Predicting job insecurity via moderating influence of individual powerlessness.

While job insecurity has been extensively studied since Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt called attention to it in 1984, this paper examined why some individuals respond to the antecedents of job insecurity with increased job insecurity while others do not. This research sought to assess whether a moderator variable, individual powerlessness, might offer explanatory information on why people experience job insecurity. Moderated multiple regression analysis on a sample of 276 managers using Caplan, Cobb, French, Van Harrison, and Pinneau's 1975 Job Insecurity scale and Ashford, Lee, and Bobko's 1989 Powerlessness scale, suggested that an individual's powerlessness moderates the effect of antecedents on measured job insecurity. An interaction was found for subjects scoring high on powerlessness and not for those scoring low as hypothesized.