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.