A Three-Way Synergistic Effect of Work on Employee Well-Being: Human Sustainability Perspective

We explored the interaction of the United Nation’s sustainable development goals to facilitate human sustainability using occupational health and sustainable HRM perspectives. In Study 1 (n = 246), we assessed the preconditions to empirically confirm the distinctiveness of the dimensions of health harm of work from other study constructs. Subsequently, we tested the hypotheses across two studies (n = 332, Study 2; n = 255, Study 3). In alignment with the ceiling effect of human energy theory, the three-way interaction results across the samples consistently indicate that high supervisory political support (SPS) significantly strengthens the negative interactions of psychological health risk factors and high job tension as adverse working conditions (SDG-8) on working-condition-related well-being as the human sustainability dimension (SDG-3). Similarly, synergistic effects were found of the side effects of work on health, high job tension, and high SPS on well-being in sample 3. We discuss theoretical and future research for human sustainability from occupational health and sustainable HRM perspectives.