Premium
Health Promotion and Flexibility: Extending and Obscuring Power in Organizations
Author(s) -
Maravelias Christian
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
british journal of management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.407
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1467-8551
pISSN - 1045-3172
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00638.x
Subject(s) - flexibility (engineering) , health promotion , public relations , power (physics) , promotion (chess) , work (physics) , workplace health promotion , business , intersection (aeronautics) , marketing , sociology , political science , management , public health , medicine , nursing , economics , engineering , law , mechanical engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , politics , aerospace engineering
This paper explores the intersection between pursuits of improving organizational flexibility and pursuits of improving employees' health. It is argued that health promotion programmes have the potential of operating as mechanisms of power, which assist organizations in making up self‐governing employees who flexibly adapt their lifestyles to the criteria of health and professional success. The paper shows how the fact that health promotion programmes are handled by ‘independent’ and legitimate health experts, and are provided to employees in the name of their health and well‐being, obscures the forces of power in them, making them seem merely as informed ways of helping employees help themselves towards healthier and more successful lives. The paper concludes that health promotion programmes help to establish a new work ethic that challenges the boundary between work and private life. Furthermore, they make a healthy lifestyle part of the competencies that employees are responsible for developing and nurturing.