Artificial Intelligence technologies (AI) are rapidly transforming the nature of jobs and work. While much of the discussion around AI concerns its capabilities, this set of compiled commentaries argues that AI also has profound implications for workers’ health, safety, and well-being. The commentaries explore these implications across a range of topics, including technostress, human health, flourishing, job and occupational insecurity, algorithmic management, ethics, and training needs for future occupational safety and health professionals. Together, the commentaries suggest that AI’s potential impacts are neither inherent nor inevitable. In a world where AI’s effects are still a consequence of human decisions, the frameworks and values of occupational health psychology hold promise for understanding and shaping a future of work where worker health, safety, and well-being are paramount.

Fifty years after Pateman proposed her spillover thesis that workplace experiences affect other areas of life, such as politics, debates continue regarding its validity. Central to this debate is the need to identify the specific job qualities at work that may enhance employees' political involvement, as well as to understand the mechanisms and contextual conditions through which the spillover effect occurs. This study addresses these issues by investigating how employees' supervisory roles contribute to political spillovers, focusing on the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. We propose that employees holding supervisory roles experience higher levels of psychological empowerment, which, in turn, positively influences their political involvement outside the workplace. In contrast, employees without supervisory responsibilities tend to be less psychologically empowered, leading to lower levels of political involvement. Furthermore, we theorize that national-level workplace democracy moderates this relationship, such that the positive effect of having a supervisory role on political involvement is particularly pronounced in countries with weak workplace democracy, where limited employee representation, participation, and autonomy make the psychological benefits of supervisory roles more significant. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, primary survey data from the United Kingdom and cross-country data from mainland Europe, we provide empirical support for our arguments and discuss their implications for the broader discourse on political spillover.

: With increasing political polarization accompanied by various economic threats and crises, the interplay of politics and work is crucial to understanding emerging phenomena. With this position paper, we highlight what work and organizational psychology can offer in the work-politics nexus. We classify three broad streams in which we see the need for more research on the work-politics nexus: (a) politics affecting work, (b) work affecting political attitudes and engagement, and (c) political participation at work. Using these areas, we highlight the urgency for organizations and practitioners to pay attention and provide future research directions for work and organizational psychology scholars. This position paper aims to highlight initial work and organizational psychological research in the work-politics nexus and encourages work and organizational psychologists to direct more attention toward the intersection of work and the broader civic sphere. Zusammenfassung: Angesichts der zunehmenden politischen Polarisierung, begleitet von verschiedenen wirtschaftlichen Bedrohungen und Krisen, ist das Zusammenspiel von Politik und Arbeit entscheidend f & uuml;r das Verst & auml;ndnis neu auftretender Ph & auml;nomene. Mit diesem Positionspapier heben wir hervor, was die Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie im Zusammenhang zwischen Arbeit und Politik leisten kann. Wir unterscheiden drei gro ss e Bereiche, in denen wir einen Forschungsbedarf zum Zusammenhang zwischen Arbeit und Politik sehen: (a) Politik, die sich auf die Arbeit auswirkt, (b) Arbeit, die sich auf die Politik auswirkt, und (c) politische Partizipation am Arbeitsplatz. Anhand dieser Bereiche betonen wir die Dringlichkeit f & uuml;r Organisationen, diesem Thema Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken, und geben zuk & uuml;nftige Forschungsrichtungen f & uuml;r Wissenschaftler und Wissenschaftlerinnen der Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie vor. Dieses Positionspapier soll erste arbeits- und organisationspsychologische Forschungsarbeiten im Zusammenhang zwischen Arbeit und Politik hervorheben und Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologen und -psychologinnen dazu ermutigen, mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf die Schnittstelle zwischen Arbeit und dem breiteren zivilgesellschaftlichen Bereich zu richten.

Work experiences and political participation outside work are intrinsically linked. Management scholars have acknowledged the role that organizations play in shaping political behavior from a firm-level perspective, but the specific working conditions and how they translate into employee political participation and attitudes outside work remain poorly understood. This paper offers an interdisciplinary review of the empirical literature from the past 25 years across the management and political science disciplines. It examines how individual work-related experiences (broadly categorized into job content, working environment, employment characteristics, and social relations at work) relate to political engagement outside of work: political participation, political attitudes, political trust, and political values. The results show that enabling work experiences (e.g., more skill use, autonomy, higher income, more social interactions) and experiences that caused grievances (e.g., more job or financial insecurity) were both related to more political participation but differed in their effect on political trust and regarding political attitudes on economic and cultural issues. We also review the main theoretical explanations and consolidate contradictions. Finally, we propose a future research agenda, calling for the expansion of theoretical lenses, a focus on individual-level explanatory mechanisms, and more multilevel research.

This study examines the effect of subjective financial stress on exhaustion and work-related outcomes (violation of psychological contract and turnover intentions). It argues that to fully understand the impact of subjective financial stress on outcomes, individual fluctuations over time need to be taken into account. Building on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose that because of the centrality of money to people's lives, any increase in subjective financial stress will cause disruption to multiple domains in people's lives, which will affect work-related outcomes. We also investigate whether intraindividual reactions to changes in financial stress were stronger for people with generally higher levels of financial stress than others. Empirical evidence from a four-wave study conducted among British employees (N = 711) partially supports the assumptions. In line with COR theory, the findings show that subjective financial stress threatens important personal resources that correspond to stress reactions (emotional exhaustion), perceptions of unfairness (psychological contract breach), and a search for better resources (turnover intentions). In support of the dynamic within-person perspective, when people experienced an increase or decrease in subjective financial stress over time, they also reported a worsening or improvement of these outcomes, respectively. Interestingly, this was independent of the average level of financial stress: people at high average levels of financial stress suffered similarly to people at low levels when their financial stress changed. This paper ends with a call for more research to uncover why some people suffer more from an increase than others.

This study examines the dynamics of job insecurity and perceived income inadequacy trajectories and their implications for political attitudes. The authors examine these phenomena over a period of five years, using latent class growth analysis. Using data from the Dutch LISS panel with 5662 employees, the study uncovers five distinct profiles that portray diverse levels of job insecurity and perceived income inadequacy, which are relatively stable across time or show only small changes: (1) very low job insecurity and adequate incomes, (2) converging low job insecurity and adequate incomes, (3) low job insecurity and high income inadequacy, (4) increasing job insecurity and high income inadequacy, (5) high job insecurity and adequate incomes. The study explores connections between these trajectories and political attitudes and behaviour, particularly union membership and trust. Union membership is highest among those with the greatest job insecurity. Examining trust in government, the economy, democracy and parliament, the authors find significant differences in trust levels among the five profiles. The most precarious profile consistently registers the lowest trust scores.

According to the incongruence model, unemployed people experience incongruence between their actual as compared to their desired employment status, which is an important source of distress. In contrast to other theories, this model is able to explain why unemployed people feel worse not only compared to employed people but also compared to people in other life situations, such as students, homemakers and retirees, who are assumed to experience low levels of incongruence. The current study analysed two longitudinal samples (n = 1066 and n = 1036 at T1) that were followed over 2.5 and 1.5 years, with six and five measurement points, respectively. The results show that (1) unemployed people who found new jobs experienced a reduction in their incongruence levels; (2) changes in incongruence were associated with changes in mental health; (3) changes in incongruence mediated the effects of changes in employment status on mental health. In addition, (4) mental health changes associated with other employment status changes such as entering (or leaving) the labour force (i.e., becoming a student, homemaker or retiree) were also mediated by changes in incongruence levels. Furthermore, the effects remained stable when the influence of the latent and manifest functions of employment was controlled.

Job insecurity, that is, the perceived threat of job loss or of valued job features, is a well-documented stressor with negative consequences for employees. This lead article proposes to advance the field by going both deeper and broader in linking individual job insecurity experiences to their social context on the microlevel (individual characteristics), the mesolevel (the individual's immediate social context such as organizations) and the macrolevel (the wider context such as countries). Going deeper, we discuss theoretical and methodological approaches to investigate how job insecurity affects employees' experience of work but also their identity and life outside work-essentially, how people view themselves and their place in society. Going broader, we review evidence of macrolevel influences as predictors and moderators of job insecurity, as well as the effects of job insecurity on political attitudes and behaviour. Taken together, we discuss these two streams of research as top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in the interplay between individual job insecurity experiences and their socio-political context. We conclude with suggestions for future research and theory development to move the field forward. We hope to provide a fruitful point of departure to delve into the mechanisms between experiences of job insecurity and the broader social context.

We are grateful for the two commentaries on our lead article on job insecurity, its psychological repercussions and broader social context, which provide important additions, as well as impetus to refine and clarify our arguments. In this rejoinder, we respond to the most important points raised by the commentators: we refine our conceptualization of job insecurity, challenge the idea of job insecurity as a motivator and discuss the role of employees' immediate social context at the meso-level, as well as theoretical explanations for the fundamental mechanisms of job insecurity. We conclude by emphasizing once more the political significance of job insecurity, as well as the need for evidence-based interventions to address its root causes.

This paper investigates how changes to work (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic) and job insecurity relate to identification and subsequent compliance to public health mitigation guidelines. Specifically, we argue that job insecurity and certain changes to social contacts, workload and autonomy can be related to a lowered identification with the working population. Three-country survey data from Belgium, the UK and the US collected at the height of the pandemic supports that people who reported changes that were in line with what most people experienced (e.g., a decrease in social contacts at work) and changes that symbolised more importance (e.g., an increase in workload due to the pandemic) identified more strongly with the working population. Higher job insecurity was associated with less identification with the working population. Changes to autonomy did not play a role. Identification with the working population was related to higher compliance with national COVID-19 health guidelines. A 2SLS instrumental variable estimation controlled for endogeneity issues and confirmed the relationship between identification and health compliance. The study brings important general lessons for the societal impact of work-related changes and discusses applications beyond the pandemic context.

With job insecurity and precarious employment at an all-time high, and burnout labelled as the new worker pandemic, this incisive book sets out to initiate debate and fuel learning in the continually evolving field of work psychology.

The construct of job insecurity has captured the attention of researchers for nearly five decades. Yet, in that time, the nature of what is meant by a “job” (particularly throughout the Global North) has shifted (e.g., the rise in gig workers, short-term contracts, and freelancing), with concurrent implications for how we might best conceptualize “insecurity” in those jobs. Thus, in our chapter, we propose to describe some of the most prevalent employment arrangements (i.e., what do we mean by a “job”?) and unpack the meaning of “insecurity” across a range of modern employment contexts. In doing so, we ask: for whom, where and how is job insecurity a relevant stressor? Moreover, what are the conceptual and methodological implications of these answers for future research on job insecurity? In doing so, we hope to offer suggestions for adapting job insecurity research to account for the changing meaning and context of work in many parts of the world.

Precarity at work is a multifaceted phenomenon, which includes economic vulnerability, job insecurity, few social benefits, and low job quality. There is a substantial amount of work and organizational psychological research on the effects of low job quality and job insecurity, but the effect of economic vulnerability has gained little attention and is rarely included. We define economic vulnerability as risks to workers' individual financial self-sufficiency and differentiate between objective (e.g., low labor income) and subjective indicators (e.g., perceived financial strain). Based on a conceptual framework of economic vulnerability, we discuss different theoretical perspectives on its psychological impact. We then provide an overview of the state of research on the consequences of economic vulnerability on workers' health and well-being as well as on (working) life in general. We conclude with recommendations for future research on precarity and economic vulnerability, and a discussion of intervention strategies for organizations and policy makers. Overall, the chapter highlights the relevance of the concept of economic vulnerability within precarity of work research and the crucial importance of individual financial self-sufficiency for a healthy, meaningful, and productive (working) life.