Insecurity in the Ivory Tower: Direct and indirect effects of pay stagnation and job insecurity on faculty performance

Abstract

Despite unprecedented cuts to public funding of state universities, little research has examined economic stressors in academia. This study addresses this gap in research by examining the direct and indirect relationships of pay stagnation and job insecurity to performance among a sample of 355 faculty members from a public university in the United States undergoing major budget cuts. In line with job stress and psychological contract breach theories, among tenured faculty, both job insecurity and pay stagnation were indirectly related to lower performance via job satisfaction. Among non-tenured faculty, only pay stagnation had a significant adverse relationship with job satisfaction. Given the difficulty of guaranteed job security or pay raises during times of austerity, organizational interventions designed to improve job satisfaction may be more efficacious. Such interventions might help ameliorate the negative impact of economic stressors on the performance of tenured faculty.