The effects of job insecurity and trust on employee acceptance of innovative human resource practices

The objectives of this research are: (1) to examine job insecurity and antecedents argued to comprise it; (2) to examine trust in its component forms as calculative trust and relational trust; (3) to explore the mediating relationship between job insecurity and trust and their roles in employee acceptance of specific human resource innovations at small organizations; and finally, to determine if demographics and the role of participants as (non) beneficiaries affect their responses to job insecurity, trust and acceptance.; Questions addressed included: Are perceived job threat and job control antecedents of job insecurity? Does job insecurity have a negative effect on trust? Does job insecurity have a direct and mediated effect on employee acceptance of human resource innovations? Does trust mediate the relationship between job insecurity and acceptance? This research also sought to determine if employees who could be considered direct beneficiaries of a human resources program such as workforce diversity or suggestion box reward program responded differently than non-beneficiaries. It also examined factors such as race, age, gender, tenure in the company, and hierarchical level in the organization.; Utilizing structural equation modeling techniques, perceived job threat and perceived control of one's job situation were found to be significant antecedents of job insecurity. Relational trust and calculative trust also successfully modeled the latent variable, trust. Trust was strongest when perceived threat was low and perceived control was high. The effects of job insecurity and trust on employee acceptance of human resource innovations were strongest when both were included in the nested structural equation model.; Findings on beneficiaries were limited because the subsets of samples were small for structural equation modeling. Examining employee acceptance of some innovations individually rather than as a bundle did offset this somewhat. For example, as has been previously suggested, blacks were more accepting of work force diversity than whites and more variance was accounted for in the relationship for blacks than for whites. Results also indicated that users of work and family benefits, the 401K, and the suggestion box were more supportive than nonusers. Other control measures of significance were work hierarchy and age. The results from this research also supported arguments that both job insecurity and trust are multidimensional constructs.