100 years running: The need to understand why employee physical activity benefits organizations

• Author: Joel Koopman,Christopher C. Rosen,Lauren S. Simon,Allison S. Gabriel,Charles Calderwood
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2064
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016

100years running: The need to understand why

employee physical activity benefits organizations

CHARLES CALDERWOOD

1

*

,†

, ALLISON S. GABRIEL

2

*

,†

,

CHRISTOPHER C. ROSEN

3

, LAUREN S. SIMON

4

AND JOEL KOOPMAN

5

1

Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, U.S.A.

2

Department of Management and Organizations, The University of Arizona, Tucson,AZ, U.S.A.

3

Department of Management, Sam M. Walton College of Business, Universityof Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, U.S.A.

4

School of Business Administration, Portland State University, Portland, OR, U.S.A.

5

Department of Management, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, U.S.A.

Summary Employee physical activity initiatives are commonplace, but management scholarship has not kept pace with

theoretical and empirical work to validate such initiatives. In this Incubator, we clarify the employee physical

activity construct, present mechanisms linking physical activity to organizationally valued outcomes, and

consider the dark side of employee physical activity initiatives. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: employee physical activity; employee well-being; organizational wellness

The last century has seen an evolution regarding perspectives on employee physical activity, from early in vestigators

expressing reservations about physically taxing work (Mayo, 1924) to researchers today arguing that increasing

physical demands of work constitutes a public health necessity (Straker & Mathiassen, 2009). The latter concern

is well founded, given the increasingly sedentary nature of work and its negative impact on health (Church et al.,

2011). In response, 51% of US employers with 50 or more employees now offer wellness programs, with 55% of

these employers offering fitness programs (Mattke et al., 2013) that encourage employees to be more active by

providing on-the-clock time to engage in physical activity and/or resources to encourage physical activity when

not at work (e.g., gym memberships). Although such programs offer intuitive health advantages, they have been

developed using insights from outside the management community, providing little clarity around why physical

activity yields organizationally relevant outcomes. This oversight has led to a scientist-practitioner gap, wh erein

organizations continue to develop policies that promote more active workplaces, while organizational scientists fail

to keep pace with research to validate such efforts. In light of these limitations, the time has come to dig deeper to

understand the linkages between physical activity and organizationally relevant outcomes. In this Incubator,we

clarify the construct of employee physical activity, identify pathways through which it yields benefits, and highlight

potential downsides to physical activity initiatives.

*Correspondence to: Charles Calderwood, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, 806 W. Franklin Street, Richmond,

VA 23284-2018, U.S.A. E-mail: cccalderwood@vcu.edu

Allison S. Gabriel, Department of Management and Organizations, The University of Arizona, 1130 E. Helen Street, Tucson, AZ 85721-0108,

U.S.A. E-mail: asgabriel@email.arizona.edu

†

The first and second authors contributed equally to this article.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 26 October 2015, Accepted 1 November2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1104–1109 (2016)

Published online 24 November 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2064

The Incubator