SDR _______________________________________________________________________ A model of workplace happiness Vaughan M. Dutton and Laurel D. Edmunds Happiness is a very subjective and illusive concept. Developing a definition and model has been the focus of research for many years. Despite the increased interest in improving happiness in the workplace and in society in general, there does not appear to be a model of happiness which addresses the more specific context of working life. The well established body of work comparing job satisfaction with job performance (Judge et al., 2001) takes a relatively narrow view of each concept, but here we consider a more strengths-based approach in relation to the broader working environment. 1. Objective Our objective was to develop a model of happiness that could be applied to the workplace which would take into account the developments in positive psychology. Hence we required a way not only to measure happiness, but also to give an indication of the variables impacting on happiness. Being an applied model, it would have to be amenable to being converted into a measurement model and suggest a way forward for intervention. In other words, the model was required to be more than an abstract philosophical treatise on happiness or a onedimensional measurement of happiness. It would have to provide a workable explanation of where happiness comes from, how it is sustained and how it might be enhanced. 2. Defining happiness The first step in the development of our model was arriving at an acceptable definition of happiness. This was perhaps the most difficult part of the exercise. Arguably, every theory ever derived makes an inherent assertion as to the nature of happiness. Lay conceptions of happiness abound and with them many divergent opinions on what is relevant emerge. As such,
„happiness‟ applies to an extremely wide range of phenomena and has many varying definitions. In a sense, our question became less about what happiness is and more what interpretation of happiness are we interested in. We had to stake a claim, in a sense, as to how to think about happiness, thereby silencing the multitude of alternative voices. One way of trying to avoid the problem of definition is to resort to subjective reports of happiness. In this approach, respondents are simply asked whether they feel happy or not. This approach has been extremely prevalent in happiness research (King et al., 2006; Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005). A very probable reason for this is that this approach short circuits the problem of definition. After all, if someone says they feel happy, who are we to disagree? In actual fact, however, the assumption in this design is that self-reported affect/emotion represents the essence of happiness. Unwittingly, this design assumes that our emotions provide the most accurate picture of what is happening to us and to our world. It relies on a model of subjectivity that posits a one to one relation between our consciousness and the reality of our inner beings and the world around us. We felt that this affect-based model of happiness is inappropriate to our aims, speaking more about feeling happy than being happy. Feeling happy appeared overly one dimensional and a „snapshot‟ view, ignoring the broader dynamics of a happy existence. In it, the subject is reduced to affect and the highs and lows, the challenges and victories that typify the engaged and productive life are ignored. In short, we wanted an interpretation of happiness that acknowledged more of what it is to be alive. In order to begin making sense of the range of data related in one way or another to happiness,
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