The Relationship Between Job Insecurity And Work Engagement Of Service Industry Employees

As the transformation and upgrading of China’s service industry continues to advance,many enterprises have begun to take the initiative to seek for new chances and pursue high-quality development.However,this has also led to an increased sense of job insecurity among service industry employees.This concern about the survival of job and its valued aspects in turn has an impact on employees’ work engagement.To explore the relationship between job insecurity and work engagement of employees in the service industry,this study attempted to explore the relationship between them through both quantitative and qualitative research.We also introduced the variable of emotional labor to see if it mediates the relationship between job insecurity and work engagement of employees in the service industry.In study 1,we used questionnaires to investigate the relationship between job insecurity(quantitive vs.qualitative),emotional labor(surface acting vs.deep acting),and work engagement among 189 service industry employees,using SEM(Structural equation modeling)for data analysis.The results showed that quantitative job insecurity was positively related to surface acting and work engagement,while it was negatively related to deep acting.Qualitative job insecurity was positively related to surface actin,while it was negatively related to work engagement.Both surface and deep acting mediated the relationship between quantitive job insecurity and work engagement.And surface acting mediated the relationship between qualitative job insecurity.In study 2,15 service industry employees were invited to take semi-structured interviews.And the thematic analysis method was used to analyze the results.The results not only further supported the findings of Study 1,but also provided a more microscopic perspective to better understand this phenomenon.While explaining the relationship between job insecurity,emotional labor,and work engagement,the study also gives suggestions for reducing job insecurity and increasing work engagement for both individual employees and organizations.