The happy-productive worker thesis (HPWT) is considered the Holy Grail of management research, and it proposes caeteris paribus, happy workers show higher performance than their unhappy counterparts. However, eudaimonic well-being in the relationship between happiness and performance has been understudied. This paper provides a systematized review of empirical evidence in order to make a theoretical contribution to the happy-productive worker thesis from a eudaimonic perspective. Our review covers 105 quantitative studies and 188 relationships between eudaimonic well-being and performance. Results reveal that analyzing the eudaimonic facet of well-being provides general support for the HPWT and a much more comprehensive understanding of how it has been studied. However, some gaps and nuances are identified and discussed, opening up challenging avenues for future empirical research to clarify important questions about the relationship between happiness and performance in organizations.
Literature suggests that job satisfaction and health are related to each other in a synergic way. However, this might not always be the case, and they may present misaligned relationships. Considering job satisfaction and mental health as indicators of wellbeing at work, we aim to identify four patterns (i.e., satisfied-healthy, unsatisfied-unhealthy, satisfied-unhealthy, and unsatisfied-healthy) and some of their antecedents. In a sample of 783 young Spanish employees, a two-step cluster analysis procedure showed that the unsatisfied-unhealthy pattern was the most frequent (33%), followed by unsatisfied-healthy (26.6%), satisfied-unhealthy (24.8%) and, finally, the satisfied-healthy pattern (14.3%). Moreover, as hypothesized, discriminant analysis suggests that higher levels of job importance and lower levels of role ambiguity mainly differentiate the satisfied-healthy pattern, whereas overqualification and role overload differentiate, respectively, the unsatisfied-healthy and satisfied-unhealthy patterns. Contrary to our expectations, role conflict also characterizes the satisfied-unhealthy pattern. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.
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