"The Effect of Formal Versus Informal Job Security on Employee Involvement Programs"

Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI This study examines the effect of employee involvement and job insecurity on employee satisfaction and commitment. A data set incorporating information from employees, managers and government sources in fifteen hospitals in a single metropolitan region in the United States is used to test these issues. In contrast to previous research, we find that workers' satisfaction and commitment persist as long as the form of employee involvement in place increases worker input and control in their jobs and as long as management is perceived to be making clear efforts to enhance the future security of workers' jobs. Employee perception of management effort to maintain employment security, however, is based on past downsizing within the organization, thus raising the potential that continued downsizing will increase insecurity and therefore will decrease both employee desire to participate in decision-making, as well as employee satisfaction and commitment to the organization. Mower 1984). For firms, the capacity to involve employees in ongoing organizational decisions is seen as a critical driver of organizational success. Through the incorporation of the ideas and information from employees, organizational flexibility, product quality, and productivity may improve (Adler 1993; Kochan and Osterman 1994). As a result of these benefits, employee involvement has diffused throughout firms in the United States so that some form of involvement is present in most large U.S. firms (Levine 1995). While the benefits of employee participation are well documented, particularly the benefits to employees, a question exists as to whether or not job security is an essential complement to involvement programs, and thus whether EI programs are vulnerable to failure in the current environment of rising insecurity. Past studies of EI suggest that insecurity undermines the positive effects of involvement, leading ultimately to employee withdrawal from participation in EI programs and eventual program demise However, formal job security may no longer be required for employee involvement programs to be successful. Psychological contract theorists argue that workers' expectations of security have changed over the past ten years; workers …