Organizational Body Work: Efforts to Shape Human Bodies in Organizations

Abstract

In this article, we review management and organizational research that describes and explains “organizational body work”—purposeful, organizationally embedded efforts to shape human bodies. We conceptualize human bodies in terms of three dimensions—materiality, meaning, and functionality—and argue that organizational body work is constituted by programs of purposeful effort involving activities situated in and shaped by organizational life. Based on a review of 209 articles and books that feature descriptions of organizational body work, we unpack the concept in three main ways. First, we offer an inductively developed process model of organizational body work that comprises five key themes: the triggers, forms, consequences, and contexts of organizational body work, and the variations of bodies targeted. Second, a key observation that emerged from our review was that organizational body work is animated by a set of organizational tensions, and so we explore three such tensions situated in the cultural, health, and political dynamics of organizational life. Third, we suggest eight directions for future research intended to illustrate and inspire rather than set boundaries around the study of organizational body work.