Abstract
In organizations, psychologists have often tried to promote employees’ well-being and performance, and this can be achieved through different pathways. The happy-productive worker thesis states that ‘happy’ workers perform better than ‘unhappy’ ones. However, most studies have focused on hedonic well-being at the expense of the person’s eudaimonic experience. This study examines whether orientations to happiness (i.e., life of pleasure/meaning) are related to hedonic (i.e., perception of comfort) and eudaimonic (i.e., activity worthwhileness) experiences that, in turn, improve performance. We applied multilevel structural equation modeling to diary data (68 office workers; n = 471 timepoints). We obtained significant effects of: life of pleasure on self-rated performance through activity worthwhileness, life of meaning on performance (self-rated, rated by the supervisor) through activity worthwhileness, and life of meaning on performance rated by the supervisor through perception of comfort. Results show more significant paths from/or through eudaimonia to performance than from/or through hedonia. The results suggest that the pursuit and/or experience of eudaimonic happiness is more beneficial for work performance than the pursuit and/or experience of hedonic happiness. Theoretical and practical implications for organizations are discussed.
Highlights
There can be different pathways to achieving better performance at work; those that involve meaningfulness may be among the most effective [1,2,3,4]
The literature reveals that studies that have analyzed the relationship between well-being and performance have a limitation, which is their excessive focus on hedonic well-being at the expense of the eudaimonic experience [8]
Following the researchers who point to the inconsistent arguments about this construct [17] and other researchers who are interested in the study of the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives [33], in the present research, we focus on the life of pleasure and the life of meaning orientations to happiness
Summary
There can be different pathways to achieving better performance at work; those that involve meaningfulness may be among the most effective [1,2,3,4]. The promotion of well-being and performance at work is one of the main interests of the organizational health framework [5]. In this regard, the happy-productive worker thesis [6], which states that ‘happy’ workers perform better than ‘unhappy’ ones [7], has been established as a referential model when studying these two work outcomes. The issues of whether pursuing pleasure or purpose leads to having more hedonic or eudaimonic experiences [10], and whether these experiences improve work performance [11], have been identified as important questions for research, they have not been sufficiently
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