Incentivizing the Use of Quantified Self Devices: The Cases of Digital Occupational Health Programs and Data-Driven Health Insurance Plans

Initially designed for a use in private settings, smartwatches, activity trackers and other quantified self devices are receiving a growing attention from the organizational environment. Firms and health insurance companies, in particular, are developing digital occupational health programs and data-driven health insurance plans centered around these systems, in the hope of exploiting their potential to improve individual health management, but also to gather large quantities of data. As individual participation in such organizational programs is voluntary, organizations often rely on motivational incentives to prompt engagement. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms employed in organizational settings to incentivize the use of quantified self devices. We therefore seek, in this exploratory paper, to offer a first structured overview of this topic and identify the main motivational incentives in two emblematical cases: digital occupational health programs and data-driven health insurance plans. By doing so, we aim to specify the nature of this new dynamic around the use of quantified self devices and define some of the key lines for further investigation

Touch and contact during COVID-19:Insights from queer digital spaces

The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss the transformation of socialisation processes due to the digitalisation of entertainment and community formation during COVID-19. More specifically, we focus on alternative modes of touch and contact within the context of queer digital entertainment spaces and question how the world is shaped and sensed in a (post-) COVID-19 era. Inspired by the work of Karen Barad on a quantum theory of queer intimacies, we highlight that the rise of hybridised experiences in-between physical and digital spaces captures a series of spatio-temporal, material and symbolic dimensions of touch and contact. We conclude by drawing implications for the future of organisations and work