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Practical Implications 
Contrary to popularly-held beliefs that job insecurity may motivate employees to achieve 
maximum performance (Dizik, 2017), our findings suggest that JI may do little to enhance 
organizational outcomes. Even worse, it may encourage workplace dysfunction marked by 
ingratiatory behavior and evasive knowledge hiding. Some managers may utilize threats of 
employment-related punishment to motivate performance or to deter undesirable work behaviors. 
However, concerns about job loss don’t appear to make workers stellar employees or performers. 
Our findings suggest that leaders may benefit from abandoning the stick of job loss as a strategy 
to motivate performance. In this regard, managers may benefit from rethinking some common 
managerial concepts, such as the 20-70-10 rule and the ‘up or out’ mentality. The comparative 
nature of such practices might serve to further heighten socially-oriented job preservation 
strategies, as employees may feel the need to stand apart from others to keep their jobs.
Additionally, not only should organizational leaders avoid intentionally increasing JI, but 
managers should also actively work to alleviate insecurity and its effects. Rather than trying to 
scare employees into high performance, leaders could look to strategies that increase security and 
engagement (e.g., Lesener, Guys, Jochmann, & Wolter, 2020). Leadership may also seek to 
reduce proximal threats, such as those posed by management issues or “lean-and-mean” 
organizational strategies (Carusone & Shoss, 2018).
Nonetheless, there may be times when JI is unavoidable. For example, in times of threat 
to the jobs of the entire organization (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic), job preservation motivation 
may be useful for promoting some beneficial organizational outcomes to the extent to which 
counter-pressures may be identified and managed. Addressing JI in such circumstances where 

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JOB INSECURITY AND JOB PRESERVATION 30
the threat is imminent will likely yield the most successful results, as our findings suggested that 
proximal threats were more strongly associated with job preservation motivation. It may be 
beneficial to communicate the situation to employees while clearly explaining desired behaviors 
that will help secure their jobs and discouraging undesired behaviors, such as knowledge hiding. 
On a related note, our findings of a positive relationship between JI and self-presentation 
ingratiatory behaviors are in line with popular career advice encouraging workers to continually 
sell their accomplishments to their boss (e.g., Klaus, 2003). These findings should lead managers 
to question whether any perceived performance gains due to JI are real or simply self-
presentation.
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Overall, our results suggest that organizational leaders should carefully consider 
the impact of failing to address, or attempting to induce, JI amongst their employees. While JI 
may be associated with employees’ expenditures of effort in an attempt to preserve their jobs, the 
associated behaviors are likely to run counter to the ultimate goals of the organization.