Well-Being

Nearly all workers have a supervisor or ‘boss’. Yet little is known about how bosses influence the quality of employees’ lives. This study is a cautious attempt to provide new formal evidence. First, it is shown that a boss’s technical competence is the single strongest predictor of a worker’s job satisfaction. Second, it is demonstrated in longitudinal data -- after controlling for fixed effects -- that even if a worker stays in the same job and workplace a rise in the competence of a supervisor is associated with an improvement in the worker’s well-being. Third, a variety of robustness checks, including tentative instrumental-variable results, are reported. These findings, which draw on US and British data, contribute to an emerging literature on the role of expert leaders in organizations. Finally, the paper discusses potential weaknesses of existing evidence and necessary future research.

not all that matters to our well-being. In some cases, the worth of the object of those concerns also matters. We can explain our reaction to the case of the grass-counter if we accept that a discontinuity in welfare value between what I call “low fare” and “full fare.” A discontinuity in value is a sharp break between the welfare contributions of different kinds of welfare goods such that no amount of one good can ever be more valuable than some finite amount of another good. In the central case, faring well involves both endorsement and goods. Call the great contribution that endorsement and worth make together “full fare.” It is also true that endorsement on its own counts toward well-being, though it counts for less than the unity. Call the small contribution that endorsement makes on its own “low fare.” This discontinuity is necessary to deal with the double bind problem without abandoning the endorsement thesis. On this view, the grass-counter fares well since we are supposing that he endorses his worthless activity, but he experiences a relatively low amount of welfare. The discontinuity in welfare value not only explains why the disillusioned artist fares much better in any state of affairs she does endorse; it also explains why it is difficult to imagine

The academic literature has provided arguments both in favour and against diversity. Arguments in favour of diversity point to positive correlations between diversity and employment (Nathan 2011; Ottaviano and Peri 2005), productivity and wages (Ottaviano and Peri 2005, 2006), the amount of (ethnic) services such as shops and restaurants (Mazzolari and Neumark 2012). Arguments against diversity point to the possibility of misunderstandings among people of different cultures (Horwitz and Horwitz 2007), a decrease in social capital (Alesina and La Ferrara 2000; Letki 2008; Sturgis et al. 2011), and social conflicts (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Sturgis et al. 2011; Putnam 2007). The ones mentioned above are all different aspects of people’s lives that may be positively and negatively affected by diversity; all these aspects may contribute differently to people ’ s overall well-being. Given the relevance that governments nowadays place on subjective well-being (Waldron 2010), and since the impact of immigration and of a diverse society is a highly debated topic (Finney and Simpson 2009), surprisingly little research has been done on the impact of diversity on well-being.

Ryff, 1989). Others, however, fall in line with the tradition of Bentham by defining happiness as the average online experi- ence of pleasure and pain, (Kahneman, 1999). In this article, we use the term happiness interchangeably with subjective well- being or the subjective evaluation of one’s life. We conceptualize happiness as being hierarchically organized to emphasize complexity of the concept (see Diener, Scollon, & Lucas, 2003, for more detail). The highest level of the abstraction is happi- ness, which is a summary judgment of one’s life. That is, we do not use the term happiness to refer to the momentary feeling state of happiness. Rather, we use this term to refer to a relatively stable feeling of happiness one has towards his or her life. Al- though we review the studies on the momentary mood of hap- piness below, when doing so, we will note this fact to distinguish it from the relatively stable feeling of happiness. At the next level of hierarchy, there are four components of happiness: pleasant emotions, unpleasant emotions, life satisfaction, and domain satisfaction. Each of these can be further dissected into specific aspects of life experiences (e.g., love, worry, meaning, health). Although these four components are correlated with one another (e.g., individuals who often feel pleasant emotions tend to be satisfied with their lives as a whole), they are distin- guishable from one another (e.g., Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996). Similarly, none of the individual components can be equated with overall happiness or subjective well-being. However, because we analyzed data that had been already collected, we use specific components of happiness as proxies to the concept of happiness in the empirical part of this article.

The hereby proposed design approach meets the three heuristics defined. First, the approach provides tangible guidelines for anticipating on the relation between technology and well-being via mediation analysis. Thereby it can prevent better undesired and unintended consequences of technology. Second, the approach, inspired by value sensitive design, does justice to the circumstances in which well- being becomes defined. It starts each design problem by defining well-being in context as a set of values. In that, Values that Matter tries to tackle the methodological issue, as pointed to before, that design for value approaches up until now could not deal with. This methodological issue concerned identification of values, embodiment of values and anticipation on unintended consequences. First, Values that Matter tries to provide tools for identifying the right values in the design context. By involving actors, value cards and mediation analysis, the designer should be able to target the important values. Consequently, by linking values to the causing aspects of technology, the designer gains insight into how to embody values in design. Finally, as shown, the interwoven mediation framework helps in anticipating on technology’s effect and concurrently its unintended consequences. Finally, Values that Matter meets heuristic three. The approach takes into consideration that well-being cannot solely become defined by users alone, as users are biased by, amongst others, their short- term desires. Therefore, the methodology grants an important role to designers in embodying in design an objective well- being. This objective well-being takes into account the values of well-being users would not consider themselves. The methodology proceeds with understanding users’ subjective evaluations of the design as an input for the redesign. This way, the approach tries to bring about best well-being by balancing its objective and subjective components.

It is surprising that children ’ s well- being has become the focal consider- ation in legal and public policy debates regarding same-sex marriage. Early arguments against same-sex marriage explicitly invoked natural law and re- ligious considerations, af fi rming that heterosexual marriage is rooted in human nature or divine will while also asserting that same-sex marriage is either conceptually/ontologically impos- sible or inherently immoral. Those argu- ments have largely fallen by the wayside before compelling legal arguments about equal protection, the liberty rights of consenting adults to choose their own values and life preferences, and the separation of church and state. Instead, the focus has shifted to con- cerns about the effects that same-sex marriage has on children. For exam- ple, in 1996, Hawaii argued that, “… all things being equal, it is best for a child that it be raised in a single home by its parents, or at least by a married male and female … . ” 3 Eight years later,

ies that demonstrate positive physical or men- tal health consequences of membership or community service are usually cross-sectional in design; researchers rarely assess the possi- bility that individuals who are selected (or select themselves) into community associa- tions or service already possess more physical and psychological resources than non-volun- teers. Finally, when longitudinal studies do control for prior levels of well-being, researchers almost always emphasize the “social causation” implications of their find- ings, pleased that they can rule out “selection” effects. That is, they are eager to demonstrate that social involvements benefit individuals net of the physical or emotional factors that might have selected those individuals into vol- unteer work in the first place. This is perhaps an understandable impulse for sociologists who must struggle to convince other disci- plines that social forces indeed shape individu- als’ lives and psyches. However, by focusing on social causation processes, investigators inadvertently de-emphasize the antecedents and role of human agency (Thoits 1994). This is especially ironic, given that the topic is vol- unteer work, where agency must be involved for it to occur! We will argue that individuals’ personal resources and well-being both facili- tate their involvement in volunteer work and are subsequently enhanced by such work. In short, the purposes of this paper are to re- examine general well-being as an antecedent and a consequence of volunteer work in the community and to focus attention on the neglected topic of agency.

Thus our social relationships have significant influence on enhancing our well-being. They increase our happiness and life satisfaction. R.F. Baumeister (2013) has found in his research that relationships that serve to satisfy our needs make us happy, while our contribution to the welfare of others increases our sense of meaning in life. George Vaillant has extensively researched on secrets to a fulfilling life. He has extensively researched for many years and published the findings in the book “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant study (2012)”. He found that the warmth of people’s relationships has the most significant impact on human flourishing. He concluded “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

Arrow’s (1951, 1963) fundamental theorem states that there do not exist satisfactory welfarist principles if the only information that can be used in social evaluation is ordinally measurable and interpersonally non-comparable utility information. Sen (1970) shows that the conclusion of Arrow’s theorem remains true if Arrow’s ordinal interpretation of individual utility is replaced by a cardinal interpretation and no interpersonal comparisons of well-being are permitted. Taking these results as our starting point, we illustrate how the Arrow-Sen impossibility can be avoided if various forms of interpersonal utility comparisons are possible.

The Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) is a cross-national research study conducted in collabor- ation with the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The study aims to gain new insight into, and increase our un- derstanding of, young people’s health and well-being, health behaviors and their social context (Currie et al. 2011). By 1983 the HBSC study was adopted by the WHO Regional Office for Europe as a collaborative study. HBSC now includes 43 countries and regions across Europe and North America. The international standard questionnaire produced for every survey cycle enables the collection of common data across all partici- pating countries and thus enables the quantification of patterns of key health behaviors, health indicators and contextual variables. These data allow cross-national comparisons to be made and, with successive surveys, trend data is gathered and may be examined at both the national and cross-national level. The international net- work is organized around an interlinked series of focus and topic groups related to the following areas: body image, bullying and fighting, eating behaviors, health complaints, injuries, life satisfaction, obesity, oral health, physical activity and sedentary behavior, relationships: family and peers, school environment, self-rated health, sexual behavior, socioeconomic environment, substance use: alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, and weight reduction behavior. This study has the approval of the S. João Hospital scientific committee, an ethical national committee and the

Figure 5 illustrates that fact. There exists no statistically significant correlation, although a best-fitting line would have a very small positive gradient, between state well- being and state GDP per capita. By contrast, and concep- tually a different form of comparison, Figure 6 shows that if we control for household income (the microequations are not given in the tables but are available on request), then this gradient is negative. (This result is potentially consis- tent with the fixed-effects relative income concern finding in Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004, and Luttmer, 2005. Ours, however, is naturally thought of as a correlation between the state fixed effects and other characteristics. Figure 7 is a variant and corroborative check.) This, in a weaker version, is what compensating differentials theory would predict. It should be emphasized that the paper’s results do not merely tell us the obvious fact that factors like the climate or air cleanliness or beauty are better in some places than in others. The intellectual question is why the plusses and minuses from innate state differences, such

Further, previous research indicates that educational background has a positive impact on pupils’ educational attainment and other academic outcomes (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013), which is supported by the results of the present study. One possible cause for the influence of educational background on pupils’ cognitive well-being could be the benefits of having parents with educational resources, who to a higher degree than others can provide educational support and guidance to their children (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013; Bukodi et al., 2014). It is reasonable to believe that educational resources influences pupils’ cognitive well-being positively, seeing that educational resources tend to influence pupils’ cognitive ability (Svensson, 1964), which in turn is an important aspect for cognitive well-being. When it comes to previous research on the influence of family background on psychological well- being, however, the results are mixed. West and Sweeting (2003) found a relation between parental occupation and pupils’ psychological well-being, while Högberg et al. (2019) found no significant impact of parents’ employment on pupils’ school-related stress, which is in line with the present study. That is, pupils’ school-related worries and stress were not dependent on their family’s educational background. It is reasonable to think that the cause for the non- significant effect of educational background on psychological well-being was that the source of pupils’ worries and stress came from processes in school, which weren’t affected differently by low- or highly educated parents. That is, it is likely that parents had similar short-term expectations regardless of educational level, which could be argued to differ from the effect of highly educated parents on academic outcomes such as educational attainment, that Bukodi and Goldthorpe (2013) note, which thus would be long-term expectations.

In the UK, the WEMWBS has been considered as an appropriate tool to measure mental well-being in different samples, such as overall population samples [9, 11, 12], students [9, 13], teenagers [14, 15], clinical samples [16, 17], and ethnic minority samples [18]. Yet, high values for Cronbach’s alpha led to the suspicion that item redundancy could be an issue for the WEMWBS as well. As a result, the 7-item short WEMWBS (SWEMWBS) was developed [19, 20]. The SWEMWBS has been preferred in terms of its psychometric proper- ties and its convenience for monitoring positive mental health. However, it presents a more restricted definition of mental well-being as it mainly encompasses hedonic items. The WEMWBS may therefore be preferred when content coverage is an issue [19, 20]. It should also be noted that a recent study indicated limited discriminant

The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model posits that both job demands and job resources affect employee well-being, including the experience of burnout or work engagement. More recent studies adding to the model suggest that personal resources also contribute to these work-related outcomes. A personal resource that has not been examined in the JD-R model is psychological wellbeing (PWB), which encompasses thriving through the existential challenges of life to actualize human potential, and reflects qualities of self-acceptance, positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, and autonomy. The purpose of this study is to extend the JD-R model by examining the potential of PWB to inform the model. This work was done within the Canadian LTC context, which has not yet been examined using this model. A convenience sample of 327 LTC employees (110 nurses and 214 nursing assistants; three people chose not to disclose their status), completed a questionnaire assessing burnout, work engagement, job demands, job resources, and PWB. Simultaneous regression was used to examine the relationship between job demands and burnout, and job resources and work

Consequently, we may assess the effect of various explanatory variables in terms of contributing positively or negatively to Subjective Well-Being. We may also consider the substitution ratio between explanatory variables. For instance, Frey and Stutzer (2000) look at the impact of democratic institutions on Subjective Well-Being. Clark and Oswald (1994) look at the impact of unemployment on well-being. Cutler and Richardson (1997) and Groot (2000) look for the effect of various illnesses on health satisfaction. The evidence from the economic and psychological literature indicates a fairly stable relationship between satisfaction and objectively measurable variables (see e.g. Diener and Lucas 1999). This is seen as indirect evidence of the interpersonal comparability of the responses. This paper aims at a somewhat more sophisticated model in which we will assume that satisfaction with life is an aggregate of various domain satisfactions.

At first glance, it would appear that younger, less tenured clients are more susceptible to well-being problems because of their youth and lower job experience. Younger Canadians, generally, report more mental health problems. Lower job tenure has also been linked to higher distress in workers through job insecurity, lower status, and higher role ambiguity. However, the current findings suggest that, while youth and less time on the job may be associated with higher distress for any worker, these problems may be augmented for call centre workers.

goal is made and the means of executing ways to achieve them. There is no doubt that family plays an important role in the emotional and cognitive development of every individual (Sungh & Udainiya, 2009; Church, 1987). It has been suggested that bonds between parents and children appear to be important to a child’s well-being as parents are able to lower their child’s anxiety their warmth and attention (Browne & Shlosberg, 2006). In the study of Iyendar and Lepper (1999, as cited in Markus & Kitayama, 2003), it has been suggested that parents, particularly the mother, serve as a source of support and motivating factor for individuals to perform the task they have to fulfill. Children who are guided by their mother in their decision-making process will more likely feel happy knowing that their mother, who has a strong influence in their lives, approves of their endeavor and are supported by them (Iyendar & Lepper, 1999, as cited in Markus & Kitayama, 2003). Furthermore, sibling relationships may also influence an individual’s subjective well-being in such a way that sibling attachment or closeness makes a difference in their positive and negative affect (Cicirelli, 1989). When siblings are close, they tend to have a sense of security (Browne & Shlosberg, 2006) that elicits positive affect. And when this happens, an individual will have lesser life stressors, enabling him or her to have more positive emotions which in turn would contribute to their subjective well-being.

In addition, Georgia has a number of institutions for persons with disabilities (of all ages). In a 2012 report, the Public Defender of Georgia published its account of the state of human rights in these institutions. It revealed violations in all the institutions for disabled persons. The violations were of both systematic and individual nature. There was evidence of physical restraint of disabled persons, and restrictions of medical services for children with disabilities. Psycho-social rehabilitation services were restricted in all the institutions, not giving disabled persons an opportunity to develop independent living skills. Persons with disabilities reportedly lacked access to the outside world as well as the right to contact with their families. Lack of professional staff and their unawareness of professional methods hampered the provision of proper health care services to disabled persons. The report makes an important contribution to improving the understanding of the situation in which people with disabilities live. A Public Defender with an expanded mandate that also includes older persons might prepare a similar review of the situation of older persons in residential care or day care centres. The outcomes of the report suggest that the quality management of such centres and the abuse prevention and case management system should be strengthened. Allowing regular contact with family members will be important as an element of external control of the well-being of the centres’ clients. Alternatives should be developed to using physical restraints and health care staff should be trained accordingly.

A review of the literature in 2006 by Grawitch, Gottschalk, and Munz de- scribed that psychology, sociology, medicine, public health, and business all have a voice in understanding the relationship between well-being and organizational improvements. They proposed a path model in which em- ployee well-being and organizational outcomes influenced each other. Workplace practices incorporate both health and safety as well as climate and practices often associated with engage- ment, including employee involvement, development, and recognition. These practices were shown in their model to impact overall well-being as well as or- ganizational improvements. They

A coherent objection to Table’s 4 estimates is that they are biased because of the fact that the personality of the worker is here an omitted variable. Hence it might be that inherently ‘cheerful’ people tend both to report high levels of job satisfaction and to give favorable assessments of their supervisor (they simply have a sunny outlook about everything). In that case, the association between the worker’s well-being and the assessment of the supervisor might be spurious. One way to probe this possibility is to include another variable for the inherent cheerfulness of the employee, and to see whether that largely eliminates the significance of the supervisor variable. The final column of Table 4 does so. It includes a variable for whether the individual reports that his or her co-workers are friendly. The friendliness variable is positive in column 5 of Table 4. Once this inclusion is done, the coefficient on the supervisor-competence variable is barely affected. It falls by only approximately 0.05 points to 0.238. This result is consistent with the existence of a genuine role for supervisor competence.