Toward a critical theory of corporate wellness
Toward a critical theory of corporate wellness
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DOI：
10.1057/s41292-017-0064-1
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发表时间：
2018-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
Pasquale, Frank
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hull, Gordon;Pasquale, Frank
在美国，“员工健康”计划越来越依赖于雇主提供的健康保险。这些计划试图推动员工（有时相当有力）采取健康行为，例如戒烟和定期锻炼。尽管被广泛宣传可以节省医疗费用，但大量研究却否定了这一原理。在记录了这些计划未能带来积极的投资回报后，我们对其进行了分析，认为它们反而为雇主提供了对员工加强控制的机会。这些计划基于强调个人控制和责任的人力资本理论和新自由主义主体性模型，将健康视为一种必须说服员工采用的生活方式，将工作场所不仅扩展到家庭，而且扩展到工人的身体，并巩固了一个人属于自己工作场所的观点。与此同时，他们对健康计划的选择性认可（许多计划没有科学依据）产生了一种健康的社会真理，被定义为适合工作。我们最后认为，被私营部门促进健康计划所阻碍的公共卫生举措将是更好的资源投资。
In the U.S., 'employee wellness' programs are increasingly attached to employer-provided health insurance. These programs attempt to nudge employees, sometimes quite forcefully, into healthy behaviors such as smoking cessation and exercise routines. Despite being widely promoted as saving on healthcare costs, numerous studies undermine this rationale. After documenting the programs' failure to deliver a positive return on investment, we analyze them as instead providing an opportunity for employers to exercise increasing control over their employees. Based on human capital theory and neoliberal models of subjectivity that emphasize personal control and responsibility, these programs treat wellness as a lifestyle that employees must be cajoled into adopting, extending the workplace not just into the home but into the bodies of workers, and entrenching the view that one belongs to one's workplace. At the same time, their selective endorsement of health programs (many scientifically unsupported) produce a social truth of wellness framed as fitness for work. We conclude by arguing that the public health initiatives occluded by the private sector's promotion of wellness programs would be a much better investment of resources.