Schertler and colleagues (2026) find that remote work intensity is associated with lower belongingness and that leaders’ virtual collaboration behaviors may temper this relationship. We extend their account by framing remote inclusion as a signal-detection problem within the team’s interaction environment. Employees infer whether they belong from cues generated through coworker exchanges, communication technologies, participation norms, and leader-supported routines. Leaders shape this environment, and team members enact it through their everyday interactions. This perspective may explain why stable differences in leaders’ average collaboration behaviors mattered more than within-person fluctuations in those behaviors. We also distinguish belongingness from authenticity and clarify that authenticity should not be treated as equivalent to uniqueness. Remote work may affect these dimensions through difference processes. Future research should examine the interaction routines that make inclusionary cues easier to detect, along with the relational histories and individual differences that shape how those cues are interpreted.
Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), are increasingly used in personnel selection processes, for example, to present scenarios in situational judgment tests (SJTs). Despite growing concerns about workforce aging and labor market shortages, limited research has explored how test characteristics interact with applicants’ age. Drawing on the modular approach to personnel selection procedures, two experimental studies among 122 (Study 1: video- vs. text-based stimulus) and 121 participants (Study 2: VR- vs. text-based stimulus) investigated the interaction between stimulus format and test-takers’ age in relation to perceptions of presence and organizational attractiveness. Results of Study 1 showed that a video-based format increased presence but did not significantly affect organizational attractiveness compared to a text-based format. Further, presence did not mediate the relationship between stimulus format and organizational attractiveness, and age did not moderate the effects. In contrast, a VR-based stimulus significantly enhanced both presence and organizational attractiveness compared to a text-based format, with stronger effects among younger and middle-aged test-takers than older ones. Moreover, presence mediated the relationship between stimulus format and organizational attractiveness. These findings emphasize the importance of applying a human-centric approach when considering test characteristics and age-related differences in the development of fair selection procedures.
Platform ride-hailing pairs algorithmic efficiency with promises of flexible, ‘be-your-own-boss’ work, yet drivers portray the job as dignity-stripping. Using an interpretive–abductive design, 31 interviews with Indian male drivers were conducted and analysed via the Gioia methodology. Six interlocking mechanisms emerged: indiscriminate automation, metrics-driven gamification, detached and transactional relationship, deindividuation, limited solidarity and emotional distance, and entrapment, each aligning with classic facets of organisational dehumanisation. Advancing the scholarship on organisational dehumanisation, this study conceptualises dehumanisation as a process that systematically erodes dignity and introduces a novel framework that maps the six mechanisms into three analytically distinct but interrelated dignity erosion pathways: epistemic flattening (erosion of recognitional dignity and professional identity), affective disembedding (erosion of relational dignity and emotional recognition), and c oercive infrastructure (erosion of autonomy and volition). The findings also reveal that this moral injury stems from the synergy of code, discretionary corporate policy, and capital structure, an interaction ignored by autonomy-versus-precarity and technostress debates. The study also proposes multi-level remedies: participatory rating dashboards, live dispute channels, EMI-to-income caps, and peer-mentoring hubs, that simultaneously address code, corporate process, and capital architecture. By revealing how seemingly neutral algorithms can entrench coercive and dehumanising conditions, the study invites platform designers, regulators, and labour advocates to pursue human-centred governance of digital work.
This study investigates how alignment between team-level perceptions of AI usefulness and ease of use shapes collective outcomes. Drawing on social cognitive theory and the technology acceptance model, we theorize that perceptual congruence enhances group AI self-efficacy, which in turn promotes group task proficiency. We tested this framework using time-lagged survey data from 318 employees nested within 107 teams in South Korean police organizations, where AI adoption was mandated. Polynomial regression and response surface methodology revealed that congruence between perceived usefulness and ease of use was associated with higher group AI self-efficacy than misalignment, with effects strongest under high–high alignment. We also found asymmetric misalignment effects: self-efficacy declined more steeply when usefulness exceeded ease of use than the reverse. Mediation analyses confirmed group AI self-efficacy as the mechanism linking perceptual alignment to task proficiency. These findings highlight the importance of shared perceptions for effective AI integration in team settings.
