Employee Physical Activity: A Multidisciplinary Integrative Review

Abstract

While physical activity is widely recognized to be relevant to employee well-being and organizational health care costs, the management literature has yet to clarify when, how, and why employee physical activity influences job performance. Therefore, the goal of this review is to provide a cross-disciplinary synthesis of evidence surrounding the implications of physical activity for job performance. After first conducting an emergent systematic review of the management literature to verify our assertion that this research base has inadequately addressed the relationship between physical activity and job performance, we performed a cross-disciplinary review of six key disciplines (sports sciences, public environmental occupational health, general medicine internal, physiology, neuroscience, and psychology/psychiatry) to develop a resource-based framework that serves to identify how physical activity relates to job performance. This unifying framework is intended to guide future research on employee physical activity. As an initial application of this framework, we provide a set of future research directions centered on empirically evaluating proposed mechanisms, boundary conditions, and temporal factors that can inform physical activity research in organizational contexts.

“After All, No One Is Superhuman Here”: An Analysis of the Perceived Effects of Managerial Athleticism

“…The finding was to be expected, as it is easiest to express an opinion about effects on oneself. The research results support the results of the previous research, (e.g., Goldsby et al 2005;Burton et al 2012;Limbach and Sonnenburg 2015;Dong et al 2019;Goldsby et al 2019;Calderwood et al 2021) indicating exercise can provide leaders (and employees) with physical, affective, and cognitive resources. In addition to these, interviewed leaders also highlighted the social resources produced by exercise.…”

“…The explanatory factors behind the above research findings are generally consistent. First, physical exercise is considered to foster physical resources such as fitness, improved health, and sleep (see Calderwood et al 2021;McDowell-Larsen et al 2002). Physically active leaders would then have an elevated level of physical resilience, that is, they would be less likely to become physically exhausted due to intensifying job demands and be able to prevent and withstand various health stressors (Lovelace et al 2007).…”

“…Physically active leaders would then have an elevated level of physical resilience, that is, they would be less likely to become physically exhausted due to intensifying job demands and be able to prevent and withstand various health stressors (Lovelace et al 2007). Secondly, physical exercise is seen to provide various psychological benefits or affective resources, such as positive affect, self-esteem, and mental resilience (Calderwood et al 2021;Dong et al 2019; see also Goldsby et al 2019;Goldsby et al 2021). Physical exercise could then help, for example, leaders to manage pressure and to combat the harmful effects of work-related stress by serving as a buffer against those ill effects (Burton et al 2012).…”

“…Physical exercise could then help, for example, leaders to manage pressure and to combat the harmful effects of work-related stress by serving as a buffer against those ill effects (Burton et al 2012). Thirdly, physical exercise is associated with enhanced cognitive resources, such as attention, memory, and reaction time (see Calderwood et al 2021;Limbach and Sonnenburg 2015;Dong et al 2019). As a result, leaders who exercise regularly might benefit from, for example, improved information processing, error recognition, executive function, and decision-making.…”

“…Clohessy et al (2020) showed that such harmonious passion (for cycling and on an employee level) was positively related to work performance and work innovativeness. In essence, the key is finding the optimal threshold extent of exercising; one that improves leadership performance rather than reducing it (McDowell-Larsen et al 2002;Calderwood et al 2021).…”