Organizational change and psychosomatic symptoms: Exploring pathways through working conditions and assessing the moderating role of social support among European workers

Abstract

Building on the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model, this article sets out to analyze the mechanisms through which organizational change can affect workers’ health. The author carries out a moderated mediation analysis drawing on data from the European Working Conditions Survey conducted in 2015 with more than 44,000 European workers in 35 countries. Emotional labor, work intensity and physical strain are included as mediators of the relationship between organizational change and health, assessed by the self-declaration of psychosomatic symptoms. The study tests for the moderating role of social support, assessed as supervisor support and colleague support. It is shown that emotional labor mediates the relationship between organizational change and health alongside other work demands, with slight variations in the mechanisms depending on whether the reorganization involves staff cuts. There is evidence that social support from the hierarchy moderates the health effects of job demands.