering such effective adaptive practices, the effects of the novelty and criticality of COVID-19 on employees’ job security can be reduced, thus making employees less likely to subsequently experience emotional exhaustion and engage in organizational deviance or saving behavior. However, the adaptive practices of organizations cannot completely negate the disruptive effects of COVID-19 on employee job security.
Implications for organizational management
The results of the study showed that unpredictable crises (such as COVID-19) will have destructive effects on employees’ attitudes and behaviors, in terms of higher levels of job insecurity, emotional exhaustion, organizational deviance, and saving behavior (an important index of financial insecurity).
This study also provided several practical implications for organizations. First, in light of the detrimental effects of COVID-19, organizations can take action to reduce the extent to which employees perceive the pandemic as novel or disruptive, such as developing clear and straightforward work procedures and guidelines.
Second, organizations and managers can alleviate employees’ concerns about job insecurity, for example by maintaining transparent communication with them about organizational personnel decisions.
In summary, the study indicates that organization adaptive practices can mitigate the detrimental effects of unpredictable crises, and that organizations should be encouraged to reduce any undesirable influences on employees during crises.
