The effect of entrepreneurial intentions on depression: the mediating role of job insecurity and moderating roles of person vocation fit, and entrepreneurial leadership in the longitudinal study

PurposeThe understanding regarding the impact of entrepreneurial intentions on the job insecurity and depression is limited in the longitudinal settings, organizations need to know which factors can be added to decrease the psychological and career issues of visiting or contract employees. Thus, this research aims to investigate the person vocation fit and entrepreneurial leadership as a moderator in the relation of entrepreneurial intentions, job insecurity and depression in within- and between-person level with the time of 4 months' time lag.Design/methodology/approachThe data was gathered by using survey method from visiting faculty of universities located in Punjab, in the longitudinal design of 4-wave months and M.plus software was used to do the mediation and moderation analysis.FindingsResults revealed that job insecurity mediated the entrepreneurial intentions and depression, the person vocation fit and entrepreneurial leadership moderated the entrepreneurial intentions and job insecurity link in the following month.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper contributes in the literature of entrepreneurship and career management, by considering the role of person vocation fit and entrepreneurial leadership in the organizations of emerging countries that have high unemployment rate and mental health issues. This paper provides nuanced understanding of how these two constructs have influenced the entrepreneurial intentions-job insecurity-depression within- and between-person level in the visiting or contract employees. Therefore, made strong contribution to the theory of person- environment fit, the entrepreneurial event theory and the contingency theory in the longitudinal data. In addition, to generalize the results, this theoretical framework should be tested in the other geographic area and industries.Practical implicationsThe findings give practitioners, e.g. managers, policy- makers and counselors, with an idea how to decrease the feelings of job insecurity and depression in visiting or contract employees. They can promote the culture of innovation by giving training of entrepreneurial leadership and hiring the employees who have person vocation fit, all of these factors can lead to enhance the positive organizational image in potential and existing employees as well as it will also decrease the unemployment issue in emerging countries.Originality/valueIn past, scholars focused on the consequences of job insecurity and its harms but none emphasized on the aspects of entrepreneurship regarding the visiting faculty of universities. Like how entrepreneurial intentions can gradually decrease the job insecurity and depression among them and how the strengthen of person vocation fit and entrepreneurial leadership role their play monthly in this regard.