ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the interplay of power, politics and health in organizational and institutional life. Formal politics are organized and all organizations are themselves crucibles of political life. The term ‘organizational politics’ is not a part of the lexicon of everyday speech without good reason. In addition to marking particular organizational types, power and politics appear in many guises in organizational life. A concern for issues of power, politics and privilege – and the different advantages and disadvantages they produce and reinforce for different stakeholders – lies at the heart of the discipline of critical organization studies. The inspiration for much of the most provocative academic work on the politics of health at work is Foucault. Well-being is big business, covering a broader range of services than a purely physiological approach to the prevention or treatment of illness.
