New Luddites? Counterproductive Work Behavior and Its Correlates, Including Work Characteristics, Stress at Work, and Job Satisfaction Among Employees Working With Industrial and Collaborative Robots

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is integral to Industry 4.0, yet its psychological aspects remain insufficiently explored. In particular, relatively little is known about differences in the organizational and individual factors contributing to counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) among employees working with industrial robots and collaborative robots (cobots). This deficiency highlights the need to deepen our understanding of socially undesirable organizational behaviors that might occur in HRI and their potential correlates to better align with the human-centered focus of the evolving Industry 5.0. The first aim of our study was to investigate whether work characteristics, job satisfaction, and stress at work are related to CWB (overall and in two dimensions—sabotage and withdrawal) in the total sample and the two subgroups, including industrial robot operators and cobot operators. Based on the stressor-emotion model of CWB, we expected that these organizational and individual factors would contribute to CWB among employees working with robots. The second aim of our study was to examine differences in CWB and its potential correlates (i.e., work characteristics, work stress, and job satisfaction) among industrial robot operators and cobot operators. We found no significant correlation between work stress and CWB, including its dimensions of sabotage and withdrawal. However, our results showed that cobot operators reported more favorable physical work conditions and ergonomics, lower work stress, higher job satisfaction, and greater overall CWB compared to industrial robot operators. These results underscore the distinctive psychological dynamics in HRI among industrial robot operators and cobot operators, which might contribute to differences in CWB in both groups of employees. Our study also suggests potential directions for future research on the predictors of CWB and moderators and mediators of the stress-CWB relationship in robotic work environments.