Too Scared to Fight Back? Affective Job Insecurity as a Boundary Condition Between Workplace Incivility and Negative Mood States in Temporary Agency Workers

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Blue-collar temporary agency workers may confront daily workplace incivility, based on their status as outsiders in the user company, and affective job insecurity, based on their unstable employment situation. Building on the employment-health dilemma (Kößler, F. J., Wesche, J. S., & Hoppe, A. (2023). In a no-win situation: The employment–health dilemma. Applied Psychology, 72(1), 64–84) and the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion (Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. Oxford University Press), we examine how these factors jointly shape workers’ daily affective experiences. We assume that workers with high levels of affective job insecurity feel less capable to fight back against workplace incivility. Consequently, we hypothesize that these workers are less likely to respond to daily workplace incivility with angry mood and more likely to respond with sad mood. To address our hypotheses, we conducted a daily diary study in Switzerland with 95 blue-collar temporary agency workers. As expected, affective job insecurity weakened the link between daily workplace incivility and angry mood, whereas it strengthened the link between daily workplace incivility and sad mood. In sum, our findings suggest that worries and fears related to keeping one’s job can alter how workers respond to daily workplace incivility. We discuss our findings in the context of temporary agency work.
Original languageEnglish
JournalOccupational Health Science
Volume9
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)205-225
Number of pages21
ISSN2367-0142
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2025

    Research areas

  • Psychology - Temporary agency work, Workplace incivility, Affective job insecurity, Angry mood, Sad mood

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance
  2. Effects of grade retention on achievement and self-concept in science and mathematics
  3. Improved models, improved information? Exploring how climate change impacts pollen, influenza, and mold in Berlin and its surroundings
  4. Personal and regional determinants of entrepreneurial activities
  5. The EU at a crossroads. Negotiations about the multiannual financial framework 2021-2027
  6. From incremental to fundamental substitution in chemical alternatives assessment
  7. What Makes a Person a Potential Tourist and a Region a Potential Tourism Destination?
  8. From Phenomenological Self-Givenness to the Notion of Spiritual Freedom
  9. Foreign Ownership and Firm Performance in German Services: First Evidence based on Official Statistics
  10. Effects of free-air CO 2 enrichment and nitrogen supply on grain quality parameters and elemental composition of wheat and barley grown in a crop rotation
  11. In-situ synchrotron investigation of the phasesand their morphology-development in Mg-Nd-Zn alloys
  12. Comment on “fluorotechnology is critical to modern life
  13. Zugänge zu Lernerperspektiven auf das Textschreiben in der Grundschule
  14. Stochastic environmental policy, risk-taking, and growth
  15. MindMatters - A programme for the promotion of mental health in primary and secondary schools
  16. Lehrer. Bildung. Gestalten
  17. Sex differences in mental rotation strategy
  18. "Cachita" von Rafael Hernändez
  19. The interplay of eco-labels and price Cues

Press / Media

  1. Die Macht genauer Zahlen