A Journey towards Happiness Management as a leitmotiv for well-being, social marketing and business success

1. Introduction

Over the past ten years, there has been a transformation of public interest in happiness. If we look at the literature on managerial leadership over the last two decades of the 21st century, we can see a significant absence of academic work dealing with “happy leadership” (Weiss et al., 2018). Managers are social agents focused on maximizing the economic benefits of their organizations and the collective satisfaction of their internal customers. Given this reality, this study invites readers to ask: can happy leaders be guides that provide strategies and tactics favorable to their corporations amid political, economic and social uncertainty? It is not a trivial question for a society that urgently demands managers who consider happiness a fundamental key to their professional success (Isa et al., 2019).

These managers will bring success to the organizations where they work if they have a culture grounded in the guiding principles of productivity, effectiveness and corporate social responsibility based on ethical values (Mercader et al., 2021).

In the current context, this end can only be achieved with a business management model where leaders are a beacon that proactively illuminates the performance of their human capital, enriching their job satisfaction and their functional cognitive and metacognitive capabilities. In this way, companies will enjoy an operational governance style where the intangible resources of their intellectual capital serve as drivers of prosperity, dynamic capabilities, organizational learning and work engagement (Galván-Vela et al., 2022).

Based on this purpose, this chapter aims to reflect on and generate feasible guidelines for taking advantage of the opportunities a happy leadership style can bring to corporations. This fact can help the organizational management of companies to foster a culture of productive excellence, where the financial results of companies are aligned with the wellbeing of their teams and in a more fluid, creative and happy way.

Of the above, this chapter is structured in the following sections. First, a literature review on happiness management, a term related to this study’s topic, that is, “happy leadership”, is presented. Secondly, a bibliometric review of the quantity and frequency of publications written on this novel term will be carriedout. Thirdly, some arguments in favor of introducing this concept in business organizations are advanced. Finally, we reflect on the importance of implementing happy leadership in organizations as a philosophy and a way of managing.

2. Literature Review

In today’s context and time, it appears critical to reconsider not only the style of leadership but also the essence of knowing how teams and organizations manage using the coordinates of effectiveness, productivity, economic profitability, wellbeing, and happiness management (Ravina Ripoll et al., 2019; Sánchez-Vázquez and Sánchez-Ordoñez, 2019). In regard to this last term, it is worth pointing out the theoretical and methodological weaknesses of scientific studies exploring this attractive concept in companies not involved in pursuing happiness in their teams. This fact, along with other aspects, makes it challenging to have a holistic perspective of how to manage the culture of happiness, which is an essential component of building a positive workplace environment (Abdullah et al., 2017; Adnan-Bataineh, 2019; Basinska and Rozkwitalska, 2020; Salas-Vallina et al., 2020), as well as stimulating employee engagement (Salas-Vallina and Alegre, 2021), job performance (Algan and Ummanel, 2019) and organizational affectivity (Semedo et al., 2019).

Therefore, companies need managers who promote subjective wellbeing within their organizations, especially in economic crises (Pincheira and Garcés, 2018). Exploring the social science literature on leadership styles published in the 21st century, a plethora of research experimentally tackles the multidimensionality of the happiness-leadership notion findings (e.g. D’Intino, 2007; Fisher, 2010; Chaiprasit and Santidhiraku, 2011; Seligman, 2012). This series of studies has led, among other things, to identify what kind of leadership fosters job satisfaction among internal customers. These include transformational leadership (Purwanto et al., 2021), ethical leadership (Mercader, 2021; Shakeel et al., 2021) and spiritual leadership (Rai and Banerjee, 2019; Suriyankietkaew and Kantamara, 2019). The first one characterizes cultivating happiness at work within organizations through the following psychosocial variables: commitment (Kim and Beehr, 2020), affect (Ribeiro et al., 2020), charisma (Purwanto et al., 2021; Babcock-Roberson and Strickland, 2010), motivation (Oerlemans and Bakker, 2018), or job satisfaction (Jha and Bhattacharya, 2021). In this sense, authors such as Chi et al. (2011), Pai and Krishnan (2015), Jin et al. (2016), and Salas-Vallina et al. (2020) link the term transformational leadership with the happiness at work variable. It is not surprising, then, that large multinational companies have, in recent decades, opted for a transformational leadership style that cultivates an atmosphere of subjective wellbeing that stimulates creativity, teamwork, loyalty, end marketing, cooperation, engagement and trust (Salas-Vallina and Alegre, 2021; Tsuchiya et al., 2018; Ghadi and Almanaga’h, 2020; Arshad et al., 2022). It will not be achieved without a leader who boosts their employees’ and managers’ positive emotions, social skills and work needs (Salas-Vallina et al., 2021).

Concerning ethical leadership, the literature in recent decades indicates that the achievement of operational goals can be successfully achieved when a corporate culture is underpinned by the values of fairness, altruism, integrity or equality implement (Alshehhi et al., 2021; Banks et al., 2020; Shakeel et al., 2020). Through these elements, leaders want to proactively influence the ethical behavior of their workforce in order to create a positive atmosphere within their organizations. On this issue, it should be noted that academic studies indicate that ethical leaders are considered by their peers as trustworthy sources of credibility, honesty and trust (Piccolo et al., 2010; Collins and Restubog, 2021). Behind these words hide ethical leaders who carry out leadership based on managing the daily application of ethical values in their workforce. To succeed in such managerial action, employees in organizations must voluntarily become aware that their professional performance can be stimulated through social vocation (Coetzer et al., 2017; Tran et al., 2020).

Therefore, the journey through the management and business world must be able to identify the variables resulting from studies that relate happiness and wellbeing to ethical leadership to create a transition that leads to innovative and productive companies. To this end, Kalshoven and Taylor (2018) and Bhatti et al. (2020) assert a positive relationship between ethical leadership and employee happiness. From this premise, corporate cultures should foster emotional stability, optimism, positive emotions and emotional pay (Ruggeri et al., 2020). Hence, the need to understand ethical leadership as a driver of management models that pivot on happiness management (Bachmann, 2017).