Executives in Science, Business and Society 3

SUE DER KINDEREN
THE DIMINISHING
RETURN OF HAPPINESS:
WHAT IF THE GOOD LIFE
DOESN’T FEEL THAT GOOD,
ANYMORE?
VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM
On many levels, the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged
a critical look at what we do and why we do it. The
pursuit of immediate gratification, or ‘happiness’ in
our modern world, appears unsustainable - hedonism is
going out of fashion and eudaimonia is making its entrance.
Eudaimonic well-being, happiness that encompasses
meaning, positive relationships and personal growth, may
not provide instant gratification, but it ultimately contributes
to our health and the experience of a ‘full life’ [1].
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Whether we ‘live to work’
or ‘work to live’, we have an
opportunity to examine employee
well-being as ‘an end in itself’
instead of ‘a means to an end’,
which regularly translates
into achieving organisational
profit or success at the cost of
employee well-being. Power is
shifting from the organisation
to the individual, and it is the
individual who increasingly
determines the quality and
quantity of both his/her work
and private time [2]. Sustainable
well-being is being shaped by
these individual behaviours
and attitudes and gaining more
relevance in the field. At the same
time, organisations and leaders
are seeking new strategies to
shape employee behaviours that
contribute to both performance
and functioning in the workplace.
Eight hundred peer-reviewed,
empirical studies show that the
‘hedonic well-being’ framework is
primarily used to explore positive
well-being at work. This means
that the majority of research on
well-being at work that has been
conducted so far has focused on
the experience of being happy
and/or satisfied with one’s job.
These hedonic elements of
well-being have proven difficult
to influence and shape over time.
We appear to have a ‘set point’ at
which we’re hardwired to return
to while the resulting hedonic
treadmill requires increasingly
more input in order to sustain
our feelings of happiness [3].
Eudaimonic well-being has only
been examined in 5% of the
studies. Through the eudaimonic
well-being lens, we can move
beyond feeling good and, instead,
learn to capture and influence
well-being reflected in our
behaviours and thoughts, such as
having a purposeful life, fostering
positive relationships, striving for
personal growth and achieving
mastery over our environment
[4,5]. These elements have not
only proven to be more pervasive
over time and to contribute to
long-term well-being [6]yet each
may contribute to wellbeing in
different ways. We conducted
four studies (two correlational,
one experiencesampling, and one
intervention study, but they are
also more likely to be influenced
by an individual’s environment.
The question remains whether
we have the courage to walk the
lesser-known path of eudaimonic
well-being—to integrate these
elements of meaning, personal
growth, relationships and striving
into our understanding of, as well
as our shaping of, employee wellbeing
at work.
Our first study, conducted with
employees in a large mental
health care organisation in the
Netherlands, provides evidence
for the role of the organisational
context in shaping and eliciting
the ‘mutual gain’ of individual
well-being and work performance
[7]. Findings show that servant
leadership practices, which
encourage the empowerment of
employees, support subordinates
in using skills to succeed and
emphasise ethical behaviour
and the value of relationships,
is related to eudaimonic
well-being, as well as to work
engagement and performance.
However, this positive influence
is conditional on a positively
perceived psychosocial work
climate. This implies that efforts
of organisations to invest in
leaders, as a means of eliciting
the mutual gain of well-being
and performance, is wasted if the
same effort is not made to attend
to the wider work climate in which
the investment in leaders takes
place.
The next phase of our research
will focus on better understanding
the actual behaviours that elicit
psychological well-being and
whether these behaviours can