Toward a critical theory of corporate wellness

Therapeutic management in the low-wage workplace

Medicalization represents an increasingly significant form of social control. Emergent evidence suggests that workplace managers take up medicalized practices and discourses to produce a compliant labor force, but this phenomenon has received limited sociological attention. This paper extends prior theories of medicalization to investigate therapeutic management in the low-wage workplace. I draw upon eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Disability Works, a nonprofit job training program for people with mental illnesses, and interviews with other providers and advocates within this field. Disability Works harnesses therapy, psychiatry, and "softer" therapeutic practices such as mindfulness meditation, sleep hygiene, and positive affirmations to produce its workforce. This paper identifies two dimensions of therapeutic management: (1) it aims to inculcate work norms at the level of client-workers' embodied dispositions, and (2) it aims to transform structural problems into individual ones. Findings illuminate therapeutic management as an emergent workplace regime and may guide future research on its effects.

YouTube’s Yoga with Adriene as a somametamnemata: Exploring experiences of self-care and wellness in times of crisis

Drawing on the Foucauldian technologies of the self, this study explores how individuals re-envision practices of wellbeing outside of traditional organizational contexts during extreme events. Based on a thematic analysis of 7234 comments posted on the Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel in 2020, this study unpacks a technologically mediated practice of self-care, which we conceptualize as somametamnemata. Our findings illustrate three entangled aspects of somametamnemata relating to yoga, a form of bodywork: Caring about self through practicing yoga online; caring about self and others through sharing about yoga in written comments; and caring about self and others through responding to shared verbalizations of yoga. This study distinguishes somametamnemata from known practices of self-care, advancing existing literature on technologies of self by overcoming the dichotomy between negative views of ill-being and positive views of wellbeing. By situating the potentiality of individual wellbeing within ill-being, we shift debates and discussions of “corporate wellness” beyond organizational boundaries.

Who cares for wellbeing? Corporate wellness, social reproduction and the essential worker

This paper seeks to contribute to the rethinking of wellbeing in organisation studies. First, it contributes to critiques of corporate wellness by drawing on social reproduction theory to show how the wellbeing of every individual worker is dependent on the efforts of many, often unacknowledged, others. Corporate wellness initiatives epitomise the dominant, neoliberal narrative of wellbeing in which individuals are posited as responsible for the maintenance of their own wellbeing. Against this, social reproduction theory highlights the relational, socially distributed and materially grounded character of wellbeing. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic opened an opportunity to radically rethink wellbeing. A social reproduction reading of the category of the essential worker allows us to analyse some of the tensions and contradictions involved in the work of producing wellbeing today. It shows the unequal distribution of both the work involved and of its rewards. In sum, this paper helps extend debates over wellbeing in organisation studies beyond, on the one hand, individualised accounts of wellbeing and, on the other, accounts that ultimately confine understandings of wellbeing to the traditional workplace. It argues for the need for organisational studies of wellbeing to take the wider social reproduction of wellbeing as its starting point.

The Algorithms of Mindfulness

This paper analyzes notions and models of optimized cognition emerging at the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and computing. What I somewhat polemically call the algorithms of mindfulness describes an ideal that determines algorithmic techniques of the self, geared at emotional resilience and creative cognition. A reframing of rest, exemplified in corporate mindfulness programs and the design of experimental artificial neural networks sits at the heart of this process. Mindfulness trainings provide cues as to this reframing, for they detail each in their own way how intermittent periods of rest are to be recruited to augment our cognitive capacities and combat the effects of stress and information overload. They typically rely on and co-opt neuroscience knowledge about what the brains of North Americans and Europeans do when we rest. Current designs for artificial neural networks draw on the same neuroscience research and incorporate coarse principles of cognition in brains to make machine learning systems more resilient and creative. These algorithmic techniques are primarily conceived to prevent psychopathologies where stress is considered the driving force of success. Against this backdrop, I ask how machine learning systems could be employed to unsettle the concept of pathological cognition itself.

Voluntary workplace genomic testing: wellness benefit or Pandora's box?

Consumer interest in genetic and genomic testing is growing rapidly, with more than 26 million Americans having purchased direct-to-consumer genetic testing services. Capitalizing on the increasing comfort of consumers with genetic testing outside the clinical environment, commercial vendors are expanding their customer base by marketing genetic and genomic testing services, including testing for pharmacogenomic and pathogenic variants, to employers for inclusion in workplace wellness programs. We describe the appeal of voluntary workplace genomic testing (wGT) to employers and employees, how the ethical, legal, and social implications literature has approached the issue of genetic testing in the workplace in the past, and outline the relevant legal landscape. Given that we are in the early stages of development of the wGT market, now is the time to identify the critical interests and concerns of employees and employers, so that governance can develop and evolve along with the wGT market, rather than behind it, and be based on data, rather than speculative hopes and fears.

Critical Factors and Economic Methods for Regulatory Impact Assessment in the Medical Device Industry

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

Moving Beyond Disciplinary Silos Towards a Transdisciplinary Model of Wellbeing: An Invited Review

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale. We define wellbeing as positive psychological experience, promoted by connections to self, community and environment, supported by healthy vagal function, all of which are impacted by socio-contextual factors that lie beyond the control of the individual. By emphasising the factors within and beyond the control of the individual and highlighting how vagal function both affects and are impacted by key domains, the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing are explicitly linked to a broader context that is consistent with, yet complementary to, multi-levelled ecological systems theory. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationships between multiple domains, levels of scale and related social contextual factors known to impact on wellbeing, our GENIAL framework may provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary science of wellbeing that has the potential to promote the wellbeing of individuals while also playing a key role in tackling major societal challenges.

[Informed Employees - Informed Consent as Ethical Guidance for Behavioural Prevention in the Corporate Context]

BACKGROUND AND METHOD

People have a right to physical and mental integrity in all spheres of life. They also have the right to autonomous actions and informed decisions regarding their health. To ensure this, informed consent has been the ethico-legal gold standard in medicine for some years now. The registration for measures of behavioural prevention, in contrast, is mainly conducted through forms focussing on data protection, with little attention to full informed consent of future participants. In this article, we discuss the ethical challenges that arise when employees consent to health-promoting measures. We then examine whether the instrument of informed consent can be translated to the context of behavioural prevention.

RESULTS

Informed consent can be transferred to the corporate context in an altered version. Of particular importance is not only the handling of health-related data, but also the appropriate disclosure of all essential information as well as voluntary participation.

CONCLUSIONS

The adjusted version of informed consent in behavioural prevention ought to be developed further, resulting in a matrix of criteria that define conditions under which the informed consent can be applied to single measures of behavioural prevention.

The Requirements for New Tools for Use by Pilots and the Aviation Industry to Manage Risks Pertaining to Work-Related Stress (WRS) and Wellbeing, and the Ensuing Impact on Performance and Safety

Work is part of our wellbeing and a key driver of a person’s health. Pilots need to be fit for duty and aware of risks that compromise their health/wellbeing. Recent studies suggest that work-related stress (WRS) impacts on pilot health and wellbeing, performance, and flight safety. This paper reports on the advancement of new tools for pilots and airlines to support the management of WRS and wellbeing. This follows from five phases of stakeholder evaluation research and analysis. Existing pre-flight checklists should be extended to enable the crew to evaluate their health and wellbeing. New checklists might be developed for use by pilots while off duty supporting an assessment of (1) their biopsychosocial health status and (2) how they are coping. This involves the advancement of phone apps with different wellness functions. Pending pilot consent, data captured in these tools might be shared in a de-identified format with the pilot’s airline. Existing airline safety management systems (SMS) and flight rostering/planning systems might be augmented to make use of this data from an operational and risk/safety management perspective. Fatigue risk management systems (and by implication airline rostering/flight planning systems) need to be extended to consider the relationship between fatigue risk and the other dimensions of a pilot’s wellbeing. Further, pending permission, pilot data might be shared with airline employee assistance program (EAP) personnel and aeromedical examiners. In addition, new training formats should be devised to support pilot coping skills. The proposed tools can support the management of WRS and wellbeing. In turn, this will support performance and safety. The pilot specific tools will enable the practice of healthy behaviors, which in turn strengthens a pilot’s resistance to stress. Healthy work relates to the creation of positive wellbeing within workplaces and workforces and has significant societal implications. Pilots face many occupational hazards that are part of their jobs. Pilots, the aviation industry, and society should recognize and support the many activities that contribute to positive wellbeing for pilots. Social justice is a basic premise for quality of employment and quality of life.

Creating 'automatic subjects': Corporate wellness and self-tracking

The use of self-tracking devices has increased dramatically in recent years with enthusiasm from the public as well as public health officers, healthcare providers and workplaces seeking to instigate behaviour change in populations. Analysis of the ontological principles informing the design and implementation of the Apple Watch and corporate wellness programmes using self-tracking technologies shows that their primary focus is on the capture and control of attention rather than material health outcomes. Health, wellness and happiness have been conflated with productivity, which is now deemed to be dependent on the harnessing of libidinal as well as physical energy. In this context, self-tracking technologies and related corporate wellness interventions have been informed by 'emotional design', neuroscientific and behavioural principles which target the 'pre subjective' consciousness of individuals through manipulating their habits and neurological functioning. This article draws on the work of Bernard Stiegler to suggest framing self-tracking as 'industrial temporal objects', which capture and 'short circuit' attention. It is proposed that a central aim is to 'accumulate the consciousnesses' of subjects consistent with the methods of a contemporary 'attention economy'. This new logic of accumulation informs the behaviour change strategies of designers of self-tracking devices, and corporate wellness initiatives, taking the form of 'psychotechnologies' which attempt to reconstruct active subjects as automatic and reactive 'nodes' as part of managed networks.

The Datafication of Health

Over the past decade, data-intensive logics and practices have come to affect domains of contemporary life ranging from marketing and policy making to entertainment and education; at every turn, there is evidence of “datafication” or the conversion of qualitative aspects of life into quantified data. The datafication of health unfolds on a number of different scales and registers, including data-driven medical research and public health infrastructures, clinical health care, and self-care practices. For the purposes of this review, we focus mainly on the latter two domains, examining how scholars in anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, and media and communication studies have begun to explore the datafication of clinical and self-care practices. We identify the dominant themes and questions, methodological approaches, and analytical resources of this emerging literature, parsing these under three headings: datafied power, living with data, and data–human mediations. We conclude by urging scholars to pay closer attention to how datafication is unfolding on the “other side” of various digital divides (e.g., financial, technological, geographic), to experiment with applied forms of research and data activism, and to probe links to areas of datafication that are not explicitly related to health.