RESUMO
Exercise-at-work programmes have been identified as venues to decrease inequalities in physical activity and exercise between socioeconomic groups and to improve employees' health and wellbeing. Drawing on a multiple institutional logics perspective and adopting a mixed-methods approach, this paper investigates how employees, exercise-ambassadors and managers at five Danish workplaces experience Covid-19 induced changes to a 1-year exercise-at-work project, and how these changes impacted upon the workplace. Our results suggest that Covid-19 and the altered format of exercise and delivery polarized employees' opportunities for exercise at work. However, the generally positive experiences of exercise-at-work activities and their influence on social environment and collaboration (identified prior to Covid-19 lockdown) remained among those employees who continued with activities. Self-organized adaptions and models of employee exercise which emerged suggest that community logic endured despite the crisis. We show how Covid-19 induced organizational changes led to interplays between institutional logics, with family and state logics becoming more prominent. Specifically, the exercise-at-work programme changed from an aligned model, with complementary logics and minimal conflict, to a model where logics of profession and corporation became dominant at the expense of community logic (exercise-ambassadors activities), but constrained by a state and a family logic.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Athletes can be allowed to use substances from the prohibited list (the doping list) if they have a medical condition. If so, a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) is required. The boundaries between the use of pharmacological substances due to a medical need and doping are sometimes blurred. Although manipulating the system of TUE granting potentially represents an entry stage for doping, few studies examine how athletes perceive TUE management and relate this to current anti-doping policy. METHODS: 645 Danish elite athletes (mean age 22.12, SD=5.82) representing 40 sports completed a web-based questionnaire about their experience and perception of TUE (response rate: 43%). RESULTS: 19% of the respondents had been granted a TUE. 85% of athletes granted a TUE regarded their use of the TUE system as necessary to compete on equal terms with other athletes. Administrative hurdles for TUE prevented 7% of athletes from applying. 53% of the athletes considered that being "allowed" to dope by means of a TUE was of importance for their (hypothetical) wish to try out doping. 51% believed that athletes in their sport received TUEs without a medical need. Athletes granted TUEs had more than twice as high odds to distrust the efficacy of the system than athletes never granted a TUE. The belief that TUEs were misused was especially common among endurance athletes, regardless of them having experience with TUEs or not. 4% believed it would be okay to receive a TUE without a medical need. CONCLUSION: The results confirm that TUE is a problem in anti-doping policy. The fact that distrust in TUE administration increases once an athlete has experience of TUEs represents a challenge for anti-doping policy. We suggest more critical research on TUEs be carried out in order to improve harmonization and increase transparency in the regulations.
