Abstract
AbstractTechnological developments within advanced economies are impacting organisations and working lives. With the advent of ‘Industry 4.0’, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being cast as a potential ‘buffer’—a social safety net—to the restructuring of organisations, jobs, and economies that are already underway. The Covid‐19 pandemic is providing an additional impetus as governments instigate similar safety nets as employment falls in the wake of the virus. To date, much of the debate concerning UBI has taken place in disciplines outside the auspices of Human Resource Management with most commentary occurring within the spheres of economics and social policy. This conceptual study is one of the first within the human resource management (HRM) field to address the potential impacts of UBI on orientations to work and the management of employees. To do this, we focus on a central underpinning theory within HRM, the psychological contract and how this might be affected by its introduction. Finally, a research agenda is developed that provides options by which we might explore the implications of UBI for the practice of HRM when and if such schemes are implemented.
Highlights
The pace of change affecting working lives is known to be quickening (Colvin, 2015)
These changes—often termed ‘Industry 4.0’ (Schwab, 2016)—are arguably exacerbating existing insecurities within employment and intensifying concerns regarding the increasing precariousness of work (Kalleberg, 2009; Kalleberg & Vallas, 2011). One response to these concerns has been the surfacing of a long‐standing idea; that of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2016; Standing, 2017): a regular income paid by government at a uniform level to each adult member of society whatever their income or employment status
We argue that the sooner UBI is understood at this level, the better prepared our organisations will be for its introduction
Summary
The pace of change affecting working lives is known to be quickening (Colvin, 2015). Commentators, both scholarly (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2016; Pereira, 2014; Straubhaar, 2017) and practitioner (O'Brien, 2017), contend that social and technological transformations—as seen in developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies—together with globalisation and changes in national policy, are radically reshaping work (de Vries et al, 2020; Lindsay et al, 2014; Straubhaar, 2017). Utilising the psychological contract as a theoretical lens enables us to scrutinise the foundations of the employment relationship, namely the mutual expectations, promises and perceived/attributed obligations that exist between employer and employee (Rousseau, 1995), building our theoretical and practical contributions regarding the potential impacts of UBI on orientations to work and worker engagement.
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