Abstract
Responding to calls both to re-imagine business schools and to rethink and rehabilitate the concept of wellbeing within organisations, this paper takes as a starting point the cynicism and suspicion to university wellbeing initiatives amongst business school academics. We argue that although potentially a good thing, whilst wellbeing is embedded within a neoliberal imaginary it is seen as a means of control and of sustaining the neoliberal project, through exploitation rather than providing support and care. Our paper draws on a qualitative study consisting of interviews with 37 business school academics exploring how they understand, experience and practice wellbeing at and outside work. Our analysis reveals a strong disconnect between employer wellbeing messages and academics’ experiences of work. A key reason for this, we argue, is that wellbeing is mobilised by universities in a neoliberal packaged form, which emphasises individualised responsibility and coping, whilst the conditions detrimental to academics’ wellbeing are structural and contingent on working conditions. Drawing on participants own conceptualisations of wellbeing we propose reimagining wellbeing through an ‘imaginary of care’ which is both political and involves ‘world-making’, as a means of reconceptualising business schools as spaces of care.