Search results

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.

The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.

The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.

Sports and physical activity are widely recommended, both as guidelines and in clinical practice, because of their broad range of positive effects on health, depression, anxiety, and psychological well-being. While several studies have examined the anti-depressive and anxiolytic effects of physical activity in clinical populations, and fewer studies have focused on the nonclinical populations, the relationship between tennis and well-being has not been clearly investigated. This study was carried out with 76 student volunteers from Kocaeli University (Turkey) who had chosen tennis lessons as their University. The tennis exercise program consisted of 90-minute basic tennis skills lessons for 13 weeks. At the beginning and at the end of the study, the students were given the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scales, and were evaluated by the DeWitt-Dugan Tennis Service Test, the DeWitt-Dugan Speed Test, and the Dyer Backboard Tennis Test. Upon evaluating the students' pre- and post-test scores, we concluded that their BDI and BAI scores had significantly decreased, with the most significant decreases seen in several sub-scores of the SCL-90-R; their tennis skills, meanwhile, increased significantly. This study shows that partaking in tennis exercise once a week decreases depression and anxiety symptoms and enhances well-being in healthy young people.

The study examines how the technical features and associated social practices of an anonymous, text-based online forum intended for young people make it a unique platform for acquiring and sharing health information among peers.

The features and content of a young people's section of a popular Finnish discussion forum were examined with a focus on health-related threads. Observational notes and thread content were analysed with a focus on the forum's affordances for health information practices.

The findings indicate that the forum's affordances including anonymity, persistence, searchability, cohesion and tolerance enabled the pooling of peer experiences, opinions and experience-based advice on health, rather than sharing factual information or embracing reciprocal discussion. As such, instead of competing for a cognitive authority position with medical authorities or offering emotional support like tight online support communities, the anonymous forum served as a platform for young people to gain information on others' experiences and opinions on sensitive, mundane and disnormative health issues and for reflecting their own lived experiences to those of others.

The study is original in its approach to examining the affordances of an online platform for health information practices. It helps in understanding young people's ways of using different resources to meet their diverse health information needs and the value of gaining access to experiential health information.