Well-Being

There seems to be a convergence of opinion among researchers in the area of well-being that the notion of well-being can be construed in terms of happiness, life satisfaction, and absence of ill-being. Happiness refers to an affective state that involves positive and negative affect. This affect derives from positive and negative emotional reactions we experience from life events. Happiness researchers make the distinction between short-term happiness and long-term happiness. Short-term happiness is mostly influenced by environmental factors, whereas long-term happiness is more dispositional.

Life satisfaction involves cognitive evaluation of one's life. Life satisfaction is a result of comparison of one's current life situations or accomplishments against certain standards of comparison—one's ideal life, expectations of personal utility, individual goals, values, needs, opulence, and the lives of significant others. Also, life satisfaction is a cognitive evaluation of happiness in relation to salient life domains. For example, people may infer that they are highly satisfied with their lives if they judge themselves to be happy in work, family, and social life, and given that these life domains are important to them.

The absence of ill-being reflects the health perspective of well-being. This perspective posits that absence of ill-being is a necessary but not sufficient condition of subjective well-being. In other words, people cannot experience high levels of happiness and life satisfaction if they are unhappy with their health. Satisfaction with health is a prerequisite to overall happiness and satisfaction with life.

In the following section, we will focus on the effects of organizations on people's well-being. Organizations affect people's well-being (happiness, life satisfaction, and absence of ill-being) in at least two major ways, work and consumption. In other words, people assume certain jobs in organizations, and their well-being is significantly affected by these jobs and employment circumstances. Organizations also affect people's well-being by offering consumers goods and services that help consumers satisfy their needs. As such, we will describe how organizations affect well-being in relation to two important life domains, namely, work life (i.e., employee well-being) and consumer life (i.e., consumer well-being).