Section OneThe Work Effort and Job Security Relationship
Some companies have learned hard lessons that employees
may not be willing to be sufficiently flexible in their work
assignments when their employers have employment security
policies.^89 Unfortunately, high-standards companies that
provided such employment security in the past may have
endangered their own adaptability and survival through these
enlightened or progressive human resource practices. Not only
have some employees failed to reciprocate by making personal
adjustments needed for the welfare of the company, employees
may become shielded from the realities of the marketplace and
too complacent in today’s era of intense competition.
Interestingly, with an appropriate level of job insecurity,
employees may work harder. A recent field study has found an
inverted “U”–shaped relationship between job insecurity and
work effort. As presented in Figure 1-1, effort increases as
insecurity escalates from low to moderate levels, but it declines
with high levels of insecurity.^90 The implications for human
resource investment policy are that there may be trade-offs
between the benefits of employment security policies and the
costs—to include the amount of effort that may be expected
from employees. However, this relationship is obviously only an
average tendency to which there are many exceptions.