Things You Meed to Know Before Downsizing : Correlation between Job Insecurity, Perceived Organizational Support, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Employees with high job insecurity and being inside a downsized company should still perform well to maintain organizational effectiveness. However, downsizing may be perceived as an indifference on the employee's welfare that will lower employee's perceived organizational support (POS). 37 employees in a company that underwent downsizing were analyzed to show how job insecurity and POS related to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study used paired questionnaires. The first questionnaire containing demographic data, POS measurements, and job insecurity measurements filled by the employees; while the pair questionnaire containing the OCB measurements were given to his/her superiors. This was done to avoid common method variance and social desirability. Multiple regression was used to test the relationship between job insecurity, POS, and OCB. This study found that there is no significant relationship between job insecurity and OCB (r= -.219; p> .05), nor between POS and OCB (r = -.232; p> .05). However, the interaction between job insecurity and POS shows a significant relationship to OCB (R2 = .185; p< .05). Hence, if the job insecurity is high and the POS is somewhat high, the OCB will still be high. Therefore, the companies should be aware of their employees' job insecurity during downsizing period and maintaining their POS to keep them perform their best.