Happiness as a Strategic Organizational Capability An Integral Eight-Dimension Model for Sustainable Well-Being, Responsible Performance and Human Flourishing at Work

Paper ID: EIJTEM_2026_13_3_51-65

Author's Name: Dr. Ignacio Bonasa Alzuria

Volume: 13

Issue: 3

Year: 2026

Page No: 51-65

Abstract:

Organizations increasingly speak about employee happiness, yet many interventions remain peripheral, fragmented, and disconnected from the conditions under which work is actually performed. This article reframes organizational happiness as a strategic capability rather than a temporary emotion, a collection of benefits, or an individual duty to remain positive. Through an integrative conceptual review of subjective well-being, eudaimonic psychology, self-determination theory, job demands–resources theory, psychological safety, meaningful work, thriving, humanistic management, and responsible technology, the paper develops an Eight-Dimension Organizational Happiness Model. The dimensions are body, cognition, emotion, transcendence and meaning, social relationships, professional life, financial well-being, and technology. The model proposes that sustainable happiness emerges from the dynamic alignment of these dimensions and from organizational systems that protect dignity, agency, fairness, learning, belonging, and recovery. The article distinguishes four levels of maturity, proposes a governance architecture, identifies ethical safeguards, develops a multi-layer measurement dashboard, and offers propositions for empirical research. Its principal contribution is to connect the lived wholeness of the person with the design of work, leadership behavior, compensation, digital systems, and institutional accountability. Happiness becomes strategically valuable when it is embedded in how organizations decide, organize, measure, and care—not when it is demanded as an emotional performance from employees. (Diener, 1984; Diener et al., 2018)

Keywords: Organizational happiness; employee well-being; human flourishing; meaningful work; humanistic management; job design; psychological safety; responsible technology; financial well-being. (Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson & Lei, 2014)

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