Bliss in Business:
The Role of Business in using Gross National Happiness as an agent of world benefit
In 1972, the King of Bhutan introduced Gross National Happiness (GNH) as the guiding philosophy of the country's development. Now the
Standard of living, health of the population, education, ecosystem vitality and diversity, cultural vitality and diversity, time use and balance, good governance, community vitality, and emotional well-being are the nine provisional (GNH) indicators identified by the Center for Bhutan Studies. Imagine if all countries adopted this principle; we could transform our Earth into a paradise.
Since implementing the GNH measure, Bhutan has reported an increase in life expectancy by 19 years while the gross enrollment rate in primary schools has reached 72 percent and the literacy rate has grown from 17 percent to 47.5 percent according to the Times newspaper of India. Not to mention that it is a leading country in sustainability. Again, the implications for countries that take a stand on the importance of happiness is desirable for their citizens and is clearly the next step beyond the industrialized GNP that has been emphasized in Western society. In his introduction to Well-Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (63), Daniel Kahneman expresses the hope that hedonic science will prompt economics to shift its focus from "those aspects of life that can be traded in the marketplace to desirable goods such as love, mental challenge, and (reduction of) stress."
This current and future transition has severe implications for the business sector as well as management scholars. Emphases on employee subjective well being (happiness) and positive affect have been growing bodies of research in the management literature only in recent years. It is clearly time for the business sector to not only take a stand in the ethics and morality of their accounting, corporate social responsibility, and environmental implications but also for the happiness of their employees.
Linkages to the increase in the bottom line, performance, effectiveness, and productivity have all been shown as results of happy employees. In 2004, (Halverson, 2004) it was discovered that if your manager has positive affect because of the emotional contagion theory, you are likely to also experience positive affect, which will improve performance. Frederickson and Losada (2005) have identified that the more positive emotions that are experienced at work will increase an individual’s scope of attention (Frederickson & Branigan, 2005; Rowe, Hirsch, & Anderson, 2005), broaden behavioral repertoires (Frederickson & Branigan, 2005), and increase innovation (Bolte, Goschkey, & Kuhl, 2003) and creativity (Isen, Daubmen, & Nowicki, 1987). Besides the aforementioned characteristics, positive affect has shown to make a difference in the health of our physical body, which, of course, leads to low absenteeism due to illness. (For a review, see Frederickson & Losada, 2005.)
It is in the benefit of the business sector and in management scholarship to explicitly take on Bliss in Business, especially as countries take on the GNH as a priority.
Now that it is clear that happiness is a high human concern, and it is to the benefit of political and business sectors to adopt it as a moral obligation it is necessary to understand what it is that increases happiness in individuals.
We propose a paper/interactive workshop that pragmatically outlines a conceptual framework for managers to employ to help increase the happiness, well-being, and positive affect of themselves and their employees. The techniques are inspired by the positive psychology movement, eastern philosophy, and the human potential movement.
We would like to envision a future of business that recruits employees not only by the monetary benefits but also by explicitly stating the importance of their happiness. If governments continue to move in the direction of enacting the GNH, business must follow in their moral obligation to help individuals and society at large.
