How Various Modes of IT Use Lead to Job Insecurity During Rapid Digitalization: An Identity Approach

This paper investigates how individuals’ use of IT (information technologies) at work can threaten their identities and perceptions of job security over the course of a sudden digitalization period. We draw upon identity control theory to build on the premise that increasingly novel and innovative uses of IT threaten individuals’ identities by disturbing the homeostatic and conservative operation of identity preservation. We test our hypotheses by using latent growth modeling on a longitudinal sample of 179 workers across three time points (N = 537 data points) during the first four months of Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. We show, among other results, that initial levels and increases in IT innovative use lead to increases in IT identity threat, and that increases in IT identity threat leads to increases in feelings of job insecurity. Our results, methodology, and instruments open up new avenues for further mono- or inter-disciplinary quantitative or qualitative research on identity threats related or not to IT. They also bear practical implications for practitioners interested in digitalizing their work processes.