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Hedonic Versus (True) Eudaimonic Well-Being in Organizations

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The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Well-Being

Abstract

This chapter explores well-being as understood by the field of psychology and organizational studies and argues that employees and organizations could benefit from adopting an understanding of well-being grounded in Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia. The implications for management practice are discussed. The first section will outline the hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to well-being adopted by psychology scholars and highlight some associated issues. The second section will explain how the approaches in psychology are reflected in organizational scholarship. Both hedonic and eudaimonic approaches have been adapted to account for the psychological aspect of employee well-being through the constructs of job satisfaction on the one hand and meaning and engagement on the other (De Simone, Int J Bus Soc Sci 5(12):118, 2014; Grant et al., Acad Manag Perspect 21(3):51–63, 2007). In the third section, the authors argue that eudaimonist psychology scholars in particular have misinterpreted Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia by divorcing it from its philosophical foundations (Sison and Ferrero, Bus Ethics 24:S78–S98, 2015). The authors propose a more comprehensive notion of well-being which acknowledges its dependence on philosophical roots. The implications for the practice of managing employees are discussed in the fourth section based on the work of Melé (J Bus Ethics 120(4):457–471, 2014). Domènec Melé places human persons and their flourishing at the center of managing in organizations, but his notion of well-being differs from eudaimonic psychologist and organizational scholars because of his understanding of the human person. In the final section of the chapter, the authors demonstrate how the adoption of a truly neo-Aristotelian understanding of eudaimonia would be more beneficial to employees and organizations in the long run.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kenvale College of Hospitality, Cookery and Events, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Patricia Grant

  2. Business and Law, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Peter McGhee

Authors
  1. Patricia Grant
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  2. Peter McGhee
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Correspondence to Peter McGhee .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, USA

    Satinder K. Dhiman

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Grant, P., McGhee, P. (2021). Hedonic Versus (True) Eudaimonic Well-Being in Organizations. In: Dhiman, S.K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Well-Being. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30025-8_37

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