Hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in the context of workplace bullying: a hermeneutic phenomenological study of food delivery platform workers

Abstract

Research on workplace bullying has predominantly reported negative physiological, emotional and behavioural outcomes on targets, highlighting a stressor-strain approach (Conway et al., 2021; Hansen et al., 2021; Vranjes et al., 2017). However, recently, postpositivist studies emphasize an alternate perspective, showcasing targets’ agency, strength and growth, thereby evidencing targets’ quest for well-being (van Heugten et al., 2021). The current empirical study, situated in the physical platform economy (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2023), further fine-tunes and extends these nascent findings by exploring the nature of targets’ well-being in terms of hedonia and eudaimonia. Data were gathered through in-depth conversational interviews from thirty-two food delivery platform workers based in Ahmedabad, India, and thematically analyzed. Three major themes emerged, namely, ‘seeking eudaimonic well-being at work: food delivery platform work as a means to an end’; ‘experiencing bullying on the job: manifestation, etiology and impact on hedonic well-being at work’; and ‘focusing on eudaimonic well-being at work: neutralizing the ill-being of exposure to bullying at work’, representing targets’ experiences of well-being vis-à-vis exposure to bullying, subsumed under the core theme ‘the primacy of eudaimonic well-being at work: countervailing the scars of bullying at work’. The study showed that, despite exposure to workplace bullying, targets downplayed and neutralized the consequent strain owing to the experience and pursuit of eudaimonic well-being at work and subsequently moved towards positive functioning in the long run. The subjective experiences of food delivery platform workers bring forth the complex interface between bullying and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being at work and the contextual influences therein. In the process, the study makes several theoretical and substantive contributions, along with practical implications towards policy interventions. Through its theoretical anchoring in hedonia and eudaimonia, the study advances the linkage between workplace bullying and positive organizational scholarship, pinpointing the synergies between the dark and bright sides of workplaces. It elaborates the nature of targets’ well-being, in terms of hedonia and eudaimonia, thereby extending emergent perspectives on target outcomes in the context of workplace bullying. The study adds a novel work context (i.e., the physical platform economy) in which workplace bullying is experienced, furthering existing insights into the workplace bullying-informal sector/employment interface. The study reinforces D’Cruz and Noronha’s (2021) ‘varieties of workplace bullying’ conceptualization, evidencing the types of bullying present in the physical platform economy.