fitter, happier, more productive: govering working bodies through wellness

Culture and Organization

, June 2005, Vol. 11(2), pp. 125–138

ISSN 1475-9551 print; ISSN 1477-2760 online © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group LtdDOI: 10.1080/14759550500091036

Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Governing Working Bodies through Wellness

DAVID MCGILLIVRAY*

Division of Media, Culture and Leisure Management, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA, UK

Taylor and Francis LtdGSCO109086.sgm10.1080/14759550500091036Culture & Organization1475-9551 (print)/1477-2760 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Group Ltd112000000June 2005DavidMcGillivrayDivision of Media, Culture and Leisure ManagementGlasgow Caledonian UniversityCowcaddens RoadGlasgowG4 0BA0141 331 [email protected]

Over the last two decades wellness discourses have had a particularly powerful influence on advancedwestern societies. Some of the discourses have found their way into the corporate realm and these provide theprimary focus of this paper. Whereas the focus upon unruly bodies remains a force of continuity with theconcerns of 19th century paternalistic industrialists, in contemporary organisational wellness initiatives,working bodies are urged and supported to govern their own productive capacities, both in and outside ofwork. However, drawing on Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and the subject, I propose in this paper thatsuch discourses of organisational wellness cannot simply be seen as transformative and performative. Rather,these discourses encounter employee conflict, contestation and resistance which prevent the translation ofmacro wellness messages into concrete effects at the local, organisational level. In order to identify and givevoice to the various subject positions emerging through discourses of organisational wellness a spectrum ofself-governance is developed.

Key words:

Foucault; Governmentality; Organizational Wellness; Workplace Health; Project of the Self

INTRODUCTION

From its beginnings in the eighteenth century as the paternalistic concern for the health (and therefore produc-tivity) of its workforce, capital has managed to transform the body of the contemporary…worker into theperfect model of self-discipline…in short, one must exude health, energy and vitality. This healthy body mustmoreover, be obtained by individual effort and achievement.

Holliday and Thompson (2001: 123)

This paper explores a relatively new area of academic inquiry: that of

organisational wellness

.Over the last two decades, discourses of wellness have become a particularly powerfulinfluence in advanced Western societies. This is signified by Leichter’s (1997: 361) commentthat ‘Susan Sontag had it only half right; wellness, as well as illness, is metaphor in Americansociety…it symbolizes a secular state of grace’. For Leichter, and a growing band of follow-ers, wellness affirms virtuousness, achievable through a preoccupation with fitness andhealth. The common message is one of being, or becoming more ‘well’ and, by implication,fitter, happier, and more productive. Although wellness now extends to a variety of socialspaces, it is its location in the corporate realm that is the primary focus of this particulardiscussion.

Quantifying the growth of wellness in work contexts is more problematic, although therehas been progress in this respect over the last decade. Both Aldana (1998) and Haynes,Dunnagan, and Smith (1999) suggest that numerous public and private organisations have

*E-mail: [email protected]

126 DAVID MCGILLIVRAY

implemented worksite wellness initiatives (hereafter termed

organisational wellness

) as a toolto contain healthcare costs. Similarly, Opatz (1994: vii) remarks that the wellness movementis here to stay as ‘business, industry and government’ are led towards a ‘more rationalapproach to disease prevention and control of healthcare costs’. Furthermore, a cursory glanceof both the lay press and professional journals indicates a significant growth in the number ofarticles about workplace health promotion and worksite wellness (Atkinson, 2001; Connelland Grainger, 2002; Dishman

et al

., 1998; Foley, Maxwell, and McGillivray, 1999; Glasgow,McCaul, and Fisher, 1993; Grant and Brisbin, 1992; Grundemann and van Vuuren, 1997;Hunnicutt, 2001; Springett and Dugdill, 1995).

Nevertheless, until recently, limited academic attention has been paid to this subject and,that little which has, tends to be dominated by positivist and functionalist analyses. Theseanalyses concentrate on identifying interventions which will improve the efficiency andeffectiveness of organisational wellness initiatives (Chu

et al

., 2000; Kerr, Griffiths, andCox, 1996; Shephard, 1996; Wilkinson, 1999), rather than exploring how (and why) thesediscourses of wellness have come to infiltrate organisational settings. In avoiding an overlyfunctionalist or positivist analysis, this paper proposes an alternative analytical frameworkdrawing on Michel Foucault’s (1972, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1986) ideas of governmentality andthe subject central to his ‘later’ period (Moss, 1998). This analysis will consider more closelyhow organisational wellness practices have emerged and been sustained, as opposed to howorganisations can become more ‘well’

per se

.For definitional clarity, discourses of organisational wellness are taken to encompass both

the language and practices (the said and the seen) which institutionalise workplace healthpromotion programmes in organisational settings. Most obviously, the sorts of initiativesconsidered incorporate various health-related topics, ranging from health and safety, smokingand alcohol issues, to healthy eating policies and the promotion of exercise (Docherty,Fraser, and Hardin, 1999). This paper is particularly interested in the latter; health and fitnessfacilities and ancillary services situated in work environments. Furthermore, each initiativehas in common an emphasis on the working body. First, it is necessary to delineate the keyelements of the Foucauldian analytical approach being utilised.

FOUCAULT, GOVERNMENTALITY, AND THE SUBJECT

Over the last decade, the ideas emerging from Foucault’s later period have become moreinfluential in the organisation studies terrain (Moss, 1998). This later work has becomepopular as it extends his earlier analysis of power beyond its overly negative conceptualisationof disciplinary society (Katz, 2001). Foucault’s earlier ideas faced criticism for their structur-alist leanings and failure to offer meaningful space for freedom from the effects of powerrelations. The later Foucault, by contrast, is recognisable in the greater emphasis given over topractices of self-subjectification, or

Care of the Self

(Foucault, 1986), whereby subjects oper-ate on their own bodies and

reflexively

choose how to live given the ‘minefield of choice’(Trethewey, 1999: 427) available to them. In this period, Foucault emphasised the possibilityof glimpsing beyond the contingencies that ‘have made us’ (Danaher, Schirato, and Webb,2000: 30) and sought to counter claims of docility produced through disciplinary society (seealso Grey, 1994).

Foucault’s concern to focus upon governmentality and the subject (Rose, 1999) is ofparticular relevance to this discussion of organisational wellness as it offers space for areflexive subject rather than the disciplined, dominated one emerging from his earlier work(see Jackson and Carter, 1998; Hoskin, 1998). The concept of governmentality refers to themanagement of populations at both the societal (macro) and individual (micro) levels, linked

GOVERNING WORKING BODIES THROUGH WELLNESS 127

by an ‘overarching rationale of management’ (Jackson and Carter, 1998: 49). One key sitewhere such a governmental rationality (Gordon, 1991) is apparent is in the management oflabour and the organisation of work.

Governmentality is marked out in the space for resistance to directive strategies andpolicies permitted, achieved through the enactment of micro strategies. Linked to thisengagement with governmentality is the concern with subjectivity (Janover, 1997), on ‘how ahuman being turns him- or herself into a subject’ (Foucault, 1982: 208). The focus on thesubject was a constant source of interest across Foucault’s writings. In fact, McHoul (1997:774) argues that ‘almost all of Foucault’s major texts ask questions about the subject and itshistorical processes of formation’. The issue of subjectivity has influenced a number oforganisation studies articles over the last decade and a half (Bahnisch, 2000; Brewis,Hampton, and Linstead, 1997; Knights and Willmott, 1989; Newton, 1998; Sosteric, 1996;Trethewey, 1999). This paper considers the extent to which particular dominant organisa-tional discourses constitute subject positions and how the knowing subject may reflexivelyinterpret and resist particular contingent organisational truths (e.g. around organisationalwellness).

Foucault’s later writings have been subjected to significant critique. Critics argue that thefocus on subjectivity simply opens up a space for organisations to act upon ‘subjects ofresponsibility, autonomy and choice’ (du Gay, 2000: 168) and then shape their freedom fororganisational ends. This criticism follows organisational Foucauldians (Newton, 1998: 415)around, charged as they are with an abandonment of the critical project in their (apparent)denial of the exploitative employment relationship (Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995).Similarly, it is argued that they fail to provide a clear emancipatory and normative politicalposition (Grice, 1997) and, as a result, fall into the trap of neo-conservatism in their emphasison interpretation over direction for action.

However, in response, the use of Foucault’s writing on the subject in the organisationalterritory provides an antidote to the apparent loss of the subject from organisational theorisingin favour of exposing asymmetrical power relations within the capitalist labour process. Thosetheorists focusing on the subjective dimensions of the labour process (Jackson and Carter,1998; McKinlay and Starkey, 1998) instead seek to illustrate how subject positions arediscursively produced, rejecting the picture of a unified, pre-given subject category offered byan ‘ideology’ critique (Parker, 2002).

This paper provides an analysis of the opportunities for subjectivity existing within theworkplace, focusing on the phenomenon of organisational wellness. This task requiresdiscussion of resistance to be brought to the fore. Foucault’s conception of power reliedupon a ‘multiplicity of points of resistance which play the role of adversary, target, supportor handle within power relations’ (Burrell, 1988: 228). So, rather than the docile workingbody simply being caught within networks of disciplinary power unable to escape, thepresence of contestation, conflict and resistance is constant, reflecting the imperfections ofpower rather than the assumption that human beings are simply the ‘product’ of some‘coherent regime of domination that produces persons in the form of which it dreams’(du Gay, 2000: 181).

The following discussion provides a response to criticism of the subject as a discursivelygenerated fantasy in Foucault’s work. Although accepting that individuals are constituted tosome extent as subjects through governmental practices of power and normalisation whichform ideas of subjectivity, Foucault did not simply see this as producing docile bodies as‘helpless objects formed and moved by power’ (Danaher

et al

., 2000: 128). Rather, he stressedthe ability to respond and resist, and to interpret these processes differently. Particularattention is paid to the ways in which those normalising truths forged around organisationalwellness (e.g. fitness, healthy eating, non-smoking) are re-interpreted by employees.


Finally, responding to criticism over the lack of emancipatory politics and a normativestance, it is argued that it remains worthwhile to illustrate the basis of claims to truth (e.g.those put forward in organisational wellness initiatives) without providing explicit directionsfor action or engaging in emancipatory politics. As Foucault (1980: 83) stresses, there ismerit in entertaining ‘the claims to attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimateknowledges’, especially in challenging the ‘centralising powers…linked to the institution andfunctioning of an organised scientific discourse’ (

ibid

.). Discourses of organisationalwellness are increasingly given medical legitimacy within organisational settings and theywork to disqualify certain knowledges in favour of others. Whilst the formation of claims totruth around discourses of organisational wellness are outlined, local discursivities will alsobe brought forward to illustrate the imperfections of these truth claims in the everydayexperiences of working bodies. However, it is first necessary to outline the historical condi-tions of possibility from which organisational wellness emerged. Only by reflecting on thedevelopment of industrial capitalism can the contemporary context of organisational wellnessbe understood. For this reason, the next section concentrates on the late 19th and early20th century.

HISTORICISING ORGANISATIONAL WELLNESS: MORALISING DISCIPLINARY INTERVENTIONS

Although documented in company histories for over two centuries, recreational activitieslocated

in

the work environment have been afforded scant attention in the organisation studiesliterature. Yet, from as early as the 17th century, with the Clyde shipbuilders (Burton, 1994)and Lanarkshire miners (Campbell, 1979), some evidence of employer-sponsored recreationalprovision is apparent. At the time, these employers provided an informal representation of theformalised wellness schemes now established in many organisations across the UK andabroad (Griffiths, 1996a).

The period of industrial capitalism represents the most significant history of employer inter-ventions, when so-called paternalistic, ‘enlightened’ 19th century industrialists consistentlyprovided recreational opportunities connected to the workplace. For some commentators (seeBailey, 1978) this provision by philanthropic employers was a reaction to the emergentmiddling (or meddling) classes’ public health concerns about the mass of workers emergingfrom rural poverty. The workplace was seen as a place where more wholesome and enlighten-ing forms of recreation could be provided, contrasting starkly with the traditional pastimes ofthe urban working classes of the time—those involving alcohol, cruelty to animals andextended absence from work (e.g. Saint Monday). Others argue that the working body has‘long been a preoccupation of capitalists’ (Holliday and Thompson, 2001: 123), concernedwith the moral and physical health of workers.

To this end, these organisational interventions have been variously interpreted as a meansof controlling and disciplining ‘unruly’ bodies (Holliday and Thompson, 2001), reflectingFoucault’s (1977) view that disciplinary regimes regulate populations through ‘a synapticregime of power, a regime of its existence

within

the social body, rather than

from above

it’(Foucault, 1980: 39). Emerging in the prisons, such a disciplinary mode of domination wasreplicated in other organisational forms, including workplaces (Burrell, 1988).

The recreational choices of the industrial workforce provide examples of where disciplinarypower ‘reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itselfinto their actions and attitudes’ (Foucault, 1980: 39). In keeping with recreational provision innon-work contexts at the time, industrialists provided parklands, public baths and gardens (e.g.Rowntrees, Robert Owen, Cadbury’s) directed towards the working body and its possibilities.


These industrialists were part of the ‘Rational Recreation’ movement of the late 19th century(Bailey, 1978), a movement which sought to internalise particular norms and values concern-ing appropriate, ‘rational’ recreational activity. Norms for recreational participation wereestablished and policed and some employers institutionalised these disciplinary mechanisms.

In the workplace, the relationships that employees had to the activities of work, includingworking conditions and reward standards, were also organised to ensure the good health andorderly habits of the worker (Townley, 1994). For instance, workplace schemes weredeveloped which introduced the idea of the individual as a ‘productive subject’ (

ibid

.: 126), inthe process extending the organisational gaze to the private realm (Bordo, 1993). Welfareworkers acted as the key ‘judges of normality’ (Foucault, 1977: 304) acting as go-betweens,‘establishing links between the workplace, the home and the cultural milieu’ (Rose, 1990: 63).These interventions are most clearly demonstrated by the Ford Motor Company’s SociologyDepartment (Meyer, 1996), where inspectors intervened in the private lives of their workersto ensure they were living suitably stable and puritanical lifestyles. Foucault’s notion of thedisciplinary society is reflected in the early history of workplace provision when a range ofjudges of normality surveyed the behaviour of industrial workforces in both their everydaysocial settings and in some workplaces.

FROM COLLECTIVE SOLIDARITY TO THE PROJECT OF THE SELF

Another feature of early organisational involvement in recreational provision was the focuson collective activities such as team sports and social clubs (Moorhouse, 1989). Although anindirect by-product of these early examples of wellness, health enhancement was neither theprimary aim nor outcome. By contrast, over the last three decades, the concerns of healthenhancement and risk reduction have come to the fore as the focus of recreational provisionlocated in the workplace (and beyond). As a result, the type of recreational practices and theirorganisational uses thereafter have also changed.

For example, in the last 30 years, there has been a decrease in the number of organisationsproviding employees with access to facilities for team sports (e.g. playing fields). Most often,this form of provision has been replaced by an investment in health and fitness facilities.These facilities are often accompanied by the appointment of a designated health and fitnessinstructor, focusing attention of the health status of employees (Docherty

et al

., 1999;Griffiths, 1996b; Holliday and Thompson, 2001).

As Griffiths (1996b: 2) argues:

From relatively modest beginnings at the start of the twentieth century…by the mid 1970s industrial sportsand social clubs had become more commonplace…however…in North America, a change of emphasis fromleisure to fitness programmes in such clubs began to take place in the 1960s…rather than helping employeesplay sports within the social club context, North American employers became increasingly concerned aboutpromoting employee fitness…this pattern was followed in the UK.

Griffiths’ comments not only allude to a change in the

type

of recreational activity offered toemployees (e.g. from sports and social clubs to health and fitness facilities), but also to thechanging

purpose

of provision. Central to this discursive and material shift is the emergenceof the language of ‘health’ and ‘wellness’ and a focus on the ‘body’ as the target of interven-tions. In this respect, Chu

et al

. (2000) concur with Griffiths, arguing that the early 1980s sawa major increase in the number of organisations providing wellness programmes concentratedon the modification of employees’ lifestyle behaviour. Some commentators (see, forinstance, Wicken, 2000) have suggested that these organisational wellness initiatives merelyreflect the amplification of disciplinary techniques at work, whereas others argue that theyare concerned with promoting both the physical and mental aspects of employee health and


enhancing, ‘it is assumed, organisational productivity’ (Townley, 1994: 127). Certainly,several recent studies have revealed close links between the promotion of ‘active workers’and productivity gains (Fielding, 1990; Holliday and Thompson, 2001; Kerr

et al

., 1996;Shephard, 1996).

THE QUEST FOR WELLNESS: CONSTRUCTING PRODUCTIVE SUBJECTS

Central to the perceived linkage between active workers and productivity gains is thereconceptualisation of the workplace as a key setting where a particular form of healthrationality, or ‘particular truths and logics about healthy living’ (Fullager, 2002: 70) aredisseminated. So, as Chu

et al

. (2000: 155) suggest, ‘the workplace, along with the school,hospital, city, island and marketplace…is one of the priority settings for health promotion intothe 21st century’. Accordingly:

It has become clear that promoting health and quality of life cannot be the responsibility of the Statealone...the emphasis within health promotion has refocused on the roles that can be played by the individualand by agencies other than the State, such as

work organisations

and the community. (Kerr

et al

., 1996: xi,emphasis added)

The intensification of preventative health strategies can be partly attributed to the specificrationality of neo-liberal societies (Castel, 1991) which emphasises the centrality of theentrepreneurial individual who cares for him- or herself. Turner (1997: xix) terms this ‘adoctrine of obligation’, whilst Rose (1993: 3) argues that a neo-liberal form of governance,‘embraces the ways in which one might be urged and educated to bridle one’s own passions,to control one’s own instincts, to govern oneself’ (

ibid

.). Increasingly, the self-managementof risk is now implicated in the economic rationales of private companies (Petersen, 1997) asthere is an, ‘offloading’ of responsibility from state to private individuals and other formaland informal structures including work organisations (Jackson and Carter, 1998). In so doing,the social contract between individuals, employers and the state has changed as, ‘govern-ments are shifting the financial responsibility for absenteeism and disability to employers andemployees’ (Grundemann and van Vuuren, 1997: 136). At the same time, health promotiondiscourses inhabit organisational environments to the extent that some workplaces nowoccupy the role of quasi-medical settings, with particular responsibilities for functionsoutside of their primary business.

Under health promotion logic, workplaces are now recognised as places that can be ‘good’for, rather than deleterious to, your health and well-being. Whereas discourses of occupa-tional health and safety concentrate their efforts on ensuring that work is not inherently ‘bad’for you (Conrad and Walsh, 1992), ‘healthy workplace’ (Chu

et al

., 2000) logic encouragesorganisations to introduce measures to improve employee health. The growing prominenceof wellness initiatives within private enterprises further reinforces the presence of such a shift(Connell and Grainger, 2002; Haynes, Dunnagan, and Smith, 1999; Wicken, 2000).

The identification of work organisations as

guardians of health

has been consolidated bypublic health policy discourses. Health promotion agencies now lobby central government tooffer tax breaks to organisations investing in wellness services and facilities. Other forms ofpolitical rhetoric, institutional practice (Nettleton, 1997: 213), and academic discourse alsostrengthen the perception that employers have responsibilities for providing suitable,‘healthy’ work environments. For example, Ashton (1989) has called for a ‘Corporate NHS’;one that focuses on the prevention of disease and promotion of health in the workplace asboth medically desirable and commercially sensible. Furthermore, Chu

et al

. (2000: 156)suggest that, by establishing health-conscious environments inside and outside workplaces,‘workers, their families and the workplace itself should benefit…the health-promoting


workplace can bring about positive changes which support the overall success of an organisa-tion’. Organisations registered to the growing number of health at work initiatives (e.g.Scotland’s Health at Work award scheme) are charged with the responsibility for (and moni-tored on) the dissemination of health and wellness information to their employees. Set withinclear codes laid out in medicalised health promotion ‘texts’, organisations are urged toprovide suitable contexts within which employees can interrogate their lifestyles, establish-ing ‘that which should be aspired to’ (Coveney, 1998: 466). Practices to achieve this state ofwellness work from the ‘narrowly defined’ codes prescribed by health promotion discourses(as laid out in health at work initiatives) and are reinforced in the organisational realm(or

clinic

).The argument here is not, however, that the emergence of the health-promoting workplace

represents a distinct rupture with earlier attempts at ‘wellness’. In fact, as early as the 1920s,industrial health programmes were evident in large corporations, institutionalising a corporatemedical presence in the workplace (Griffiths, 1996a). However, there does appear to be an

amplification

or

intensification

of health concerns bound up in the growth of organisationalwellness initiatives. Although the extent of activity continues to vary according to industrialsector and size (Docherty

et al

., 1999), some organisations now resemble

surrogate surgeries

,staffed by medical professionals whose role it is to educate the workforce of the risks inherentin making so-called ‘inappropriate’ lifestyle choices. As those of working age (and able tosecure work) spend a significant proportion of their lives in the working environment, theworkplace is seen to represent a convenient, efficient and effective access point to the individ-ual, one that can play a significant role in shaping employee lifestyle behaviour (Kerr

et al

.,1996). In their association with scientific and medical knowledge, discourses of organisa-tional wellness are increasingly legitimated (Foucault, 1980). This legitimacy is furtherenhanced by the supposed economic benefits accruable from an engagement with wellness.These benefits include reductions in absenteeism rates, improved morale and efficiency,reduced insurance costs, improved working conditions and enhanced market positioning(Griffiths, 1996b).

In seeking to understand further the way in which discourses of organisational wellnesscome to permeate both the political and institutional (i.e. organisational) realms, it isnecessary to return to the Foucauldian analytical framework delineated at the outset; govern-mentality and the subject (Foucault, 1979). In refining his earlier disciplinary society focus(Moss, 1998) and responding to criticism about his lack of concentration on the global opera-tion of power, Foucault sought to address the ‘specificity of contemporary neoliberal forms ofgovernance premised on the active consent and subjugation of subjects, rather than theiroppression, domination or external control’ (Clegg

et al

., 2002: 317). Governmentalityprovides a way of thinking about a particular mentality of government (du Gay, 2000: 168)which represents ‘a subtle, comprehensive management of life drawing both from a top-downexercise of power over conduct…with a subjectivity constituted in a sense of personal respon-sibilities, rights, freedoms and dependencies’ (Fox, 1993: 32). Foucault coined the neologismgovernmentality to combine the ability of government to direct conduct and ‘the presumptionthat ‘everything’ can, should, must be managed, administered, regulated by authority’ (Allen,1998: 179).

Within these arts of government, Jackson and Carter (1998) include not only the state, butalso ‘other formal and informal structures’ such as work organisations and others with a vestedinterest in retaining the status quo. In analysing the contemporary label of organisationalwellness, a range of governmental, health promotion and business agencies provide employerswith direction. Discourses of health promotion, focused on both societal regulation (i.e.alleviating major health risks) and self-surveillance (i.e. individual responsibility for healthmaintenance) represent the perfect bedfellow for employers concerned with minimising the


burden of employee healthcare costs. Institutionalised in the form of organisational wellnessinitiatives, this health promotional logic appears to provide medicalised legitimacy for theorganisational governance of an employee’s subjectivity.

ORGANISATIONAL WELLNESS: VIRTUE OR VICE?

At this point, it is worth considering the extent to which discourses of organisational wellness(as articulated in earlier discussions) simply act to colonise the subjective dimension oflabour to maximise productivity or whether there is space for a reflexive otherness within thisdiscursive realm. Certainly, medicalised and institutionalised discourses of organisationalwellness seem to herald a narrowing of the range of legitimate ways in which the workingbody is performed and maintained, both within and outside of work.

In some organisational wellness initiatives, the promotion of health and fitness extends toinclude employee referral to the organisation’s in-house fitness centre for weight manage-ment advice or aerobic exercise (Holliday and Thompson, 2001). Here, the working body isessentially being ‘moulded and directed, disciplined, punished or rewarded to meet thedemands of the rigours of work’ (Hancock and Tyler, 2000: 85).

Participation in active recreational discourses (mainly in the form of health and fitness) alsodemonstrates a level of ‘disciplinary self improvement’ (Petersen, 1997: 198), which carries avalue in the competitive world of work. As Trethewey (1999) suggests, the professional bodyis also a fit body, indicating that the individual is self-motivated, responsible, willing and ableto work. This is important, given that a worker’s body image and embodied labour power areincreasingly significant components of organisational life (Hancock and Tyler, 2000;Trethewey, 1999). The working body is now assumed to be a material signifier, not only ofthe organisation’s relation with their own business (i.e. aesthetic labour), but also of employ-ees’ employment opportunities. Bodies can be seen as texts to be read, communicatingsomething about discipline, commitment and as a carrier of values concomitant with the ethosof the organisation with which they are employed (Hancock and Tyler, 2000: 93).

Given the above, it is unsurprising that health and fitness provision is a key component ofthose organisational wellness initiatives concerned with the maintenance, upkeep andimprovement of the working body. In fact, some organisations now provide the materialresources (e.g. gyms) where the working body can be fine-tuned. These

corporeal garages

represent an investment in the machinery of body maintenance where the body can beworked. For many, this organisational interest in employee health and fitness is unwelcome.Leichter (1997: 361) decries the wellness movement as inherently discriminatory, elitist andexclusive, especially if employment opportunities might be restricted on the basis of‘lifestyle incorrectness’ as defined by health promotion ‘experts’. Some occupations arealready required by law to have certain basic levels of ‘wellness’ in order to carry out theirduties (e.g. firemen, police, medical professions, armed forces and divers), but the moreinteresting trend is towards the importance of wellness for generalised recruitment andselection, retention and productivity decisions. These factors extend the concern withwellness outside of the formal confines of the workplace:

The line between work and private life…extends companies’ interests in employees ‘health habits’ and ‘life-style’ without the old regard for whether they occur at work, at home, or indeed, whether they affect workperformance in any direct way (Conrad and Walsh, 1992: 99).

There is some evidence to suggest that organisational wellness initiatives already blur theboundaries of an individual’s ‘private’ realm as work on their jobs and on their bodies are‘collapsed into one continuous cycle of self-discipline’ (Holliday and Thompson, 2001: 125).For example, outside formal organisational boundaries, wellness initiatives are increasingly


used to distribute information and advice for employees to disseminate to friends andrelatives (McGillivray, 2003). Here, the organisation extends its jurisdiction into the non-work arena, given legitimacy by an engagement with (medicalised) discourses of organisa-tional wellness. The extension of this surveillance effect is, however, deeply ambiguous, foralthough its purpose is to protect and enhance life chances, its ability to track and intervene inprivate lives is more troublesome (Lyon, 2002). Although changes in organisational formsmight well have produced more porous organisational boundaries, flexible work practicesand the ‘liberation of the individual from a forced and needless identity with the organisationitself’ (Dale, 2001: 150), paradoxically, the organisational remit might also be widened,especially if a rationality of work infuses ever more areas of social life (Deetz, 1998).

In this regard, the intensification of discourses of wellness seems to indicate the presence ofan increasingly omnipresent gaze over the conduct of individuals’ lives (Chu

et al

., 2000;Duncan and Cribb, 1996; Hughes, 2000; Leichter, 1997) as, ‘one is always in…constantmonitoring of health and never-ending risk management’ (Rose, 1999: 235). Whereas workand non-work were differentiated during industrialisation, the extension of organisationalwellness practices might go some way to crumble these distinctions (Holliday and Thompson,2001; Roberts, 1999). However, despite these concerns, it is now necessary to bring the papertoward a conclusion by subjecting to scrutiny the question of whether discourses of wellnessmerely produce docile bodies (Foucault, 1977) incapable of reflexivity or whether an active‘Other’ of wellness can emerge.

THEORISING THE RESISTANT OTHER(S) OF WELLNESS

Although business leaders and health promotion experts stress the performative andtransformative role played by discourses of organisational wellness in constituting healthyworking bodies, this does not necessarily result in the ‘reality’ of healthy bodies or healthyorganisations for all. In fact, there is evidence available to suggest that the employeereception of organisational wellness initiatives is not wholly docile and passive. Instead,contestation, conflict and resistance to the rhetoric of wellness are evident. The assertionmade here is that employees exhibit a number of responses (or micro strategies) to wellnessmessages that undermine the very foundations upon which these initiatives are built.

In discussions of governmentality and the subject, Foucault himself (Foucault, 1980) andthose who interpret his work (Miller and Rose, 1990; Nettleton, 1997; Townley, 1994) rejectthe view that the exercise of power constitutes the subject as a mere product of a regime ofdomination. Rather, they argue that ‘contestation and conflict’ (du Gay, 2000: 181) are everpresent within the power field as ‘resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relationto power’ (Foucault, 1978: 95). In the context of this discussion, it is argued that that byfocusing on subordinates’ strategic agency, knowledgeability and coping strategies, activesubjects (Kendall and Wickham, 1999) might contest organisational attempts to mobilise theinactive working body. This is not to suggest that normalising discourses have no influenceon behaviour, but, instead, to propose that the claims of competing discourses can constitutesubjectivity differently (see Pringle, 2001). Moreover, it allows for the possibility of a varietyof employee responses to ‘external discourses and strategies that attempt to discipline them’(Lupton, 1997: 103).

Foucault’s (1986) conceptualisation of the project of the self provides a basis for illustratingmore active processes of subjectivity at work. In the organisation studies field, Grey (1994)has drawn upon this strand of Foucault’s work to argue that, rather than perceiving employeessimply as docile bodies produced by disciplinary regimes, some employees bring a project ofthe self, fostered elsewhere, with them to their work environments. These employees then


utilise work experiences to maximise their self projects. This idea fits well with theexperiences recorded in some studies of organisational wellness, especially those wherehealth and fitness participation has been considered (Foley, Maxwell, and McGillivray, 2000;McGillivray, 2002; Shephard, 1996). For some employees, the provision of health and fitnessfacilities at work is viewed positively and given value because these individuals would havebeen mobilising their bodies elsewhere anyway (e.g. at their local gym). They are alreadyconvinced of the merits of a healthy lifestyle and have no objection to working on their bodiesin the work environment. However, to date the empirical evidence suggests that this responseis unlikely to be shared by the majority of the workforce (Fielding, 1990; Griffiths, 1996a,1996b; McGillivray, 2003). Instead, there is a spectrum of possible responses to theorganisational promotion of wellness along the lines of those illustrated in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1. Spectrum of self-governance.

Source

: author.

This spectrum incorporates Grey’s (1994) analysis of more active processes of docility as arealisation of the project of the self, whilst also making space for employees who resist (tran-sient position) and, in some instances, reject discourses of organisational wellness outright (i.e.non-recognition). Given that several studies have identified differential participation patternsin organisational wellness initiatives influenced by age, lifecycle and family responsibilities(Fielding, 1990; Kerr

et al

., 1996; McGillivray, 2003; Shephard, 1996) it was necessary toincorporate a transient position between the polar perspectives.

The Apollonian and Dionysian distinctions are useful for illustrative purposes as theyrepresent the two extremes within which employee lived experiences of wellness might bepositioned. On one extreme (to the left of Figure 1) sit employees demonstrating Grey’s(1994) self-disciplined form of subjectivity, the Apollonian docile body which has fullyassimilated discourses of wellness and practises a calculable, disciplined and ascetic lifestyle.This position is reflective of regular users of organisational wellness facilities, those whoaccrue distinction from their adherence to health and fitness regimes. At the other end of thespectrum (to the right of Figure 1) sits the Dionysian body (of the non-user) expressing itsresistance through indiscipline and passivity towards healthy lifestyle discourses. This is the‘unproductive’ or ‘absent’ body that is most often subject to hierarchical surveillance andnormalising judgement as the primary target of discourses of wellness.

By introducing the transient position it is possible to illustrate that employees are often tornbetween what is expected of them through the tenets of medicalised discourses oforganisational wellness and the set of experiences they bring with them when entering thework realm. In this sense, subject positions are always in the making and do not remain static(Foucault, 1986). So, although discourses of wellness embody ‘powerful norms about what isgood and bad: ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’; acceptable or unacceptable; desirable or undesirable’(Duncan and Cribb, 1996: 346) there is evidence to indicate that some employees interpretthese messages in a way that is antithetical to intended organisational outcomes. Subjects arenot necessarily permanently caught up in an (inescapable) web of wellness surveillance which

Assimilate Reject

Docile Resist

FIGURE 1. Spectrum of self-governance. Source: author.


constitutes them as docile bodies, but instead are constantly in dissonance, occupying transientpositions along the spectrum according to their relative degree of assimilation or resistance(i.e. in process). They are always en-route, torn between the power of organisational rhetoricand the limitations of their own production of subjectivity. Although the road laid out beforesubjects (in organisational wellness programmes) might be seen as setting them on a uni-direc-tional route towards prescribed notions of wellness, there are numerous slip roads that disruptthis linear progression as few, ‘people uniformly accept the pronouncements on health fromother sources’ (Nettleton, 1997: 219).

Furthermore, although a growing number of organisations provide Apollonian spaces forbody maintenance (Haynes

et al

., 1999), continuing low rates of employee participation inwhat remain essentially ‘voluntary’ wellness initiatives (Fielding, 1990; Glasgow

et al

.,1993; Grant and Brisbin, 1992; Griffiths, 1996a; Springett and Dugdill, 1995) intimates thatworking subjects remain ‘seduced by the hedonistic pleasures of consumerism’ (Fullager,2002: 72). For Rose (1999) this can be explained by the clash between notions of the rational,socially productive and disciplined citizen and the allure of narcissistic consumer culture. Insum, although there is some evidence that a proportion of employees self-regulate theirconduct and invest in their own bodies through health maintenance (e.g. regular exercise), itis questionable that the rhetoric of wellness is matched by the reality of fitter, happier andmore productive employees across the labour force.

CONCLUSION

Although the focus upon unruly bodies remains a force of continuity with the concerns of 19thcentury paternalistic industrialists, there has been a subsequent shift in emphasis from direct,openly paternalistic and collective forms of organisational intervention towards more subtletechniques which target the health status of the working body. Instead of the designatedFordist inspectors visiting the homes of workers to monitor compliance with puritanicaldiscourses, contemporary medicalised notions of organisational wellness appear to constituteeach worker as his or her own inspector. Within this discursive wellness realm, workingbodies are urged and supported to govern their own productive capacities, both in and outsideof work. Active recreational discourses fit well with the emphasis upon health risk modifica-tion implied by discourses of organisational wellness. In fact, some organisational wellnessinitiatives even extend this to include the provision of the machinery of body work whereunruly working bodies are brought to heel.

Notwithstanding the above, the paper also sought to propose an alternative reading of thewellness phenomenon, drawing on Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and the subject. Tothis end, it was proposed that discourses of organisational wellness cannot simply be seen asperformative, but instead always contain imperfect governance arrangements. Ever-presentconflict, contestation and resistance then prevent the translation of macro wellness messagesinto concrete effects at the local, organisational level. Instead, a heterogeneity of employeeresponses to wellness messages are possible, ranging from employees who utilise wellnessfacilities to realise their own projects of the self, to those who fail to recognise the value ofdiscourses of wellness in their entirety. In developing a spectrum of self-governance, thevarious subject positions developed through discourses of wellness were identified and givena voice. Each demonstrates the imperfections of discourses of organisational wellness inconstituting healthy working bodies that are fitter, happier and more productive.

Finally, this paper has not sought to suggest that organisational wellness initiatives arebenign and detached from organisational productivity concerns. Rather, an attempt has beenmade to provide a less polarised argument—one that accepts that wellness initiatives are


there for a particular reason (e.g. to enhance productivity), but also one that rejects the viewthat all employees are passive receivers of wellness wisdom.

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