The life of a happy worker: Examining short-term fluctuations in employee happiness and well-being
Guest Editors:
Despoina Xanthopoulou (University of Crete, Greece),
Arnold B. Bakker (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and
Remus Ilies (Michigan State University, USA)
Happiness and subjective well-being have been in the focus of attention of both psychologists and sociologists for many decades (e.g., Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976; Haring, Okun, & Stock, 1984; Veenhoven, 1991), and there is a well-established research tradition on the role of emotions in organizational research (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). More recently, happiness has also been a subject of interest in economics (Layard, 2006), and has became the central focus of the emergent positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology shifted the attention from the study of malfunctioning to the study of those positive qualities in people that help them flourish. As a consequence, the field of positive organization behavior (POB) has been developed. POB emphasizes the need for more focused theory development, research and effective applications of positive traits, states and behaviors of employees in organizations (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). Examining employee happiness is crucial both for theoretical and practical reasons, because it contributes to a more integrated understanding of working life. In this respect, interdisciplinary approaches that combine paradigms from different organizational sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, economy), may contribute significantly to a better understanding of employee happiness.
Furthermore, the role of time as a critical variable in theories that explain work attitudes and behaviors has been recently emphasized (Fried, Grant, Levi, Hadani, & Haynes Slowik, 2007). As a consequence, scholars started to shift from static to more dynamic models of employee well-being that, next to between-person differences, investigate within-person fluctuations (Daniels, Besley, Cheyne, & Wimalasiri, 2008; Ilies, Schwind & Heller, 2007). Recent methodological advancements (e.g., multilevel modeling techniques) provide the opportunity to examine state (i.e. daily, weekly, and monthly) aspects of employee well-being, their predictors and outcomes. This is important because it helps understanding how and why employees who are generally happy may have a bad day or week (Sonnentag, Dormann & Demerouti, in press).
The purpose of the present special issue is to unwind the psychological mechanisms that explain short-term fluctuations in employee happiness. Capturing the dynamic aspect of employee happiness allows investigating positive experiences as they happen (or very close to their actual occurrence), and thus yields stronger evidence of its antecedents and outcomes than study designs with long interval periods. Examining the dynamic character of employee happiness reduces measurement biases and leads to a better evaluation of causal effects. In addition, this attempt has important practical implications because insights on fluctuations of employee happiness may be transformed into job redesign strategies that aim at creating happy and productive workforces on a day-to-day level.
The main objective of this special issue is to publish a coherent set of theoretical and empirical studies that explain happiness fluctuations in a worker's life. We define happiness as a broad, positive well-being state (ranging from positive emotions to job satisfaction, health, and work engagement) that may vary within the same person over short periods of time (e.g., days, weeks, or months). We are interested in studies that focus on short-term, within-person fluctuations in well-being indicators, situational and personal determinants of these fluctuations, relations with other-ratings or objective indicators of job performance, potential positive spillover effects from work to other domains in an employee's daily life, as well as crossover effects of positive states from the employee to significant others. In this context, we welcome daily, weekly or monthly diary studies that stem from different organizational disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, management).
The list below presents illustrative questions for contributions. However, other related topics may also be suitable:
- Do short-term fluctuations in happiness go hand-in-hand with fluctuations in productivity? Are happiness and performance reciprocally related?
- Which situational factors are responsible for short-term, within-person fluctuations in employee positive psychological states?
- Do personality characteristics explain within-person fluctuations in employee happiness?
- Are state adaptations of established trait scales a reliable tool for measuring within-person fluctuations in happiness, engagement, satisfaction, and proactive behavior?
- Do real time qualitative methodologies add in the measurement of short-term fluctuations in employee happiness?
- Which short-term workplace interventions may enhance employee happiness and job performance? Are positive interventions positive for all employees?
- What can employees do to feel happy every day at work? Does job crafting help in this respect?
- Do happy employees cross over their happiness to other people around them (e.g., colleagues, family members) on a day-to-day basis?
- Do social norms explain short-term changes in employee happiness?
We welcome theoretical papers, as well as theory-driven empirical studies. Elaborate study designs (e.g., experience sampling studies, daily deconstruction methods, growth-curve studies, multiple-sources of information), with real-time quantitative (e.g., surveys) and/or qualitative (e.g., ethnographies) techniques, and application of advanced methodologies (i.e. multilevel/ mixed models) will be considered an advantage.
Contributors should note:
- This call is open and competitive, and the submitted papers will be subjected to anonymous review by referees with expertise in the field.
- Submitted papers must be based on original material not under consideration by any other journal or outlet.
- For empirical papers based on data sets from which multiple papers have been generated, the editors must be provided with copies of all other papers based on the same data.
- The editors will select five papers to be included in the special issue, but other papers submitted in this process may be published in other issues of the journal.
The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2010. Submissions should not be submitted before 01 December 2010. The special issue is intended for publication in Human Relations in the second half of 2012.
Papers to be considered for this special issue should adhere to the submission requirements of Human Relations (http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/submit_paper.html), and will be submitted through the online system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hr) of the journal. Please indicate in your covering letter that the paper is intended for this special issue. Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to the Editorial Office: humanrelationsjournal@tavinstitute.org.
The Guest Editors of this special issue would be happy to discuss your ideas for potential submissions. They can be contacted directly at:
dxanthopoulou@psy.soc.uoc.gr (Despoina Xanthopoulou),
bakker@fsw.eur.nl (Arnold B. Bakker),
ilies@msu.edu (Remus Ilies).
Authors who are interested in contributing to this special issue are kindly requested to inform the Guest Editors of their plans via email before 01 September 2010.
References:
Bakker AB, Schaufeli WB (2008). Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 147–154.
Campbell A, Converse P, and Rodgers W. (1976). The quality of American life. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Daniels K, Besley N, Cheyne A, and Wimalasiri, V. (2008). Coping processes linking the demands-control-support model, affect and risky decisions at work. Human Relations, 61, 845–874.
Fried Y, Grant AM, Levi AS, Hadani M, and Haynes Slowik L (2007). Job design in temporal context: A career dynamics perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28, 911–927.
Haring MJ, Stock WA, and Okum MA (1984). A research synthesis of gender and social class as correlates of subjective well-being. Human Relations, 37, 645–657.
Ilies R, Schwind KM, and Heller D (2007). Employee well-being: A multilevel model linking work and nonwork domains. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 16, 326–341.
Layard R (2006). Happiness and public policy: A challenge to the profession. Economic Journal, 116, 24–33.
Rafaeli A, Sutton RI (1989). The expression of emotion in organizational life. In Cummings LL and Staw BM (eds), Research in organizational behaviour, Vol. 11 (pp. 1–42). Greenwich CT: JAI Press.
Seligman MC, Csikszentmihalyi M (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14.
Sonnentag S, Dormann C, and Demerouti E (in press). Not all days are created equal: The concept of state work engagement. In Bakker AB and & Leiter MP (Eds), Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research. New York: Psychology Press.
Veenhoven, R. (1991). Questions on happiness: Classical topics, modern answers, blind spots. In Strack F, Argyle M, & Schwarz N (Eds) Subjective wellbeing: An interdisciplinary perspective. London: Pergamon Press.
