Perceived exploitative working relationships are not a problem of a bygone era nor are they confined to developing countries, but rather the current pandemic spotlights how organizations are treating their employees as survival becomes the imperative. At what cost? Maria Grazia Giammarinaro (U.N. special rapporteur) reports that “the abuse of vulnerable workers - such as those deemed as essential - had increased “alarmingly” due to COVID-19, leaving many facing starvation and forced to accept exploitative conditions” (Reuters, July 30, 2020). Moreover, last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labor Organization (ILO) concluded that long working hours kill hundreds of thousands of people a year from stroke and ischemic heart disease. Combined with the increasing use of new forms of work, outsourcing, technology advancements, less legal regulation, COVID-19 has added fertilizer to ripening conditions for organizations to exploit its employees.

Consequently, this fast-paced and uncertain context coupled with the ongoing COVID-19 situation fuels a conductive environment for organizational mistreatment – organizations acting malevolently towards their employees in order to survive or thrive. One of these forms of organizational mistreatment is organizational exploitation. Drawing on seminal works in political economy and sociology, recent literature defines exploitation as employees' perceptions that they have been purposefully taken advantage of in their relationship with the organization to benefit the organization itself. Specifically, these perceptions of exploitation include: the organization uses and mistreats the employees, forces them into a contract that solely benefits the organization, does not compensate them adequately despite expecting employees to go to work at any time, does not provide job security and can dismiss employee at its convenience, uses employees’ ideas without asking or acknowledging and, does not care if it harms their employees.  Such experiences and perceptions have the potential to undermine and erode employees’ attitudes towards their organization. However, less is known about its impact on employee health and behavior. This is particularly important given the implications of COVID-19 itself for employee health.

Our project aims to provide novel insights into when and why perceptions of exploitation impair employees’ health and its consequences for work-related behaviors and it goes beyond understanding the exploitation of essential employees and low-paid employees and contributes to current debates on how labor markets facilitate the emergence of modern-day exploitation. It also puts the social and economic spotlight on organizations in an attempt to understand the impact of their actions for employees. Moreover, Bapuji et al. (2020) recently made a case for the social and economic impact of multinational companies’ strategic decisions by claiming that they do not do enough for their employees, hurting employees at home and overseas. Findings will have policy implications, and evidence-based recommendations will facilitate the minimization and prevention of perceptions of exploitation and raise awareness of the deleterious consequences of exploitative working relationships in developed countries. 

Using a mixed-method approach, we plan to conduct interviews, experiments and surveys to investigate how and why exploitation is related to employee health and behaviors. Measuring health outcomes using technology (smartwatches), we hypothesize that individuals’ perceptions of exploitation are likely to lead to sustained cognitive effort and depletion of resources that in turn impacts their mental (psychological well-being) and physical health (sleep quality, emotional exhaustion, somatic complaints), as well negative behaviors toward the organization (absenteeism and presenteeism, actual turnover).

This project will contribute theoretically and empirically to a critical yet overlooked area of research in the field of management – the impact of perceptions of exploitative working relationships on employee health, well-being and behavior. Specifically:

a) This research is innovative and novel for EOR and management literature, since 1) most of research on the field has been focused on attitudes and behaviors (such as performance and citizenship behaviors) neglecting its impact on health; and 2) use of other sources (coworkers, spouses) and technology to collect health-related data as a complement to self-rated survey data.

b) We believe our results will influence how organizations, managers and employees view the employment relationship and its wider impact, namely in terms of the prevalence of exploitative working relationships perceptions, its impact on individual and collective health, and the tools that can be used to minimize (and in some circumstances prevent) this negative impact.

c) It has potential to impact policies and organizational strategies in the pursue of a decent and healthy workplace.

d) This research has potential to stimulate debates and further research around what organizations do when facing economic constraints and establish pathways to avoid worker exploitation.

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With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.