The Ambivalence of Well-Being in the Workplace

Work is often seen as either a source of fulfillment or a cause of harm and exhaustion. Stéphane Moulin rejects this binary, arguing that well-being at work is fundamentally ambivalent. Placing ambivalence at the centre of his analysis, Moulin calls for a renewed dialogue between psychological and sociological approaches. Drawing on survey data from 579 workers in Quebec’s restaurant and academic sectors, as well as in-depth interviews with restaurant supervisors and academic chairs, Moulin examines work experiences among professors and professional staff, lecturers, support staff, servers, cooks, and kitchen and service helpers. He identifies three ambivalent profiles – the overworked, the disappointed, and the serene – situated between the marginal extremes of the morose and the satisfied. This ambivalence arises from three forces: ongoing psychosocial exposure shaped by the uneven fulfillment of workplace justice needs; ethical dispositions, notably hard work and resilience, sustaining effort while masking harm; and management strategies, including self-management, that privilege short-term coping over structural change and reveal work’s insidious colonization of personal life. With its original, empirically grounded analytical framework, The Ambivalence of Well-Being in the Workplace invites a rethinking of the human relationship to work.