Organizational virtuousness, subjective well-being, and job performance

Abstract

PurposePast research has convincingly shown that higher employee subjective well-being, or happiness, is a source of higher job performance and retention. This paper therefore examines the relationships between organizational virtuousness, subjective well-being, and individual job performance among French and Japanese employees.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was conducted among Japanese and French managers and staff at Japanese and French domestic companies and structural equation modeling was employed to compare those associations.FindingsWe found that the Japanese and the French have different conceptualizations of organizational virtuousness, suggesting that firms must tailor their virtue-building activities based on the local culture. Subjective well-being is comparatively more important in Japan since it acts in complement to organizational virtuousness to positively affect job performance, while in France, only organizational virtuousness counts as a source of job performance.Research implicationsNational culture is revealed to be a new factor explaining differences in how employees consider organizational virtuousness and we provide evidence of positive associations of organizational virtuousness with positive subjective well-being and with job performance for both the Japanese and the French.Practical implicationsOrganizational virtuousness cannot be construed from a universalistic perspective where virtues are conceptualized on the same basis regardless of location or region, and firms should also consider their employees' individualist or collectivist inclination when trying to influence work outcomes.Originality/valueThese findings point to the role of national culture on the perception of organizational virtuousness and its effect on subjective well-being and job performance.

Work during COVID-19: assessing the influence of job demands and resources on practical and psychological outcomes for employees

“…Further, improved work-life balance because of these resources may have led to a reduction in work exhaustion for an individual like previous research reported that autonomy that comes with telecommuting helps in mitigating workload pressure, exhaustion and further the negative impacts (Sardeshmukh et al , 2012; Allen et al , 2015; Gajendran et al , 2015; Vander Elst et al , 2017). As recent studies also found that, telecommuting improves well-being when the work arrangement is employee-centric (Sánchez, 2017; Avgoustaki and Frankort, 2018) and this also helps the organization in the long run because improved well-being increases performance and productivity and employees are less likely to quit (Magnier-Watanabe et al , 2020).…”

Engaging Employees Through a Virtuous Environment! Does Positive Affect Mediate in the Relationship?

“…This indicates that employees experience high and improved emotions/positive affect if they feel that the organizations where they work are caring and trustworthy. Along with this, the organizational environment accompanied by integrity and forgiveness also enhances employees' happiness (Magnier-Watanabe et al, 2020). Thus, based on the favorable association between organizational virtuousness and different well-being dimensions (Ahmed et al, 2018;Magnier-Watanabe et al, 2020), it can be ascertained that organizational virtuousness influences employees' positive effect favorably, thus we hypothesized that Hypothesis 1: Organizational virtuousness is favorably associated with positive affect…”

“…Further, the change in the scenario whereby the employees are not only keen to have financial benefits (Chadha, 2018) but also require support, and an optimal environment to feel full-fledged and motivated, mandates to pay attention to organizational virtuousness. Notably, organizational virtuousness is favorably associated with different well-being dimensions like psychological (Magnier-Watanabe et al, 2020) and affective well-being (Ahmed et al, 2018). Generally, organizational virtuousness refers to "the transcendent, elevating behavior of the organization's members" comprising of five sub-dimensions (Cameron et al, 2004).…”

Psychological safety, meaningfulness and empowerment as predictors of employee well-being: a mediating role of promotive voice

“…A poor employee's well-being perceptions adversely affect on-job service performance (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015). On the other side, positive perceptions of well-being enhance work performances (Magnier-Watanabe et al, 2020). The psychological well-being of employees is a core agenda among human resource policymakers and researchers (Guest, 2017).…”