Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being––people’s evaluations and feelings about their lives. Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust. We argue that economic indicators were extremely important in the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillment of basic needs was the main issue. As societies grow wealthy,

Consistent with a growing number of models about affect and behaviour and with a recognition that perception alone provides no impetus for action, it was predicted that associations between company climate and productivity would be mediated by average level of job satisfaction. In a study of 42 manufacturing companies, subsequent productivity was significantly correlated in controlled analyses with eight aspects of organizational climate (e.g. skill development and concern for employee welfare) and also with average job satisfaction. The mediation hypothesis was supported in hierarchical multiple regressions for separate aspects of climate. In addition, an overall analysis showed that company productivity was more strongly correlated with those aspects of climate that had stronger satisfaction loadings. A second prediction, that managers ’ perceptions of climate would be more closely linked to company productivity than would those of non-managers, was not supported. However, managers ’ assessments of most aspects of their company’s climate were significantly more positive than those of non-managers.

This study developed and tested a theory-based measure of authentic leadership using five

for the design and management of open-plan offices

The meaning of employee engagement is ambiguous among both academic researchers and among practitioners who use it in conversations with clients. We show that the term is used at different times to refer to psychological states, traits, and behaviors as well as their antecedents and outcomes. Drawing on diverse relevant literatures, we offer a series of propositions about (a) psychological state engagement; (b) behavioral engagement; and (c) trait engagement. In addition, we offer propositions regarding the effects of job attributes and leadership as main effects on state and behavioral engagement and as moderators of the relationships among the 3 facets of engagement. We conclude with thoughts about the measurement of the 3 facets of engagement and potential antecedents, especially measurement via employee surveys. Correspondence concerning this article should be

This paper relates a series of current development in the literature of economics and psychology as they relate to decision making by households and business firms. The first part of the paper reviews recent literature dealing with happiness and subjective wellbeing. In the second part of the paper recent developments in management science that make use of intuition and mental focus are related to firm profitability and improved economic efficiency. Both of these recent developments can provide critical insights into improving the “bottom line ” performance of policy makers, managers and society as a whole at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. These ideas are then used to design to and develop a series of policy suggestions that refocus attention on the concept of subjective well being or happiness as opposed to economic utility maximization as well as the role of intuition and the concept of “flow ” in the decision making process. of top managers. We can summarize these ideas succinctly by focusing on two sets of variables relating to decision making and decision outcome in a two by two matrix summarized in the Table

This experiment was conducted in a mock-up office-space laboratory. One hundred and eighteen participants worked for a single day under one of four lighting designs. They had no control over the lighting until the latter half of the afternoon, when all participants were offered some form of individual dimming lighting control. During the working day participants performed a variety of simulated office tasks, as well as completing a number of questionnaires on topics such as mood, satisfaction, and discomfort. Results related to questionnaire outcomes were consistent and convincing. After lighting control was offered there were significant improvements in mood, room appraisal, lighting satisfaction, glare dissatisfaction, environmental satisfaction, satisfaction with performance, self-assessed productivity, and visual discomfort. Further, our results suggest that it is not control in itself that is important, but exercising control to achieve preferred conditions. Participants who made the biggest changes to lighting conditions after they were given control tended to register the biggest improvements in mood, satisfaction and discomfort outcomes; those who made little change registered no improvements in outcomes. Task performance results were more equivocal. On many tasks, performance did significantly improve after control was introduced, but we attribute these improvements primarily to known practice effects. We recommend field studies over the longer term to test whether mood and satisfaction effects persist, and whether performance effects emerge. 1.

Some twenty years ago a book about mental health and work might have appeared incongruous to the curious reader. This is not so in these early years of the 21 st century when most people have either experienced stress or emotional turmoil in their workplace or have friends or relatives who have undergone the experiences of downsizing, outsourcing or corporate takeovers. We now recognise that workplaces must be significant to our mental health, given the time we spend at work and the effort we invest in paid employment. More importantly, we recognise that few workplaces in Australia, or in other developed economies, have escaped the dramatic structural and cultural changes accompanying monetary, trade and labour deregulation. The flexible workplace and new managerial practices of benchmarking, best practice, performance appraisals and Just in Time approaches to productivity and efficiency gains have not been achieved without cost to individual workers and their families. The psychology behind these reforms is the basis of the first chapter

Drawing from the foundation of positive psychology and the recently emerging positive organizational behavior, two studies (N = 1,032 and N = 232) test hypotheses on the impact that the selected positive psychological resource capacities of hope, optimism, and resilience have on desired work-related employee outcomes. These outcomes include performance (self-reported in Study 1 and organizational performance appraisals in Study 2), job satisfaction, work happiness, and organizational commitment. The findings generally support that employees ’ positive psychological resource capacities relate to, and contribute unique variance to, the outcomes. However, hope, and, to a lesser extent, optimism and resilience, do differentially contribute to the various outcomes. Utility analysis supports the practical implications of the study results.

Employee engagement is the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards his organization and its values. It is a measureable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn & perform at work. Employee engagement has a direct impact on the employee’s productivity. Understandably, the most productive employees are those that are not only committed and loyal ; but also but also those whose outputs are healthy and gratifying both for themselves as well as for the organization they work for. Obviously, these are the employees who can be called ‘engaged”. In almost a bottomup fashion, the organization as a whole benefits from employees that are committed, loyal, productive, and engaged.The paper aims at finding the employee engagement across manufacturing organizations and IT organizations, and compares the underlying reasons indicating high or low employee engagement. Fifty middle level executives of a car manufacturing unit and fifty such employees of an IT firm, located in and around the city of Bengaluru, India, were sampled for the study. It was found that the degree of employee engagement was significantly high in the manufacturing organization as compared