Organizational context, employer-employee shared intentionality, and well-being perceptions

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between well-being initiatives (WBI) and employees’ perceptions of WBI in different organizational contexts. We conducted a cross-context analysis of WBI in three companies operating in different sectors. Findings highlight that organizational contexts (organizational culture, organizational structure and work processes) shape management’s strategic intentions about the WBI offered (i.e., the criteria used to configure the well-being packages), and the intentions that employees attribute to management’s decision to offer a given configuration of WBI. We contribute to the process-based research of Human Resource Management (HRM) and to the well-being literature by theorizing on the interplay (alignment or misalignment) between employers’ strategic intentions and employees’ attributions of intentions as a form of shared intentionality. We explain that shared intentionality depends on employers’ and employees’ ability to manage the context interdependencies in which they are embedded. Finally, not only we bring a more nuanced understanding of the well-being challenges people face in different work settings, but also initiate a discussion about the traps and best practices associated to configuring effective WBI.