Do Impression Management Motives Matter? The Differential Effects of Job Insecurity on Job Crafting and Helping Behavior

Drawing from the impression management theory and approach–avoidance framework, we develop a dualpathway model to examine the double-edged sword effect of job insecurity on employees’ job crafting and helping behavior. Specifically, we propose that job insecurity will elicit self-enhancement motives and selfprotection motives, which, in turn, impact employees’ job crafting (i.e., seeking challenges, seeking resources, and reducing demands) and helping behavior, respectively. We argue that team psychological safety is a boundary condition for the indirect effects of job insecurity. Utilizing two-wave data from 265 employees and 31 supervisors, we found that job insecurity was positively related to seeking challenges, seeking resources, and helping behavior via self-enhancement motives. As well, job insecurity was positively related to reducing demands via self-protection motives. Team psychological safety weakened the positive indirect effect of job insecurity on reducing demands via self-protection motives. Taken together, our findings highlighted the upsides and downsides of job insecurity and the importance of fostering team psychological safety to attenuate its negative effects.