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This paper aims to conceptualize how business and society co-evolve their efforts to maximizing the greatest well-being of the greatest number following a conscious-unconscious, staged, dialectical process.

This study used a conceptual framework linking eight components of well-being (economic, environmental, social, cultural, psychological, spiritual, material and physical), with stages of consciousness and the co-evolution of business and society.

Stages of consciousness – traditionalist, modernist, post-modernist and integral – moderate both the pace and direction with which business and society co-evolve to the greatest well-being of the greatest number across eight components of well-being.

This is a conceptual framework which integrates existing empirical relationships, but the overall framework itself is yet to be empirically tested.

The whole process of maximizing well-being can become more conscious for both business and society. This requires making unconscious components conscious and becoming conscious of the inseparability of the eight components of well-being as a counter-balanced set.

Businesses and societies can maximize well-being across eight inseparable components. But implementing this is a staged process requiring progressing populations through stages of consciousness. Earlier stages lay the platform for a critical mass of people able to integrate the eight components.

Knowledge of well-being is dominated by disciplinary disconnection and bivariate studies; yet, current meta-crises and calls for post-conventional leaders indicate the importance of an integrated multidisciplinary well-being model which explains past efforts of business and society, diagnoses current problems and points towards more viable paths.

Although economic output has nearly doubled in the last 30 years, life satisfaction levels in the UK and other developed countries have remained resolutely flat, with evidence that depression and anxiety are increasing, notably among young people. While governments in the developed world focus on economic development as the key route to well‐being, a growing body of research suggests that, once basic needs have been met, this approach is flawed. This well‐being manifesto for a flourishing society, produced by the think tank new economics foundation (nef), proposes eight alternative priorities for government action to promote well‐being. While the focus is on UK policy and the examples are largely drawn from the UK, the key themes of the manifesto will apply to many developed country contexts.

There is a long association between the arts and mental well‐being, but this can also be an area of contest and debate. In this commentary on the issues raised by the papers in this special arts and mental well‐being issue of the journal, James Oliver and Paul Murray question the attempt to impose scientific measures of outcome on arts participation, and ask if we should not, instead, regard access to opportunities for creative expression as a legal right and moral duty owing to those whom we, as a society, have excluded from the mainstream through incarceration or labelling.

This article explores the impact of crises, such as the coronavirus pandemic, on service industries, service customers, and the service research community. It contextualizes pandemics in the realm of disasters and crises, and how they influence actors' well-being across the different levels of the service ecosystem. The paper introduces a resources–challenges equilibrium (RCE) framework across system levels to facilitate service ecosystem well-being and outlines a research agenda for service scholars.

Literature on disasters, crises, service and well-being is synthesized to embed the COVID-19 pandemic in these bodies of work. The material is then distilled to introduce the novel RCE framework for service ecosystems, and points of departure for researchers are developed.

A service ecosystems view of well-being co-creation entails a dynamic interplay of actors' challenges faced and resource pools available at the different system levels.

Service scholars are called to action to conduct timely and relevant research on pandemics and other crises, that affect service industry, service customers, and society at large. This conceptual paper focuses on service industries and service research and therefore excludes other industries and research domains.

Managers of service businesses as well as heads of governmental agencies and policy makers require an understanding of the interdependence of the different system levels and the challenges faced versus the resources available to each individual actor as well as to communities and organizations.

Disasters can change the social as well as the service-related fabric of society and industry. New behaviors have to be learned and new processes put in place for society to maintain well-being and for service industry's survival.

This paper fuses the coronavirus pandemic with service and well-being research, introduces a resources-challenges equilibrium framework for service ecosystem well-being and outlines a research agenda.

The unstoppable and exponential growth of social media use has given rise to concerns about the consequent effects on users. Among the major concerns are the psychological consequences, which have received considerable academic attention. The current mixed-methods research aims to examine women's social media use and its effects on their psychological well-being in a patriarchal culture, namely Pakistan.

This study employs a mixed-method research methodology. The quantitative section collected data from 240 women and used structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the in-depth interviews with ten women.

The integration of the findings revealed increased use of social media by women and its beneficial effects (communication and socialisation, escapism and self-presentation), though qualitative findings revealed the cultural implications and obstacles that women face (online anonymity and digital asylum). The study calls attention to women's social media usage patterns and the resulting effects on women's psychological well-being in a low-income country with a patriarchal social structure.

Most research remains limited to Western societies and young populations. The situation is somewhat different in developing economies with traditionally preserved cultures compared to Western societies. This study uniquely examines the influence of social media on psychological well-being in a developing country with a special cultural context.

This paper brings together evidence and theories from a number of disciplines and thinkers that highlight multiple, sometimes incommensurable understandings about well‐being. We identify three broad strands or themes within the literature(s) that frame both the nature of the problem and its potential solutions in different ways. The first strand can be categorised as the ‘hard’ science of wellbeing and its stagnation or decline in modern western society. In a second strand, social and political theory suggests that conceptualisations of well‐being are shaped by aspects of western culture, often in line with the demands of a capitalist economic system. A third theme pursues the critique of consumer culture's influence on well‐being but in the context of broader human problems. This approach draws on ecology, ethics, philosophy and much else to suggest that we urgently need to reconsider what it means to be human, if we are to survive and thrive. Although no uncontroversial solutions are found within any of these themes, all play a necessary part in contributing to knowledge of this complex territory, where assumptions about the nature of the human condition come into question.

The paper aims to answer the following questions. Is marketing requisitely holistic? Marketing serves managers, governors, owners and employees as well as customers, suppliers and other stakeholders with its activities in order to help company increase well‐being of stakeholders. What about the broader society's well‐being and future? What will follow, once the innovative‐society phase of socio‐economic development creates affluence, which diminishes human ambition to work in order to have? Social responsibility might be the next step in achieving success.

There are new forms of marketing (e.g. societal marketing; relationship marketing; cause‐related marketing; and green marketing) that could help humans accomplishing this task, to some extent. Marketing will have to detect, elaborate and disseminate new data, along with using them for its action; the paper does not tackle the latter, but marketing taking into account the social responsibility of the company in order to help companies.

Companies will namely need more/requisitely holistic bases to develop innovative products, acceptable with social responsibility. Experience says that ethnographers, anthropologists, and other social scientists are becoming necessary in the “open innovation” model and the extremely demanding market of the affluent and nearly affluent society. So is a more systemic/holistic thinking and action of companies, including their marketing.

The paper suggests how marketing must adapt to meet new challenges.

The significance of well-being in social development policy and practice is increasingly acknowledged by scholars and practitioners worldwide. Nevertheless, when examining well-being within the context of Global South trends, existing conceptualisations seem to yield incongruent indicators. Given the background, this paper aims to synthesise theoretical and empirical literature on well-being to foster an understanding of well-being in contemporary Global South.

This article reviews the now large literature on the well-being in the Global South. The article begins with a discussion of the contributions of state-of-the-art developments in well-being studies, a realm experiencing remarkable growth in social policy studies. It then turns to the prominent well-being constructs that have garnered considerable attention within the literature, with an examination of the Global North and Global South context followed by reinterpretation of these concepts to facilitate a comprehensive study of well-being beyond the realms of welfare states. Concluding the narrative, a succinct outline of potential pathways for future research is presented in the final section.

The review reveals that the concept of well-being in the Global South does not necessarily deviate entirely from the prevailing belief that the region is fundamentally distinct from the Global North on a conceptual level. The authors have discovered that three core dimensions of well-being, namely objective, subjective and relational, are observable across societal boundaries due to the diffusion of knowledge and social and cultural practices that have progressively aligned them with Global North-style modernisation. An exception arises in the relational aspect, where the attainment of positive collective relationships precedes individual happiness to some extent. The paper advances a renewed perspective on well-being, portraying it as a situational, interconnected, collective undertaking and continuous process. These approaches empower the researchers to address the overarching question of which analytical foundations can most effectively uncover the intricacies of well-being in diverse and contemporary circumstances.

This paper helps the researchers to address the overarching question of which analytical foundations can most effectively uncover the intricacies of well-being in diverse and contemporary circumstances, thereby facilitating future enhancements in social policy design.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges, interplay and potential directions for future service research to address the first three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty, zero hunger and good health and well-being.

This commentary examines how service research has addressed these SDGs in the literature, and through the development of a theory of change, the authors propose an agenda for service research going beyond serving, to enabling and transforming service systems, expanding the current focus on individual to community and population well-being through promotion and prevention.

Service research has increasingly advocated human-centered approaches but requires a shift towards an all of humanity perspective. Individual and collective well-being have gained attention in service research, emphasizing the importance of considering collective well-being.

The commentary underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to develop services that contribute to the well-being of the human species. It calls for research that transcends dyadic interactions, considers systemic dynamics and broadens the focus from individual to collective and population well-being.

This paper discusses important societal issues of poverty, hunger and good health and well-being and the need for integrated and ecosystem approaches to develop equitable and sustainable solutions for collective well-being.

While SDGs 1, 2 and 3 address individual goals, they collectively underpin the well-being of communities and societies.

This paper aims to compare Pareto optimality for altruistic and individualistic societies to show whether it is possible to have Pareto improvement through altruistic acts even after free market equilibrium.

The paper follows conceptual, axiomatic and theoretical approaches to show Pareto efficiency in altruistic versus individualistic societies. The paper first outlines the welfare axioms of Islamic economics compared to those of capitalism. Second, it defines Pareto efficiency within capitalist and Islamic economic systems. Third, it compares and contrasts the concept in the two systems based on their epistemological and anthropological worldviews. Fourth, it shows how – even under the efficient allocation of material goods – room for Pareto improvement still exists through the redistribution of resources. Finally, it demonstrates optimum income transfer for social welfare maximization.

The paper shows that Islamic economics relying on certain welfare axioms aim for an altruistic society. It then theoretically proves that social well-being would be greater in such an altruistic society in comparison to an individualistic society promoted by capitalism, holding everything else constant. The paper clearly shows that free market equilibrium does not maximize social utility. It theoretically demonstrates that even under efficient allocation of material goods, there is still room for Pareto improvement through redistribution of resources. It reveals that optimum income transfer might not be possible through voluntary altruistic behaviors unless people transcend self-interest and begin to value social interest as important as their own interest. Therefore, the paper suggests a role for the government to reach optimum-level income transfer for social welfare maximization.

The paper is purely theoretical. Its main limitation is not to be empirically tested. Future studies might shed light on the issue through empirical evidence

Pareto improvement provides important guidance or at least moral justification for welfare programs. The paper might directly affect welfare policy of Muslim countries.

The paper suggests income transfer through altruistic acts would provide higher social welfare. Therefore, it is in the best interest of nations to promote altruistic behaviors and support voluntary welfare programs for higher social utility.

The paper contributes to the Islamic moral economy doctrine by proving that altruistic behaviors encouraged by Islamic teaching could provide higher social welfare.