AUTHOR=Samreen Farah , Nagi Sadaf , Naseem Rabia , Gul Habib 

TITLE=COVID-19-Induced Downsizing and Survivors’ Syndrome: The Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.833116

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.833116

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Downsizing due to COVID-19 (COV-DS) and its consequences on laid-off employees has 
attracted the attention of many researchers, around the globe. However, the underlying 
mechanisms that explain the effects of COV-DS on the employees who have survived cutoffs
remain underexplored. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory, this paper aims to 
study the causal path through which COV-DS reduces the survivors’ affective commitment. 
The current study proposes the mediation of survivors’ job uncertainty stress and organizational 
identification between COV-DS and survivors’ affective commitment. This study also posits
the moderating role of transformational leadership between COV-DS and both the mediators. 
The extant study has employed WARP PLS 7 and Hayes Process Macro to test the 
hypothesized relationships. Using the sample of 274 employees from the private sector of 
Pakistan it was found that job uncertainty stress strongly mediates the relationship between 
COV-DS and survivors’ affective commitment. While, mediation of survivors’ organizational 
identification was not proved to be significant. However, with the moderation of 
transformational leadership both the mediators were proved to be significant.