Addressing paradoxical tensions between productivity and wellbeing through social symbolic work

Organisational demands for efficient productive performance can be in tension with employee desires for meaningful, purposeful work that supports their wellbeing. When an organisation pursues employee wellbeing and productivity as many do, this can create a paradox of contradictory yet interrelated demands. The existence of this paradox stems partly from plurality of stakeholder interests that is inherent to the employment relationship, however, paradox is also socially constructed; It is determined by social actors’ response to different demands and their interpretation of how organising processes/structures and the wider environment combine to form competing and interrelated demands that they recognise as paradoxical (or not). We draw on a social-symbolic work lens to understand efforts to address wellbeing-productivity paradoxes through qualitative longitudinal research in three case study organisations.

We examine how discursive, relational and material dimensions of social symbolic work combine and contradict to shape organisational approaches to wellbeing-productivity paradoxes. We highlight the theoretical and practical utility of social symbolic work as a way to understand how to work through paradox, but also examine the limitations of addressing paradox productively. Inconsistencies within social symbolic work and between this work and the wider context create a deficit underpinned by internal and external contradictions that undermine attempts to address paradox. The cases show that whilst individuals and organisations engage in work to resolve fundamental tensions between wellbeing and productivity, they often lose sight of the paradox and are flawed in their approach. The dynamic interplay between influences on social symbolic work its context and the outcomes of this work can result in unconscious contradiction, polarisation or strategic alignment.

Ultimately paradoxes are persistent and our findings question the utility and feasibility of attempting to ‘work through paradox’ at either an individual or organisational level.