The 2nd Edition of Rethinking Work in the Digital Era to Protect the Environment and Promote Health

Dear Colleagues,

Two years later of the first edition of the Special Issue on "Rethinking Work in the Digital Era to Protect the Environment and Promote Health", we are proposing the 2nd edition. The recent COVID-19 pandemic and its effects highlighted that new technologies, digitization, and automation gained a protagonist role in workplace and education environments worldwide. During that recent difficult period, the ways of doing work, the training of employees, lifelong learning, the entire organizational structure, and the managers’ and employees’ roles have changed. Furthermore, these changes arrived and remain.

Hence, the newest social and educational psychology approaches should analyze both the transition currently taking place in the labor market and its implications for people’s well-being and continuous education. As job polarization arises, consisting of services decomposed into low-tech and low-paying vs. high-tech and high-paying jobs, social and educational psychology needs to address several concerns. First, how to help those less-qualified workers to better adapt to the changes in the digital era for achieving decent flexible work. Second, how to train people that apply to jobs in growing fields like health, education, and other services, and how to maintain their soft skills needed for in-person services. Third, how to support managers who cope with technology undermining their status, power, and control, for creating value in future work. Moreover, how to promote people to be healthier workers, with greater autonomy and control of their time, combining traditional and independent work with flexible employment, clear boundaries between work and private life, and higher wellbeing (both hedonic and eudemonic). Finally, how aged workers could deal with financial planning for retirement and with later career development. Therefore, the present 2nd edition of “Rethinking Work in the Digital Era to Protect the Environment and Promote Health" is intended to update the findings and suggestions about the psychosocial processes that underlie these complex and unsettled questions.

Innovative contributions and results of empirical studies that increase our understanding of how the workplace and/or educational settings are changing and how people can embrace emerging forms of work and learning are the focus of this Special Issue. Hence, it is open to articles, reviews, case reports, and position papers on these themes. We will consider studies utilizing new digital technologies and co-design methodologies and those targeting vulnerable population groups, traditional clinical trials, observational studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses.

Dr. Gabriela Topa
Dr. Xuesong Zhai
Guest Editors

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