Guest editorial: Happiness management – A holy grail to be discovered by companies in the age of artificial intelligence

Abstract

In these last decades of the 21st century, there is a significant concern on the part of the academic and professional world to explore the subjective well-being of citizens (Sanagustín-Fons et al., 2020), as well as the happiness at work of individuals within organisations (Foncubierta-Rodríguez et al., 2020). The latter concern has taken on considerable relevance after the Covid-19 pandemic, especially during the “Great Resignation”. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that a significant number of companies in today's globalised society have become, perhaps unwittingly, toxic, stressful and conflictive environments for their human capital, and these factors and others limit the psychological health and professional growth of their workforce. This circumstance is exacerbated when it coexists with leadership styles focussed simply on pursuing short- and medium-term speculative success in the age of artificial intelligence (Abellán-Sevilla and Ortiz-de-Urbina-Criado, 2023). In this sense, the emerging happiness management literature shows that corporate governance focussed on maximising only the economic benefits of its shareholders does not cultivate happiness at work within their organisations (Rando-Cueto et al., 2023). Through this asset, company management can realise the philosophy of happiness management as an organisational culture that injects well-being, prosperity and quality of life into their human capital. Previous scientific studies empirically demonstrate that the absence of corporate happiness within companies is synonymous with stress, emotional exhaustion or psychological problems on the part of their internal customers (Robina-Ramirez et al., 2023a, b). These elements, and many others, not only negatively affect work performance and motivation but also lead to poor work performance due to inefficient and wrong decisions from a functional and operational point of view. Under such conditions, it is unsurprising that employees' professional activity is characterised by low productivity and low innovative work behaviour. A close look at this phenomenon shows that to reverse this situation, the resource of happiness at work is needed. A significant chain of academic studies indicates that the dimension of happiness at work plays a vital role in proactively increasing the creative skills, intrapreneurship or digital innovation of all members of organisations (Galiano-Coronil et al., 2021). In this line of research, an essential body of scientific work recognises that the attractive philosophy of happiness management constitutes an essential business culture to boost people's happiness at work (Hatami et al., 2023). This appealing corporate culture allows corporate governance to undertake managerial actions to stimulate their internal customers' intrinsic emotions through creativity, organisational justice or effective communication. It requires happy leaders who foster governance within their organisations that favour the generation of ideas from their employees (Ruiz-Rodríguez et al., 2023). In this way, companies can improve their operational and managerial processes. It is an essential aspect to take into account with the advent of artificial intelligence, which will bring very drastic changes in the work organisation of corporations in the post-COVID-19 economy (Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2023). One of them is to holistically harmonise the economic efficiency of companies with the happiness of their internal customers at work. This juxtaposition will require companies to move away from trade-off principles and organisations to commit to a strategic direction focussed on boosting the corporate happiness of their employees. Undoubtedly, this asset generates competitive advantages when teamwork, passion for work and resilience of their human capital are significantly promoted (Mu et al., 2023). Suppose companies want to aspire to all of this. In that case, they must embrace the culture of happiness management as a down-top, collaborative governance style, which can play a crucial role in addressing the accelerating technological changes that artificial intelligence will bring about. It means that happiness management becomes the holy grail that shows us that a more dynamic, sustainable, innovative and productive fabric can be achieved when happiness at work and digital advances go hand in hand in the managerial life of companies (Ravina-Ripoll et al., 2020). In addition to the above, the editors of this special issue want to highlight the socio-economic benefits of happiness management for organisations in today's digital society (Martínez-Falcó et al., 2023). These include, on the one hand, helping to cultivate a favourable climate for innovation, technological development and intrapreneurship. On the other hand, it cushions the adverse effects of artificial intelligence on employees' happiness at work. Under this approach, the articles that make up this monograph's academic corpus aim to attract readers' interest in happiness management. It constitutes the holy grail of economic prosperity and competitive sustainability for companies in the genesis of the new era of artificial intelligence (Ravina-Ripoll et al., 2019). Without further ado, we move on to the next section, where we will describe, in general terms, each of the articles that make up the special issue entitled: “Happiness Management – A holy grail to be discovered by companies in the age of artificial intelligence”.