Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets
Previous research has shown that both past unemployment and anticipated future unemployment have a detrimental impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours, which may affect organisational performance. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the relative impact of past unemployment c...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Routledge
2013
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20783 |
| _version_ | 1848750404923293696 |
|---|---|
| author | Lange, Thomas |
| author_facet | Lange, Thomas |
| author_sort | Lange, Thomas |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Previous research has shown that both past unemployment and anticipated future unemployment have a detrimental impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours, which may affect organisational performance. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the relative impact of past unemployment compared with current job insecurity. Although it is possible that both effects operate simultaneously, this paper – focused on employees' job satisfaction and utilising a set of cross-sectional data derived from the European Social Survey 2006–2007 – reports on a strongly pronounced insecurity effect: anticipated unemployment substantially reduces employees' job satisfaction. Interestingly, inclusion of the perceived risk of future unemployment as a separate predictor variable in ordered probit regressions relegates the experience of past unemployment to a statistically insignificant coefficient and thus weakens the ‘scarring’ hypothesis. These results hold true even when several socio-demographic characteristics and proxies for individual personality traits are controlled. Implications for organisations and human resource practitioners and scope for future research endeavours conclude the analysis of the paper. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:36:18Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-20783 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:36:18Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | Routledge |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-207832017-09-13T16:04:40Z Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets Lange, Thomas unemployment job satisfaction ordinal probit regression job insecurity European labour markets Previous research has shown that both past unemployment and anticipated future unemployment have a detrimental impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours, which may affect organisational performance. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the relative impact of past unemployment compared with current job insecurity. Although it is possible that both effects operate simultaneously, this paper – focused on employees' job satisfaction and utilising a set of cross-sectional data derived from the European Social Survey 2006–2007 – reports on a strongly pronounced insecurity effect: anticipated unemployment substantially reduces employees' job satisfaction. Interestingly, inclusion of the perceived risk of future unemployment as a separate predictor variable in ordered probit regressions relegates the experience of past unemployment to a statistically insignificant coefficient and thus weakens the ‘scarring’ hypothesis. These results hold true even when several socio-demographic characteristics and proxies for individual personality traits are controlled. Implications for organisations and human resource practitioners and scope for future research endeavours conclude the analysis of the paper. 2013 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20783 10.1080/09585192.2012.706819 Routledge restricted |
| spellingShingle | unemployment job satisfaction ordinal probit regression job insecurity European labour markets Lange, Thomas Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title | Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title_full | Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title_fullStr | Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title_full_unstemmed | Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title_short | Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets |
| title_sort | scarred from the past or afraid of the future? unemployment and job satisfaction across european labour markets |
| topic | unemployment job satisfaction ordinal probit regression job insecurity European labour markets |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20783 |