Economic crisis and the employee: The effects of economic crisis on employee job satisfaction, commitment, and self-regulation

• This paper examines the impact of the recent economic crisis in Greece on employee attitudes.
• The study is based on samples with about 1000 employees surveyed each before and during the crisis.
• Results show that the crises lead to lower promotion and higher prevention focus.
• Changes in regulatory focus impact on employee job satisfaction and commitment.

Greece has been suffering a severe crisis starting in about 2009. This paper examines the impact of the recent economic crisis in Greece on employee work-related attitudes via changes in regulatory focus. We collected data in a large and heterogeneous sample of employees (N = 1024) during the crisis and compared them with a matched sample of employees surveyed (N = 882) half a decade earlier, i.e., before the crisis. Participants reported their job satisfaction, organizational commitment and their self-regulatory focus. Results show, as expected, that participants after start of the crisis were lower in extrinsic job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment and were also (unexpectedly) lower in normative commitment, while these attitudinal changes were explained by decreased promotion orientation and increased prevention focus. Rather unexpectedly, pre-crisis and crisis samples did not differ in levels of continuance commitment. This paper makes a relevant contribution by showing that the threatening crisis event does not only have negative effects on work-related outcomes, but also that changes in regulatory foci occur and explain attitudinal change indicating an adaptive mechanism to the threatening situation of an economic crisis.