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Open Ended Responses 
 We examined our open-ended responses to provide greater insight into workers’ job 
preservation strategies. A total of 233 participants provided a response to the item. Responses 
were coded using the themes of preservation strategy type (protective, promotive) and resource 
investment target (task-oriented, social-oriented) from our 2x2 typology in Table 1. Each 
response was first independently rated by the third and fourth authors. Raters were permitted to 
select multiple codes per response. Initial interrater agreement was 95%. Disagreements were 
then discussed and consensus was met on all responses. We found all four of our quadrants were 

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JOB INSECURITY AND JOB PRESERVATION 24
reflected in participants’ answers (see Table 7). Approximately 84% of all substantive responses 
referenced at least one of the four categories. There was no discernable pattern in codes or 
content between the two phrasings of the question.
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Insert Table 7 about here 
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STUDY 2: DISCUSSION 
As anticipated, JI was associated with job preservation motivation under the condition of 
more proximal threats; in turn, job preservation motivation positively predicted performance and 
self-presentation ingratiatory behavior, and negatively predicted counterproductive work 
behavior. These findings are in line with our hypotheses that job insecure employees, under 
certain conditions, would be motivated to act in a manner to try to preserve their jobs and that 
this motivation would be associated with promotive and protective social- and task-oriented 
behaviors. This idea is bolstered by qualitative responses that further illustrate these strategies 
and demonstrate job preservation as a useful way to understand how people respond to feelings 
of JI. However, opposing direct effects for performance and counterproductive work behavior 
suggest that these particular strategies may be difficult to enact at higher levels of job insecurity, 
helping to explain the overall pattern of relationships found in Study 1 as well as inconsistencies 
in the extant literature.