Breaking the Cycle of Overwork and Recuperation: Altering Somatic Engagement Across Boundaries

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Creary, Stephanie J.; Locke, Karen
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2021.1466
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 873-900
• 关键词: ideal worker; overwork; segmentation; integration; BOUNDARY MANAGEMENT; somatic engagement; ETHNOGRAPHY

摘要

Past research often relegates the management of the ideal worker's overworking body to the nonwork environment. Reflecting a segmentation approach to managing the boundary between work and nonwork, the nonwork setting is treated as a context for recuperation. Yet, segmentation may, ironically, support the ideal worker image and reinforce the persistence of overwork. Drawing on two-year-long ethnographic studies of yoga teacher training, this paper considers how individuals shift how they manage the boundaries around their bodies. In doing so, we challenge the notion that segmentation of non work from work is an ideal boundary management strategy for addressing the negative impacts of overwork. Rather, we suggest that an integration strategy developed in a non work community may be productive for breaking the cycle of overwork and recuperation promoted by the ideal worker image and creating a virtuous cycle of activation and release. We bring forward the bodily basis to overwork and conceptualize somatic engagement as a form of engagement through which actors come to connect reflexively with their bodily experience across domains. Relatedly, in revealing how individuals come to connect reflex-ively with their bodily experience, we elaborate our understanding of the relational phenomena that enhance individuals' somatic experiences across boundaries.