Despite a large body of positive psychological research into the relationship between happiness and productivity,Carr, A.: "Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Human Strengths" Hove, Brunner-Routledge 2004Isen, A.; Positive Affect and Decision-making. In M. Lewis and J. Haviland Jones (eds), "Handbook of Emotions" (2nd edition), pp. 417–436. New York, Guilford Press 2000 happiness at work has traditionally been seen as a potential by-product of positive outcomes at work, rather than a pathway to business success. Happiness in the workplace is usually dependent on the work environment. During the past two decades, maintaining a level of happiness at work has become more significant and relevant due to the intensification of work caused by economic uncertainty and increase in competition. Nowadays, happiness is viewed by a growing number of scholars and senior executives as one of the major sources of positive outcomes in the workplace.Boehm, J K. & S. Lyubomirsky, 2008 Journal of Career Assessment 16(1), 101–116 In fact, companies with higher than average employee happiness exhibit better financial performance and customer satisfaction.Warr, Peter, (2009). The Joy of Work? Jobs, Happiness and You. 1st ed: Routledge It is thus beneficial for companies to create and maintain positive work environments and leadership that will contribute to the happiness of their employees.

Happiness is not fundamentally rooted in obtaining sensual pleasures and money, but those factors can influence the well-being of an individual at the workplace. However, extensive research has revealed that freedom and autonomy at a workplace have the most effect on the employee's level of happiness, and other important factors are gaining knowledge and the ability to influence the self's working hours.

Definition Ryan and Deci offer a definition for happiness in two views: happiness as being hedonic, accompanied with enjoyable feelings and desirable judgements, and happiness as being eudemonic, which involves doing virtuous, moral and meaningful things. Watson et al. claims that the most important approach to explain an individual's experience is in a hedonic tone, which is concerned with the subject's pleasant feelings, satisfying judgments, self-validation and self-actualization. However, some psychologists argue that hedonic happiness is unstable over a long period of time, especially in the absence of eudaimonic well-being. Thus, in order for one to live a happy life one must be concerned with doing virtuous, moral and meaningful things while utilising personal talents and skills.

Antecedents

Organisational culture

Organisational culture represents the internal work environment created for operating an organisation. It can also represent how employees are treated by their bosses and peers. An effective organisation should have a culture that takes into account employee's happiness and encourages employee satisfaction. Although each individual has unique talents and personal preferences, the behaviors and beliefs of the people in the same organizations show common properties. This, to some extent, helps organisations to create their own cultural properties.

Jarow concludes that an employee feels satisfied not through comparisons with other peers, but through his/her own happiness and awareness of being in harmony with their colleagues. He uses a term called "carrier" to represent lack of happiness, life in constant tension and never-ending struggle for status.

Employee salary

There are many reasons that can contribute to happiness at work. However, when individuals are asked with regards to why they work, money is one of the most common answers as it provides people with sustenance, security and privilege. To a large extent, people work to live, and the pecuniary aspect of the work is what sustains the living. Locke, Feren, McCaleb Shaw and Denny argued that no other incentive or motivational technique comes even close to money with respect to its instrumental value.Locke, E. A., Feren, D. B., McCaleb, V. M., Shaw, K. N., & Denny, A. T. (1980). The relative effectiveness of four methods of motivating employee performance. In K. D. Duncan, M. M. Gruenberg, & D. Wallis (Eds.), Changes in working life (pp. 363−388). New York: Wiley.

The income-happiness relationship in life can also be applied in organisational psychology. Some studies have found positively significant relationships between salary level and job satisfaction. Some have suggested that income and happiness at work are positively correlated, and the relationship is stronger for individuals with extrinsic value orientations.

However, others don't believe that salary, in itself, is a very strong factor in job satisfaction.Spector, P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Application, assessment, causes, and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hundreds of studies and scores of systematic reviews of incentive studies consistently document the ineffectiveness of external rewards.Pfeffer, J. (1998). The human equation: Building profits by putting people first. Boston: Harvard Business School. The question regarding this subject has been recently studied by a group of people, including Judge and his colleagues. Their research shows that the intrinsic relationship between job and salary is complex. In their research, they analysed the combined impact of many existing studies to produce a much larger and statistically powerful analysis. By looking at 86 previous studies, they concluded that while it is true to say that money is a driver of employee's happiness, the produced effect is transitory. Judge and his colleagues have reminded us that money may not necessarily make employees happy.

Job security

Job security is an important factor to determine whether employees feel happiness at work. Different types of jobs have different levels of job security: in some situations, a position is expected to be offered for a long time, whereas in other jobs an employee may be forced to resign his/ her job. The expectation of the job availability has been related with the job-related well-being and a higher level of job security corresponds to a higher level of job satisfaction alongside a higher level of well-being.

Career development The option for moving or shifting to alternative roles motivates the employee's participation in the workplace meaning if an employee can see the future potential for a promotion, motivation levels will increase. By contrast, if an organisation does not provide any potential for higher status position in the future, the employee's effectiveness in work will decrease. In addition, the employee may consider whether or not the position would be offered to them in the future. On the other hand, not all of the opportunities for transferring into another activity are aimed to obtain the upward movement. In some cases, they are aimed to prevent the skills obsolescence, provides more future career possibility, as well as directly increasing the skill development.

Job autonomy

Job autonomy may be defined as the condition of being self-governing or free from excessive external control in the workplace environment. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that autonomy is important to human beings because it is the foundation of human dignity and the source of all morality. Among the models of human growth and development that are centred on autonomy, the most theoretically sophisticated approach has been developed around the concepts of self-regulation and intrinsic motivation. Self-determination theory proposes that 'higher behavioural effectiveness, greater volitional persistence, enhanced subjective well-being, and better assimilation of the individual within his or her social group' result when individuals act from motivations that emanate from the inner self (intrinsic motivation) rather than from sources of external regulation. For self-determination theorists, it is the experience of an external locus of causation (or the belief that one's actions are controlled by external forces) that undermines the most powerful source of natural motivation and that (when chronic) also can lead to stultification, weak self-esteem, anxiety and depression, and alienation. Thus, health and well-being as well as effective performance in social settings are closely related to the experience of autonomy. Hackman and Oldham developed the Job Characteristics Model, a framework that focused attention on autonomy and four other key factors involved in designing enriched work. Work designed to be complex and challenging (characterized by high levels of autonomy, skill variety, identity, significance, and feedback) was theorized to promote high intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction, and overall work performance. Two decades of research in this tradition have shown that job scope or complexity, an additive combination of autonomy and the four other job characteristics: (a) is correlated significantly with more objective ratings of job characteristics; (b) may be reduced to a primary factor consisting of autonomy and skill variety; and (c) has substantial effects on affective and behavioural reactions to work, mostly indirectly through critical psychological states such as experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the work. It is possible to infer from this line of research that the experience of autonomy at work has positive consequences ranging from higher job performance to job satisfaction and enhanced general well-being, which are both related to the concept of happiness at work. However, Dysvik and Kuvaas highlight that employees with lower intrinsic motivation may require more structure and support to perform well. This complexity is further illustrated by the findings of Preenen et al., who noted that job autonomy's effects on performance indicators such as motivation to learn and commitment are moderated by the maturity of the company.

Work–life balance