Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between workers’ well-being and digitalisation at work. It is based on the findings of a qualitative study carried out in a manufacturing company, and it focuses on the development of a wearable device for well-being. Using the analytical concepts of ‘translation’ and ‘inscription’ taken from Actor-Network Theory, it explores how digital technologies for well-being are designed in corporate programmes and shows how the final technology results from processes of inscription and translation performed by the actors involved in the design phase. The end device embodies a concept of well-being that has been called ‘bounded’ to emphasise how well-being at work is limited by organisational constraints. The article invites a rethinking of hedonic well-being at work as a precondition for eudaimonic well-being so that the human being is understood as a psychophysical unit that is part of a rich social context.

Keywords

inscription organisation organisational constraints translation wearable technology workers’ well-being

Introduction

‘When the company told us about that [the device], I immediately thought: “They’ll attach something to me, and I’ll do some activities and they’ll see the result”’. This quotation, taken from an interview with a worker during the development of the programme reported by this article, summarises crucial questions that may arise when a company decides to promote corporate well-being initiatives: while the aim is to improve workers’ well-being, this improvement must nevertheless yield an output in terms of corporate performance. To shed light on these dynamics, this study investigates how a corporate well-being initiative supported by a digital technology – a wearable device – is developed. Using the analytical concepts of ‘translation’ and ‘inscription’ taken from the field of science and technology studies, and particularly from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 1987, 1991), the article focuses on the development phase of a device intended to improve workers’ well-being. Grounded in the results of a fieldwork study conducted in a large manufacturing firm, the article shows empirically how a technology device may convey distinctive views on well-being that depend on the actors’ inscription and result from organisational constraints. These constraints are things or situations at work that prevent the full performance of a task, and they are of three kinds: social, structural and infrastructural (Coo et al., 2021). Power – which is understood as relational and generative (Foucault, 1979) – pertains to the domain of social constraints.

This study belongs in a long tradition of research on workers’ well-being (e.g. Calvard and Sang, 2017; Danna and Griffin, 1999; Foster, 2018; Huta and Ryan, 2010; Kenttä and Virtaharju, 2023; Valsecchi et al., 2023; Warr, 1990), to which it makes a twofold contribution. Empirically, since little is known about how different notions of well-being are embodied in wearable technologies and then conveyed downwards through organisations, it provides an account of a corporate initiative supported by a technology of this kind. The article shows how, when accomplished in a real context, well-being is bounded by different organisational constraints. The result is what has been termed ‘bounded well-being’. This concept, derived from Simon’s (1977) ‘bounded rationality’ and then employed by Fleming (2019) to explain how also automation can be bounded, is propounded in this study to account for a tension at the core of neoliberal workplaces between, on the one hand, embodying performance issues, discipline and responsibilisation in workers’ body control, and on the other, expressing freedom through well-being choices. The article suggests that this idea of bounded well-being aligns with the trend whereby the adoption of wearables at work can be understood as part of a neo-Taylorist trend (Morozov, 2013) where working bodies are regulated through the imposition of productivity standards (O’Neill, 2017); and wearables are connected to data analysis to improve performance (Wilson, 2013). Theoretically, the article invites a rethinking of hedonic well-being at work as a precondition for eudaimonic well-being so that the human being in his/her complexity can be understood as embedded in a rich social context.

The article first presents the theoretical bases of the concept of workers’ well-being, focusing on corporate well-being programmes and wearable technologies. It then presents the analytical concepts employed to read the data. There follows a description of the methodology, which outlines the research context, the author’s role and how the data were collected and analysed. A subsequent section presents the results, followed by the discussion and the conclusions.

Workers’ well-being

Well-being – a topic of growing interest to both companies and academics (Foster, 2018; Huettermann and Bruch, 2019; Valsecchi et al., 2023) – is difficult to define, especially when well-being at work is being discussed (Kowalski and Loretto, 2017), because there are numerous academic definitions (Danna and Griffin, 1999) and also multiple dimensions of well-being, such as subjective, economic, financial and the like. Accordingly, various types of well-being exist; those most often considered are the psychological, physical and social ones (Anderson-Connolly et al., 2002; Grant et al., 2007).

The most widespread among the various lines of inquiry is the one focused on subjective well-being (SWB) (Stam et al., 2016), which considers well-being to be a subjective condition related to personal beliefs, behaviours and preferences; a kind of ‘incommensurable’ feeling since everyone can give a different meaning to this notion. However, while most studies understand SWB as depending on the individual alone, Diener et al. (1999) observe that SWB also depends on the interaction with different social structures, highlighting the importance of the context in which well-being takes shape. Narrowing the focus to work-related well-being, Grant et al. (2007: 52) define this as the ‘quality of an employee’s experience and functioning at work’. Its main facets are psychological, physical and social functioning (Warr, 1990). Moreover, a distinction commonly drawn is between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (Deci and Ryan, 2008; Huta and Ryan, 2010). The notion of hedonic well-being means ‘functioning well’, and its focus is on the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect; the notion of eudaimonic well-being means ‘feeling good’, and its focus is on living life in a fully satisfying way (Deci and Ryan, 2008; Huppert, 2009). In this regard, if the hedonic viewpoint implies a kind of ‘consumable’ condition of well-being and can be typically represented by aspects related to job satisfaction (Guest, 2017), the eudaimonic one implies a more lasting, less ‘consumable’ understanding of well-being, and it is more concerned with the fulfilment of potential and the finding of meaning in work (Guest, 2017). Focusing on hedonic well-being at work would therefore mean avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure, satisfaction and enjoyment; focusing on eudaimonic well-being would mean obtaining enough of a sense of self to realise one’s full potential personal growth and feel engaged (i.e. to experience interest and challenge) (der Kinderen and Khapova, 2020). The literature on workers’ well-being greatly focuses on eudaimonic well-being, whereas hedonic and eudaimonic well-being are understood antithetically (e.g. Sheldon et al., 2019). Moreover, Calvard and Sang (2017: 2258) noted that many approaches to the study of well-being at work still focus on individuals alone, ‘their emotional and psychological states, and how such individuals should manage and take responsibility for those states in relation to definitions of performance’, overlooking the power relationships that are embedded in the design of well-being at work. More generally, while mainstream psychological perspectives tend to focus on how individuals taken in isolation should manage and be responsible for their own well-being in relation to performance – especially in terms of pursuing eudaimonic well-being – sociological perspectives critically consider the ideological dimension embedded in the discourse on well-being and how that discourse relates to companies’ capitalist interests (e.g. Kenttä and Virtaharju, 2023). Consequently, there is a need to move from a more psychological understanding to critically informed ones able to explain the more social and political issues implicated in well-being (Calvard and Sang, 2017).

Corporate well-being programmes

On these bases, one may presume that measuring well-being at work is difficult, and so too is designing corporate programmes intended to improve it. From a business case perspective, however, research has shown some positive correlations among work performance, perceived well-being and workers’ lifestyles. This is based on a logic of ‘mutual gains’ whereby human resource management (HRM) benefits both workers’ well-being and workers’ performance (Huettermann and Bruch, 2019). Although empirical research has demonstrated a positive effect at least on workers’ health (Schröer et al., 2014), there is still no consensus that the greater the well-being of workers, the better their performance. It is difficult to evaluate such programmes (Sirven et al., 2017) since evaluations rely on measures based on medical-clinical parameters and cannot grasp dimensions attuned to the more nuanced concept of well-being. Other scholars suggest that approaches to well-being that privilege psychological states, often positively labelled in terms of happiness or resilience, are problematic for improving the understanding of how HRM practices relate to well-being (Calvard and Sang, 2017). Therefore, although some scholars acknowledge a relationship between these practices and well-being, most observe that the relationship is far from clear (Kowalski and Loretto, 2017).

The instrumentality of corporate well-being programmes

Despite these uncertainties, by means of diverse workplace initiatives, organisations are increasingly promoting the value for their workers’ well-being of a healthy lifestyle, which ranges from physical exercise to a healthier diet. This observation has prompted scholars to wonder about the reasons for the development of such programmes. Accordingly, the focus in what follows is on the ambiguity of corporate well-being programmes due to their instrumental and ideological nature, which is a central issue in the debate, and on how this article may contribute to that debate.

Scholars underline that well-being initiatives are supported by companies because they allow the pursuit of tangible results (Guest, 2017) that translate, for example, into the reduction of absenteeism rates, so that investments in such programmes represent ‘good business’ because they provide a good return on investment (Bertera, 1990). Scholars have traced the instrumentality of these programmes back to the neoliberal ideology (Davies, 2015), which maintains that health and well-being are individual responsibilities (Zoller, 2003), and they have asserted that recent neoliberal initiatives, such as wellness training, only attempt to improve the workers’ individual resilience at the expense of initiating more constructive managerial actions (Foster, 2018). According to the neoliberal viewpoint, it is the workers’ responsibility to adapt to a tough work environment, not the managers’ responsibility to improve those workers’ conditions (Valsecchi et al., 2023). In this regard, well-being programmes may introduce self-regulatory mechanisms that fuel and legitimise the processes of empowerment inherent in the founding principles of neoliberal ethics (James and Zoller, 2018). However, research has also recognised that managing well-being initiatives is challenging for companies because in practice it is hard to measure their effectiveness, and companies need to see the business case for them if they are to invest resources (Valsecchi et al., 2023). Moreover, because existing research on workers’ well-being mostly focuses on the implementation phases of wellness programmes, the literature tends to overlook how these programmes are designed. Furthermore, these initiatives tend towards one-size-fits-all solutions (Foster, 2018) that are unable to address individual needs, and eventually embed managerial, top-down notions of well-being. What is more, another trend must be recognised in the crafting of well-being: the use of wearable technologies in organisations is accelerating to such an extent – despite ethical concerns about privacy and the potential stress due to surveillance – that such technologies are often presented as a panacea for employee well-being (Plester et al., 2022).

Wearable technologies in corporate well-being programmes

Hence, to support the delivery of well-being programmes, companies are now resorting to complementary technologies, and especially to ‘wearables technologies’ to track workers’ activities and biophysical parameters (Mettler and Wulf, 2019). From an employer’s perspective, ‘wearables’ – a category of electronic devices that can be worn as accessories (e.g. watches, wristbands, headbands equipped with monitoring sensors) – may have the dual benefit of improved company performance and workers’ well-being. They are often used to monitor a user’s health, induce the users to adopt healthy habits, and so on. In efforts to realise the potential of these technologies, they have entered the workplace as part of programmes designed to increase well-being and productivity (Till, 2018; Wilson, 2013). A growing body of literature examines the role of wearables in organisations (Miele and Tirabeni, 2020), showing how companies have started to encourage employees to engage in self-monitoring practices as part of corporate well-being programmes (Moore and Robinson, 2016).

On the one hand, some studies emphasise the positive effects that the adoption of wearables may have in increasing the efficiency of wellness programmes by fostering deeper bodily awareness (Khakurel et al., 2018). Thanks to the standardised parameters and timely feedback furnished by digital devices, workers can self-manage wellness activities without interacting with a specialist (Robson et al., 2016) and develop body awareness in an autonomous and rational way (Maltseva, 2020), thereby achieving even more freedom via supposedly well-informed well-being choices.

On the other hand, more critical studies underline the new forms of domination connected to these technologies (Zuboff, 2019), and they theorise forms of power and control that can be enacted through wearables at work (Miele and Tirabeni, 2020). On this view, these devices are instruments of a general worsening of work conditions (Spencer, 2018) because they may intensify top-down surveillance (Plester, et al., 2022) and various forms of quantification. They thus produce more precarity (Moore, 2018) and have negative consequences on workers’ well-being. By parameterising body performances, ‘smart’ technologies act as managerial strategies aimed at positioning the ideal workers as responsible subjects able to take care of themselves (Moore and Robinson, 2016; Wilson, 2013), thus integrating their bodies into the machinery of capitalism (Till, 2018). The possibility of tracking body performances through digital technologies may transform the body into a kind of ‘measure machine’, generating the idea that it is possible to quantify anything, even the self (Lupton, 2016). This gives organisations the opportunity to turn control into an empowerment rhetoric (Ruckenstein and Pantzar, 2017). Indeed, scholars have raised concerns about a managerialist world driven by a narrowing conception of happiness where technologies that promise life-enhancement are instead restricting it (Davies, 2015) and leading to a wellness syndrome (Cederström and Spicer, 2015). In such a frame, wearables appear particularly suited to the neoliberal purpose of aligning the company’s performance needs with a supposed ‘healthy’ state of workers. However, as Foster (2018) notes, the increased adoption of workplace well-being initiatives has been subject to little critical analysis, and still lacking is empirical research on the introduction of wearables to enhance well-being within real organisations. Likewise, studies that investigate the design phase are scarce. Two exceptions are, first, a pilot study by Souza et al. (2017) on the use of a wearable device in support of a corporate wellness programme, which, however, suggests the need to more thoroughly study wearables as means to promote workplace well-being; and, second, that by Rossi et al. (2022), which investigates the design of a workplace health promotion programme, but does not have a specific focus on well-being or on technology. Furthermore, there is another issue that requires critical analysis: from a symbolic standpoint, corporate well-being programmes are viewed as positive per se and are therefore difficult to question (Foster, 2018), for example, by union representatives.

Given these considerations, this article focuses on a well-being initiative supported by a digital device: it explores how the device was designed by different actors – technology developers, clinicians, social scientists, company managers and workers – and how and why the resulting well-being became ‘bounded’ by different – social, structural and infrastructural – organisational constraints. Social constraints include interpersonal aspects such as inadequate help and tense relations within teams; structural constraints are barriers related to how work is designed and organised, such as coordination issues, conflicting demands, or incomplete information; and infrastructural constraints relate to the material infrastructure of the workplace, such as inadequate equipment or space (Coo et al., 2021). In light of this tripartition, power can be considered to belong in the domain of social constraints: it is a generative relationship (Foucault, 1979) through which the individuals involved exploit their own resources to influence another’s actions (Whitson, 2014). To show how such a well-being initiative unfolds, this article adopts a perspective informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Inscribing a new technology, translating interests and meanings

An approach informed by STS and ANT in the study of health issues (e.g. Miele, 2022) and how projects develop in practice (e.g. Cresswell et al., 2010; Rossi et al., 2022) is not a new one. This article employs two concepts taken from ANT – ‘inscription’ and ‘translation’ – as tools with which to analyse how diverse concepts of well-being become embedded in a corporate technology. The notion of inscription was first introduced by Latour (1987, 1991) to investigate the social relationship between objects and humans that emerges in heterogeneous socio-technical networks. According to ANT, an ‘inscription’ is the result of the translation of a group’s interests into material forms (Callon, 1991): it starts during the design of an artefact (e.g. a new product) and involves predicting the interests, abilities, purposes and behaviours of future users. The design implies the initial definition of the artefact’s future uses where designers attribute and, in ANT terms, ‘delegate’ actions and responsibilities to both users and the artefact. Artefacts therefore have a set of in-built properties that represent a technology inscription made by their designers, and the first inscription bounds subsequent uses (Orlikowski, 2000). Thus, the inscription is the result of translations, which, in turn, imply the definition of technical norms for detailing a technology’s standard uses (Joerges and Czarniawska, 1998). In the inscription process, the actors involved in the design process establish a set of standard uses, and a sequence of actions that users should follow. This is a way to establish moral standards and relations between humans and objects in a specific context.

Czarniawska (2014) highlighted that, although engineers apparently have a dominant role in the inscription process, inscribing is pure organisational work: only legal entities – companies, associations, or authorities – are allowed to ‘write in’ the institutionalised code. Consequently, inscription is a political process (Spicer, 2005) whereby different meanings (different ‘translations’) are negotiated by different actors: translating is a power struggle (Czarniawska and Hernes, 2005), and the result (the inscription) is the product of a constellation of social relations (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999) never independent of the organisation in which they unfold (Wajcman, 2006).

Approaches informed by ANT have been employed to understand the evolution of IT projects and the introduction of a new technology in organisations. For instance, borrowing from ANT the idea that humans and non-humans are actively involved in the making of social worlds, Bruni (2005) investigated the introduction of a digital clinical records system in a hospital. Cresswell et al. (2010) adopted ANT to investigate technology implementations in health care. Similarly, Missonier and Loufrani-Fedida (2014) applied ANT to study an information system project. Furthermore, Ramiller (2007) applied key ANT concepts to analyse a crisis that arose during an evolving project of system design. In a similar way, by analysing the empirical material into which inscriptions are translated (i.e. discourses, texts, meetings, etc.), this article highlights the interest of the various actors (the translators) when inscribing a technological device (the medium) for well-being.

This article seeks to answer the following question: how does well-being take shape through a wearable device embedded in a corporate initiative, and what are the theoretical and practical implications? De-scripting the action embodied in a well-being device sheds light on the intricacies of the socio-technical assemblages – that is, the assemblies of heterogeneous social and material entities linked together to form a new whole (Müller, 2015) – that lie behind the development of an initiative to improve well-being and its enactment in practice, and it highlights the power relationships often hidden in the development of technical objects – in this case, a wearable device for well-being.

Methodology

Research setting

The research setting was a traditional Italian manufacturing firm – henceforth referred to as ‘Vogon’ – which specialised in the business-to-business production of micro-components for domestic appliances. About 650 people worked in the company’s industrial building: most of them (550) were factory workers; the others were office workers. In 2017, Vogon decided to implement a corporate, digitally supported wellness initiative, the result of which was the design of a technology aimed at improving the workers’ well-being. For the design phase, a research team composed of technology developers, along with clinicians and social scientists (the author, a research collaborator and a supervisor – this last only had a formal role and did not take part in the research activities) was assembled. These actors had formally different tasks in the project. The clinicians had to define a set of exercises for workers to reduce fatigue and enhance their physical well-being. The social scientists (the author and the collaborator) had to collect data to support the development of the well-being programme. Under the close supervision of Vogon’s project manager, the developers had to build a device according to the other partners’ suggestions. The final technology took the form of a wristband (Figure 1) equipped with motion sensors (accelerometers) and connected wirelessly (Bluetooth) to a screen displaying the data gathered from workers’ bodies as they did exercises.

Figure 1.

The end technology.

A small group of workers (N = 24, equally distributed between factory and office workers) was recruited to take part in the experimentation: office workers were selected randomly from the company’s units; factory workers were chosen by the management from within the same assembly line, mainly to avoid organisational problems related to production during the time of the interviews. In the design phase, which is the focus of the article, these workers were interviewed by the social scientists about their expectations regarding the technology and the programme.

At the time of the project, industrial relations in Vogon were conflictual, with about 85% of workers involved in the trade union and frequent strikes. Also, during the informal meetings held with the management and the workers, a climate of conflict frequently emerged. Workers went on strike mainly because of their tight work schedules and the lack of breaks or their brief duration (e.g. the short lunch break) or demands that they work during holidays. These issues were handled by management in an authoritarian way, through formal discussions with trade unions, without actual participation. The project described here was not an exception to this usual procedure: the trade union was informed about the project, but only formally involved. Owing to the focus of the project and the involvement of a research team of external experts, the trade union apparently did not question the project and its content.

The author’s role

The role of the author (one of the social scientists involved in the project) was to support the device’s development in collaboration with the other stakeholders by reporting information gathered from observations and interviews to facilitate and improve the functioning of the programme by giving voice to managers, workers and the other stakeholders. Adopted for this purpose was an ‘ethnoventionist’ stance (Van Marrewijk et al., 2010), which enabled the author to closely observe the organisational action, the notions of well-being that emerged during the design and how these notions were inscribed in the final device. This approach, however, required the author to adopt reflexivity, being connected to a multilayered and longitudinal context, and a management orientation with deep understanding. The latter meant being interconnected with different subgroups and relevant to management as a ‘change reflector’ (Van Marrewijk et al., 2010: 218–220). This positioning, which recognised the author as ‘just another subject, subjected to and resistant against the controls embedded in the research process, of which she [. . .] is a part’ (Van Marrewijk et al., 2010: 220) who actively relates to different organisational subgroups in the design of organisational tools, also fitted the ANT approach, which includes both the social scientists and the actors studied in the research assemblages (Silvast and Virtanen, 2023). Accordingly, the author crafted four strategies of analysis. First, all the documents produced during the design – including the transcriptions of the author’s interventions during the meetings – were analysed to reflexively deepen her influence and that of the other stakeholders. Second, for the same reasons, and as done in other research dealing with similar issues (i.e. Rossi et al., 2022), two diaries were kept. Third, later (see below), the social scientists interviewed each other in order to understand their influence in the project retrospectively. Lastly, the author reviewed the produced documents and meeting minutes in order to reconstruct the interactions with other stakeholders and reflect on her role in shaping the final idea of well-being and the technology supporting it.

Data collection and analysis

Data were collected between March 2018 and December 2019. However, further data were gathered in July 2022 to help reflect on the author’s role more thoroughly. This article relies on two kinds of data: documents (N = 24) and interviews (I, N = 35). The documents collected were internal protocols (IP), meeting minutes (MM), technical reports (TR), project presentations (PP) and diaries (D) (see online Supplemental Appendix 1 and 3). The internal protocols as well as the project presentations were jointly drafted by the persons involved in the project, and they described all the activities to be performed. The technical reports, written by the developers only, detailed the device’s technical functionalities. While protocols, presentations and reports made it possible to analyse in detail the activities of the programme and the characteristics that the device should assume, the meeting minutes and the diaries made it possible to retrospectively make sense of the social and organisational dynamics that drove the evolution of the programme and its device. Moreover, all the partners – developers, clinicians, managers, social scientists – as well as the workers involved in the project were interviewed.

The interviews followed a common protocol, although it was partially modified in relation to the different actors to be interviewed. To obtain descriptions of the events that were as rich as possible, the interviews had an open-ended format with questions derived from the literature and the researcher’s expectations. The questions included in the interview protocol were, for example: What is your idea of well-being? What do you expect from the programme and the device? What kind of benefits do you expect more generally? What were the main reasons that prompted you to participate in the project? The interviews lasted between 45 and 70 minutes, and they were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

All the gathered documents were then analysed using an ANT approach, which suggests that any inscription is translated through natural documents (Callon, 1991). Therefore, the analysis began with sorting the materials chronologically by types of actors so as to capture in time the episodes that were most relevant (Miles and Huberman, 1994) to the process of translation and inscription by showing the evolution of the design phase. Interviews and documents were then subjected to iterative deductive and inductive template analyses (Brooks and King, 2014) conducted in accordance with a constructivist approach, which assumes that there exist several interpretations of any phenomenon, and such interpretations depend on the researcher’s position and the specific context under study. Such an approach makes it possible to focus on the researcher’s reflexivity, and it acknowledges multiple perspectives (Brooks and King, 2014). The deductive analysis started from the literature and the researcher’s expectations: a priori themes expected to be relevant to the analysis were defined. As the data were read, fragments of text related to these themes were coded and, at the same time, new themes (inductive analysis) were defined according to recurrent items in the transcripts. The final template was then applied to the entire data set (see online Supplemental Appendix 4). The following section presents the study’s findings.

Findings

The first part of the presentation of the findings is divided into two subsections. The first one – Setting interactivity – shows how the prototype was initially designed, the efforts made to increase customisation and interactions between the device and its users, and therefore to extend well-being. The second subsection – Avoiding risks – presents the reception of the proposal by the management as well as the workers’ expectations in its regard. It also describes how the diverse conceptions of well-being took shape during the prototype’s development, showing the efforts made to decrease interactions, reduce risks and set priorities. The second part of the findings is again divided into two subsections. The first one – Figuring out well-being under constraints – focuses on the attempts made to further decrease interactions and on how different conceptions of well-being were inscribed in the device due to organisational constraints. The final subsection – Looking for measurable and objective well-being – describes the end device and the idea of well-being that results from establishing and obtaining objective well-being measures.

Designing the first prototype

Setting interactivity

When the project started, the developers had already designed a tentative prototype device to support physical therapy by collecting biophysical data from the human subject in the medical context alone. The purpose of the new application for Vogon was to generally improve the workers’ well-being, and particularly to relieve their muscular fatigue due to repetitive tasks.

To provide an improved device for the new context, the developers first presented their prototype and then discussed the programme’s goals with the social scientists and clinicians. Through such discussions, these actors jointly proposed a more comprehensive view of well-being, which encompassed not only its psychophysical aspects, but also the social ones, according to a more eudaimonic understanding of it. All the actors agreed that the purpose of the new device should be to improve the workers’ individual development, their mental health and also their awareness of being part of a relational context. This joint idea was translated into the first technical report, which stated, in a developer’s words, that:

Workers’ well-being should not be understood as the absence of malaise, but rather as a process of improving physical and psychological well-being [. . .] In the workplace, there should be promoted and maintained an adequate degree of physical, social and mental well-being. (Developer, TR1)

To achieve this goal, the developers proposed other functionalities to be added. For example, as reported by a developer during a meeting, in order to improve the workers’ awareness of being part of a relational context, they suggested adding a functionality enabling communication among workers and the gathering of their subjective well-being data: that is,

to report their state of well-being in real-time and communicate it to colleagues. This functionality could facilitate interactions and help workers become more aware of their well-being (Developer, MM1).

That idea, along with other suggestions derived from conversations with the other partners, were translated into the first version of the ‘internal protocol’, a document prepared in order to present to Vogon a first joint proposal of the programme and its supporting technology. This protocol proposed a procedure to understand well-being no longer focused on just collecting data with which to assess the state of well-being on the basis of objective parameters, but rather to improve well-being from a multidimensional perspective, where the supporting device would serve the purpose of jointly increasing, in the clinicians’ words,

‘the physical, psychological and social wellness of the workers [. . .] [and] evaluating and generating the workers’ wellness. In doing so, tools of a clinical, technological, and sociological kind will be employed’ (Clinicians, IP1).

At this stage, the device, differently from the early prototype, was supposed to be equipped with an interface enabling interaction among the workers involved. As highlighted by the developers, this entailed, for example, giving workers

‘the possibility to interact via the bracelet and share each other’s real-time emotions, feelings and personal parameters (e.g. emoticons, text messages, physical parameters) about the exercise to be done’ (Developers, IP1).

According to the same logic, in a subsequent version of the protocol, the device was further meant to be co-designed with workers by means of a gamification logic, which entailed, according to the developers, that the technology had the purpose of:

Creating a motivating context [. . .] via the introduction of gamification elements while leveraging game design skills within the solution; improving the exercises’ programme with the introduction of motor biofeedback; introducing socialisation elements among workers through the activation of playful dynamics. (Developers, IP2)

Gamification was proposed to further facilitate interaction and increase workers’ awareness of being part of a social context, especially given that the assembly line does not favour, but rather inhibits, social interactions.

Avoiding risks

When the team presented their proposal to the managers, power imbalances between the company, on the one hand, and the team on the other, became apparent. A central issue was the proposal that workers could express their subjective well-being through the device: this was seen by the company as an uncontrollable risk and raised concerns. The lack of information about what would happen if workers were able to generate measures and share perceptions through the device induced managers to push the design as much as possible towards reducing the interactions between the device and its users, and then set different priorities. The following excerpt from an internal meeting, held after the presentation of the first version of the device, shows, through the words of the internal occupational doctor, how the company emphasised the importance of some sort of ‘objectivity’ in developing a device that had to be flawless and not exploitable:

I always start from this assumption: whatever you make them [the workers] do, if you don’t control them directly, they’ll do it wrong, or they won’t do it at all. And all the while they’ll think about how to do it to fool the company [. . .] Whatever proposal you make, they’ll try to find dodges to obtain some sort of benefit. It’s clear that we should do something very objective, faultless and, overall, non-exploitable. (Doctor, MM4)

This consideration highlights the intertwining among control, discipline and the supposed well-being: for the company, it was good to deal with well-being if this did not become a means for workers to gain more power. At this stage, the social scientists were then asked to conduct interviews to understand the well-being needs of workers and their expectations. Workers expressed different priorities, such as reducing the pace of work on the assembly line, as this excerpt from an interview with a factory worker reveals:

The bracelet would teach us how to do the movements properly [. . .] But that’s not feasible for me. Because on the assembly line where I work, the work is very fast. In my opinion, if I have to do a movement correctly, I can do so in five seconds. But when I’m on the assembly line, I don’t have five seconds, but only two [. . .] We make wrong movements because we work too fast. (Ms F, factory worker, I12)

The excerpt highlights how the physical dimension of well-being (fatigue, muscular pain, etc.) was rather important for workers, and connected to the pace of work. Even if the exercises were effective in reducing muscle fatigue and the technology were to serve this purpose well, workers highlighted that the problem was upstream: muscular problems arose because the work proceeded too rapidly. Physical problems may also be non-work-related; nonetheless, they require assistance and care. Therefore, workers expressed their need for tailored well-being activities, as in the words of another worker:

I hope that the activities [. . .] are suitable. I tore the meniscus of both my knees. Now they’re better [. . .] but still today, I have pain in my left knee, which I had surgery on. [. . .] There are many others here who have health problems, so well-being activities need to be tailored to individuals. Maybe the technology can offer such opportunities. (Ms M, factory worker, I13)

In the interviews, workers not only drew attention to the more physical and hedonic well-being, on which the other stakeholders had hitherto focused to a lesser extent; they also expressed needs partly different from those initially imagined by the research team, which concerned both biomedical aspects and the general organisation of their work, as well as the general applicability of the programme. In short, workers brought the attention back to hedonic well-being and its relevance and connection to eudaimonic well-being.

Inscribing well-being in the end solution

Figuring out well-being under constraints

Although workers clearly expressed their needs, when the research team jointly suggested customising the device accordingly, the project manager stated that such customisation was not applicable in a factory setting, as is apparent in the following conversation between a clinician, a developer and the project manager:

Clinician: The overall set of workers is very heterogeneous, and the programme should be personalised. We should give the device a layer of customisation.

Developer: Yes, for example, we should include the worker’s name when the programme starts [. . .] and stuff like that.

Project manager: You talk and talk, but in the end what you present is hard to apply in the factory, realistically. (MM6)

This conversation highlighted issues related to the specific context in which the device had to be placed: it was unrealistic for the company to develop wellness activities tailored to each worker’s needs in a factory environment. When it came to locating the device and its use within work routines, structural (work coordination, costs of maintaining and prolonging the programme), infrastructural (having a dedicated space for more time) and social constraints (power dynamics) arose. One of the key issues here, as highlighted by the HR manager during a meeting, concerned the management of breaks, but also the programme’s (potential) extension in time and its availability to groups of workers other than those already involved:

If we extend the programme [in time], and to other workers as well, it still means that we must provide paid breaks to others [not involved], because currently the participants take extra paid breaks. We would have to find a way to get them to do the exercises outside the paid breaks, and that’s a problem. (HR Manager, MM5)

Although at first glance the above consideration seemed to highlight only a cost-benefit calculation, the management of breaks was a critical issue well before the project was conceived; and far from solving it, the project perhaps exacerbated it. Further issues related to power dynamics became more explicit in the following words of the CEO, who expressed concerns that the unions’ formal acceptance of the programme could have a covert purpose, namely the use by the unions of the project as a bargaining counter to obtain something else, thus gaining more power over the company:

We’re all assuming that the unions are ‘really’ saying yes [. . .], that workers are saying yes, but believe me, they’re not going to exult about it . . . They are going to use this project as a bargaining counter. (CEO, MM5)

The CEO’s fear that not only workers, but also trade unions, might not favourably receive the programme, but would instead use it to make claims, led to a power play against the research team enacted by the company to further restrict the device’s functionalities. Overall, while on the one hand there was a general interest in improving workers’ well-being, on the other that interest began to appear strictly connected to an increase in productivity, further suggesting the instrumentality of the programme as conceived by the company.

Looking for measurable and objective well-being

When the programme was about to be finalised, other interests of the company, ones more related to cost-benefit assessments, emerged, as expressed in the CEO’s words during one of the last meetings:

The correlation we are looking for [is] between the benefits of the wellness activity [. . .] and all these things with people’s productivity, not that they do an hour less [of work] in a morning so that they can do the wellness exercises! The approach that we, as a company, adopted from the very beginning was that the improvement of workers’ physical [health] must enable them to work better . . . I mean, we can also measure it in terms of productivity. (CEO, MM8)

This excerpt shows the profit interest behind the entire programme, because the management made it clear that its purpose – for Vogon – was to improve well-being in order to enhance performance. At the end of the design phase, therefore, the final programme goals were translated into the last internal protocol, which called for the development of an end device that was easily adaptable to the factory, able to extract objective parameters and which supported the company’s competitiveness – that is, a device to monitor:

Whether the exercise is performed, not performed, or interrupted, [. . .] the data analysis will have the sole purpose of generating the indices of correctness of exercise execution, as well as evaluating the repeatability of the activity performed. The data acquired through the device will contribute to the production of useful indicators to assess the outcome of the experimentation on people’s productivity. (Developer, IP8)

This excerpt taken from the last version of the protocol therefore crystallised the instrumental nature of the initiative, a return to a top-down notion of well-being, restricted to few physical aspects of well-being and embedded in a standardised one-size-fits-all technology solution.

To sum up, with a reduced possibility of interaction and a focus mainly on alleviating generic muscular fatigue and collecting data functional to the factory’s needs, the end device, differently from the first proposal, embodied a notion of well-being in which workers were as passive as possible in their interactions, and where only depersonalised physical data mattered in determining their well-being (see online Supplemental Appendix 2). The actors’ different meanings and intentions, translated and inscribed in the final device, made visible the efforts on the one hand to ‘bound’ a process that had proven hard to manage and, on the other, to allow the routine embedding of technology in existing, socially patterned organisational practices.

Discussion

By studying how the design of a wearable for workers’ well-being unfolds in a corporate programme, this article makes two contributions to the critical debate on the linkage between workers’ well-being and digitalisation. Empirically, the article complements research on the development and introduction of wearables to enhance workers’ well-being in real organisations (e.g. Plester et al., 2022) by showing how such devices may embody different conceptualisations of well-being according to the different inscriptions of the actors involved in their design. While most research focuses on the implementation phase of well-being programmes (e.g. Miele, 2022; Valsecchi et al., 2023), showing their impact on employees (e.g. Kowalski and Loretto, 2017), this article furnishes a different account by shedding light on the design phase, thus highlighting how well-being is conceived and conveyed downward through technology and is bounded by social, structural and infrastructural organisational constraints. Concerning social constraints, for example, the way in which power relations are configured and reconfigured contributes to shaping how well-being unfolds and the different dimensions – physical, psychological and social – that it comprises. However, other constraints are also at play: how work is structured in the setting where the technology is designed – which also includes the possibility of organising breaks differently (structural constraints) and devoting more time and space (or not) to wellness activities (infrastructural constraints) – contributes to shaping well-being differently.

Acknowledging such constraining aspects, and then thinking in terms of bounded well-being, makes it possible to highlight the article’s theoretical contribution. In this regard, it is useful to recall the notions of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. While the former notion relates to the individual physical pleasure linked to positive sensations and the absence of pain (the ‘functioning well’), eudaimonic well-being concerns the full realisation of individual potential and the integration with the surrounding world made possible by the awareness of being part of a relational and social context (the ‘feeling good’). The literature on workers’ well-being strongly emphasises the eudaimonic dimension of well-being, especially in terms of positive attributes centred around the individual and his/her self-realisation (Kenttä and Virtaharju, 2023), eventually neglecting the hedonic one. Although scholars have sometimes recognised that a more dynamic relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic does exist (Huta and Ryan, 2010), the two well-being dimensions remain largely polarised, and most research concerns how to pursue eudaimonic well-being (Sheldon et al., 2019). While still maintaining that the two dimensions of well-being are antithetical, some scholars speak of ‘flourishing’ to acknowledge that both must be pursued if well-being at work is to be fully understood (see, e.g., der Kinderen and Khapova, 2020).

What this article argues is slightly different, however. The studied case suggests that without ‘functioning well’ it often becomes impossible to ‘feel good’, thereby directing the attention to the hedonic dimension of well-being. As shown, despite the research team’s efforts to inscribe in the device a multidimensional view of well-being, the diverse views of well-being along with organisational constraints ultimately restricted the device’s design. The resulting tool embodied an idea of well-being that was depersonalised, less processual but more measurable, one that did not consider relational or social aspects nor the specific workers’ requests. Worth noting in this regard is the misalignment between the idea of well-being fostered by workers and that of the other actors involved. From the encounters with workers there emerged a view of well-being that varied between hedonic and eudaimonic, in that it focused on the typical (physical) dimensions of hedonic well-being but was also oriented towards the broader processual perspective typical of eudaimonic well-being (e.g. the organisation of work). In fact, on the one hand, workers complained of physical problems, partly caused by the too fast work rate, which prevented them from feeling good on the job. On the other hand, workers complained also about pre-existing and non-work-related physical problems that, however, had the same outcome: these physical issues prevented them from functioning well at work and therefore feeling good.

From a theoretical standpoint, this observation invites a rethinking of the hedonic dimension that does not conceive hedonic and eudaimonic well-being as antithetical to each other. The current interest in the eudaimonic dimension tends, in fact, to overshadow the more physical dimension of well-being, which instead complements workers’ well-being – as the studied case highlighted. Reframing the hedonic dimension as a precondition for – and not as the opposite of – eudaimonic well-being means avoiding either a Cartesian understanding of the human being or a narrow vision of well-being to instead conceive the human being in his/her complexity as a psychophysical unit that is part of a rich social context. Recognising this does not mean ignoring the importance of eudaimonic well-being; rather, it entails re-establishing a balance in the notion of well-being by deepening both the hedonic and the eudaimonic dimensions, especially in light of the socially situated and political dynamics embedded in the well-being discourse, and how these relate in practice to specific capitalist interests and corporate neoliberal initiatives (Calvard and Sang, 2017; Foster, 2018).

To return to the concept of bounded well-being proposed here, this has its roots in Simon’s (1977) concept of ‘bounded rationality’, which in turn inspired Fleming’s (2019) ‘bounded automation’. Simon developed this concept within his decision-making theory, which suggested that, when deciding, individuals have cognitive limitations that preclude their exhaustive analysis of the alternatives and their consequences. Drawing on Simon’s theory, Fleming (2019: 28) argued that ‘just as pure rationality is delimited by accessible information [. . .] in a constrained environment, so too is the organizational application of automative technology’ – and, this article adds, so too is the organisational application of whatever idea of well-being. While the driving forces of ‘bounded automation’ are labour price, power relations and the task to be accomplished, the driving forces of ‘bounded well-being’ are social, structural and infrastructural organisational constraints. In Vogon’s case, such constraints preclude the analysis and implementation of all the possible alternatives offered within the programme’s ongoing design to extend – rather than bound – well-being. This is apparent, for example, in the impossibility of giving voice to all the workers and incorporating all their well-being suggestions, but also in the impossibility of predicting all their reactions (see the doctor’s concerns). Furthermore, workers may not have directly declared other priorities and moved within the action spaces allowed them. The same reasoning can be applied to other stakeholders: they may not have implemented well-being ideas due to pre-existing power relationships (e.g. between the company and trade unions). The concept of ‘bounded well-being’ also makes apparent a tension that lies at the core of neoliberal workplaces between, on the one hand, embodying performance issues, responsibilisation and discipline through the workers’ body control, and on the other, expressing freedom through the individual workers’ choices of well-being. Although, at least in principle, workers seem to be given freedom to choose between different kinds of well-being, at the same time they are subtly required to incorporate responsibility, and to internalise their company’s performance needs. Accordingly, this study also suggests that companies may use well-being initiatives, especially if combined with technologies like the one presented here, to ‘subtly’ prompt individuals to identify with an ‘ideal’ worker who is healthy and productive. Therefore, wearables may also appear functional to recasting the body as mechanical and measurable – another productive machine that contributes to the company’s competitiveness (see the CEO’s observations). Accordingly, since digital technologies are often intended to improve organisations’ effectiveness, the adoption of wearables at work can be understood as part of a neo-Taylorist trend (Morozov, 2013) where working bodies are continuously regulated through the imposition of productivity standards (O’Neill, 2017) and wearables are connected to quantification practices to improve performance (Wilson, 2013). The concept of bounded well-being would therefore seem to fit this trend, because wearables can be developed, as seen, in a way that is functional to bounding (rather than freeing) well-being.

Conclusions

At Vogon, power relations seemed crucial in explaining the form assumed by the end technology, and they warrant further investigation. The short-termism with which the management approached the well-being issue seems to have been related to pre-existing labour conflicts. Consequently, for example, the involvement of the union representatives was a mere formality. In other projects, trade unions and other ad hoc integration bodies could be put in charge of supporting the development of programmes where the technology itself may serve emancipatory purposes, rather than mere capitalist ones.

One of this article’s limitations could be the author’s active role in the technology’s design. Although there is no room for a reflexive account, it should be acknowledged that participating in such a project affects the interaction with the individuals being studied, and in turn is influenced by them, often in ways that are difficult to recognise. For example, despite her efforts to broaden the well-being view, the author was nevertheless embedded in a context oriented to performance, one which induced her, and the whole research team as well, to sometimes devise practices to support well-being from a neoliberal perspective (e.g. the gamification proposal), on which she thoroughly reflected only later. However, participating in a social activity like the one described does not entail a complete understanding of its underlying meaning, and despite the disturbance it may cause, it provides a valuable opportunity for analysis. In this regard, the ANT approach was helpful because it enabled the author to decodify her role and the interactions. However, ANT has been criticised for its managerial and power-political biases (Silvast and Virtanen, 2023). Hence, adopting an ethnoventionist stance can help to rebalance different stakeholders’ instances, thereby overcoming this criticism.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 – Supplemental material for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes by Lia Tirabeni in Work, Employment and Society

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-2-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 – Supplemental material for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes by Lia Tirabeni in Work, Employment and Society

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-3-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 – Supplemental material for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes by Lia Tirabeni in Work, Employment and Society

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-4-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 – Supplemental material for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes

Supplemental material, sj-docx-4-wes-10.1177_09500170231203113 for Bounded Well-Being: Designing Technologies for Workers’ Well-Being in Corporate Programmes by Lia Tirabeni in Work, Employment and Society

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Editor Prof. Donald Hislop and the anonymous referees for their comments and valuable suggestions on the article. The author would also like to thank Filippo Andrei, who collaborated as a junior researcher in the project presented in the article. His work, support and insights have been fundamental for developing earlier versions of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lia Tirabeni

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Lia Tirabeni, PhD in Sociology, is Associate Professor of Sociology of Organizations at the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy), Department of Sociology and Social Research. She has been visiting scholar at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Department of Management Science & Technology. Her main research and publications concern organisation theory, in particular the intersection between Science & Technology Studies (STS) and organising; the nexus between culture, identity and organisations; and qualitative research methods in organisations.

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