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This chapter describes and tests the principles of configural theory in the context of hospitality frontline service employees’ happiness-at-work and managers’ assessments of these employees’ quality of work performances. The study proposes and tests empirically a configural asymmetric theory of the antecedents to hospitality employee happiness-at-work and managers’ assessments of employees’ quality of work performance. The findings confirm and go beyond prior statistical findings of small-to-medium effect sizes of happiness-performance relationships. The method includes matching cases of data from surveys of employees (n = 247) and surveys completed by their managers (n = 43) and uses qualitative comparative analysis via the software program fsQCA.com. The findings support the four principles of configural analysis and theory construction: recognize equifinality of different solutions for the same outcome; test for asymmetric solutions; test for causal asymmetric outcomes for very high versus very low happiness and work performance; and embrace complexity. The theory and findings confirm that configural theory and research resolves perplexing happiness–performance conundrums. The study provides algorithms involving employees’ demographic characteristics and their assessments of work facet-specifics which are useful for explaining very high happiness-at-work and high quality-of-work performance (as assessed by managers) – as well as algorithms explaining very low happiness and very low quality-of-work performance.

I present a framework for thinking about personal happiness. Ideas from philosophy are combined with research on happiness from various scientific traditions. But treatments in philosophy tend to be atomistic, focusing on one narrow approach at the exclusion of others; treatments in psychology tend also to be circumscribed, emphasizing specific hypotheses but at the neglect of overarching theory. My approach posits a far-reaching theoretical model, rooted in goal-directed action, yet mindful of nonpurposive sources of happiness as well. The heart of the theory is self-regulation of desires and decisions, which rests on self-conscious examination and application of self-evaluative standards for leading a moral life in the broadest sense of guiding how we act in relation to others. Seven elements of happiness are then developed and related to the conceptual framework. These encompass love and caring; work as a calling; brain systems underpinning wanting, liking, and pleasure; the need to deal with very bad and very good things happening to us; the role of moral concerns and emotions; the examined life and its distractions; and finally spirituality and transcendental concerns. The final section of the chapter sketches everyday challenges and choices academics face.

Organizations’ culture and environment create a remarkable influence on the minds of the employees. Employees spend a lot of time at the workplace; hence, it is essential to take care of their happiness. Stressful workplace environment reduces the job satisfaction of employees which eventually leads to mental health issues. The study focuses on mapping the publication trends on happiness of employees at their workplace over the years. The mapping was done with the help of Scopus and VOSviewer. The study takes into consideration the research publication on workplace happiness since 2013 from Scopus database using ‘Employee Happiness at Workplace’ which showed around 104 publications related to happiness till Sept 2022. The database was refined and further analyzed by VOSviewer version 1.6.16. Though much research has been done on employee happiness and lot many scales are developed on the happiness index, but bibliometric analysis is yet to be carried out on workplace happiness, it's development, forms and factors. This analysis will bridge the gap of researchers and provide them directions to carry on the research for future.

This chapter presents a research model aimed to investigate internal communication satisfaction (ICS) and employee engagement as prerequisites of employee happiness. Employee engagement is seen as a dependent variable to ICS and as an independent variable to happiness. The research is based on quantitative data collected from 174 employees working in 12 international firms who specialize in IT and creative industries and have representative office in Serbia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling is used to identify relationships between constructs. The results demonstrate that ICS increases employee engagement, which in turn increases employee happiness. Employee engagement represents complementary mediation of the relationship between ICS and subjective happiness. The outcomes reveal how organizations can employ an internal communications strategy in order to enhance engagement of their employees and their happiness as the ultimate goal. This chapter addresses an understudied topic in the public relations and strategic communication field and its findings are opening new questions which may inspire research community to search for detailed explanation of the effect that ICS has on employee happiness.

This chapter analyzes detailed 24-hour diary data from the United States to provide evidence on the relationship between workers' effort and well-being while at work. In doing so, we first measure workers' effort in terms of the amount of on-the-job leisure, number of on-the-job leisure episodes, and the time working until consuming on-the-job leisure. Second, we link these three measures of worker effort to data on instantaneous well-being while at work. We find that the less time devoted to on-the-job leisure and the number of on-the-job leisure episodes, and the more time workers spend working until on-the-job-leisure, the higher the levels of stress during their work tasks. In analyzing workers' effort and stress during market work activities, we contribute to the scant literature on the determinants of worker happiness while at work, positing the consumption and the frequency of on-the-job leisure as affective factors.

Purpose: We examine how one's occupational class affects emotional experience. To do this, we look at both general affective outcomes (job satisfaction, respect at work, and life happiness) and the experience of specific positive emotions (overjoyed, proud, and excited) during the week.

Methodology/Approach: Using affect control theory simulations, we find the characteristic emotions of four occupational classes, derived from Maloney's (2020) block model analysis: everyday specialists, service-to-society occupations, the disagreeably powerful, and the actively revered. Using these characteristic emotions, we make predictions about how likely it is that individuals in these occupational classes will report workplace affective experiences: job satisfaction and respect at work, and broader affective experience: general happiness in the prior year. Lastly, we generate and test predictions about everyday emotional experience of positive emotions.

Findings: We find mixed results for our hypotheses. In general, our predictions regarding the actively revered as the highest status block in Maloney (2020) are supported for general happiness, job satisfaction, and daily emotional experience. However, we find higher probabilities of happiness and job satisfaction for the disagreeably powerful, a lower evaluation but higher power block, than were expected.

Research Limitations: The current analysis uses only 268 occupations out of the 650 occupational titles in the US Census three-digit occupational codes. An analysis that includes the entire occupational structure would be more definitive. Additionally, it would be preferable to have emotion-dependent variables that were specifically tied to work, rather than broader emotional experience, to have a cleaner test of our hypotheses about occupational identities.

Practical and Social Implications: Prior research has shown how the emotional experiences associated with different identity labels can explain mental health outcomes, workplace anger, and broader patterns of inequality (Foy, Freeland, Miles, Rogers, & Smith-Lovin, 2014; Kroska & Harkness, 2008, 2016; Lively & Powell, 2016). Understanding how occupational class elicits certain types of emotions in everyday interactions may help scholars explain differences in health and overall life satisfaction across occupations that are not explained by material resource differentiation.