Job insecurity and workplace deviance: The moderating role of locus of control

Job insecurity has been widely associated with reduced constructive work behaviors; however, few researchers have taken counterproductive work behaviors into consideration when investigating job insecurity. From a retaliation perspective, we investigated whether qualitative and quantitative job insecurity increase or reduce employees’ workplace deviance and how locus of control moderates these relationships. A survey was carried out with 263 participants from 40 firms in China, who completed mature, established scales, and hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression modeling. The empirical results showed that quantitative job insecurity reduced organizational deviance and increased interpersonal deviance, whereas qualitative job insecurity increased both organizational and interpersonal deviance. Moreover, internal locus of control weakened the positive relationship between job insecurity and workplace deviance. Therefore, qualitative job insecurity was more detrimental than quantitative job insecurity in terms of workplace deviance, and both were more detrimental to those who are of an external locus of control.