Happiness management through corporate volunteering in advancing CSR

1. Introduction

The UN International Day of Happiness is celebrated annually on March 20th throughout the world. In the current era of socio-economic and political unrest, happiness and well-being matter more than ever. But what does happiness mean? The concept of happiness has its roots in ancient Greek term eudaimonia which describes the good life (Gavin and Mason, 2004). Over the past 30 years, academic interest in happiness and subjective well-being (SWB) has grown, especially within social sciences, but the concept remains difficult to define (Oishi et al., 2013; Chia et al., 2020; Andrijić, 2022). One proposal has argued that happiness has three aspects: a momentary feeling of joy and pleasure (affective or hedonic), life satisfaction (evaluative) and fulfilment of one's life purpose (eudaimonic) (Layard et al., 2012).

There is growing interest in understanding the phenomenon of happiness due to its increasing importance in current business and economic discussions, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic (Andrijić, 2022). Within organizations, employee well-being is regarded as resulting in happiness (Hernández et al., 2020). Happiness management has been identified as a key aspect of human resources management and described as a multicultural management model focusing on creativity, commitment, technological innovation, internal entrepreneurship and social responsibility with the aim of promoting happiness within organizations and among people (Sánchez-Vázquez and Sánchez-Ordóñez, 2019). CSR may be a key strategy for happiness management as it is related to employees' welfare, quality of life and the common good (Hernández et al., 2020).

Companies are increasingly expected to engage in CSR actions that have positive social impact on their employees, customers and the surrounding society at large (Raimo et al., 2021). CV is a practical form of CSR activity that responds to this call. CV refers to activities in which firms offer their employees an opportunity to engage in work benefiting a specified societal cause using their working time (Grant, 2012). In CV, companies typically form partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to jointly help the most vulnerable individuals in society (Raimo et al., 2021). While the connection between CSR activities and organizational performance has been explored thoroughly in earlier studies (Gupta and Sharma, 2016), it is still unclear how CV as a CSR activity is connected to its consequences and what the effects are on the internal stakeholders (Espasandín-Bustelo et al., 2020). Scholars have specifically called for research on employees' happiness (Colantonio, 2009) resulting from CSR activities (Raab, 2020). Though there is some understanding of the creation of momentary happiness through a shift from rational and individual mindsets to emotional and collective mindsets, research has not explicated the development of lasting, sustainable happiness (Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021).

In this study, we seek to respond to calls for research on happiness in business organizations by investigating CV as a form of happiness management from the perspective of people involved in volunteering activities. We ask: How does CV, as a form of CSR, create sustainable happiness in business organizations?

We carried out qualitative research based on two company cases of CV in Finland. The companies collaborated with NGOs to offer opportunities for volunteering to their employees to support marginalized groups in society. The data was collected through qualitative interviews and the analysis of the interviews included first examining CV's role in happiness management, and then the shifts from individual to collective mindsets and from rational to emotional mindsets.

This paper contributes to the discussion of happiness management (Sánchez-Vázquez and Sánchez-Ordóñez, 2019) through CV in two ways. First, we show how the shifts from individual to collective mindsets and from rational to emotional mindsets form bases for sustainable happiness (Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021) in companies. Secondly, we show based on the data that there is a need to emphasize a shift from actual to potential future experiences to reach sustainable happiness.

2. Theoretical background

3. Methods

This study is qualitative in nature and the research was conducted through interviews with employees to gain in-depth insights (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011) about the creation of happiness through CV experiences. We include two case companies headquartered in Finland in our study to broaden our understanding of the research phenomenon.

The CV activity within the companies was organized together with NGOs. The idea was to offer employees an opportunity to do one day of volunteer work per year in a project they select from a few options arranged by the company and NGOs. In both companies, CV was a relatively new activity and employees' interest in it was increasing. Participation was considered voluntary, and employees were not expected or pushed to participate even though the company was internally promoting possibility for CV. The first case company is a financial and insurance service provider in Finland. The company has approximately 12,000 employees and 1.7 million customers. The CV activity is mainly about helping youth to balance and plan their use of money to improve their financial householding competence. The CV activity consists of company employees sharing their professional competence in one-day training courses. Company employees also help their partnering NGO with service design to improve the NGO's services to people who need help.

The second case company is a telecommunications services provider in Finland. The company has approximately 5,000 employees and it offers telecom and other digital services to about 2.8. million customers both in Finland and Baltic countries. The company offers its employees the possibility of using one working day for their chosen CV activity. In one project, their employees can work in cafés meant for youth where they are able to discuss their daily issues with safe adults. Other projects consisted of garden work in safe homes and assisting differently abled children in a theatrical play.

The interviews were conducted with company managers responsible for organizing CV activities and with employees who participated in CV projects as volunteers. The interviewed volunteers were chosen by the company managers based on the instructions of the researchers. We asked the managers to invite volunteers who had recently participated in the CV activity and to include both male and female employees. The final list of informants was accepted by the researchers, and one informant did not show up to the interviews due to unknown reasons. The informants represented a small, but we believe representative and informative sample of the overall volunteers in both companies. The data collection took place between 2018 and 2019. The interviews included questions about motivation and the overall CV experience; in addition, managers were also asked about volunteer activity at the company level. The interviews were conducted with an emphasis on confidentiality, and the negative aspects and critiques of the CV experience were discussed to allow informants, especially the volunteers, to feely express both their positive and negative feelings towards the experience. A summary of interview details is listed in Table 1. This study focuses especially on the perception that employees have of the CV practices developed by the companies they work for and how these projects have impacted their sense of happiness (Raab, 2020).

For the analysis of our interview data, we developed a coding system based on the theoretical insight that sustainable happiness occurs where employees' experiences move 1) from an individual, self-centered mindset to a collective and relational mindset and 2) from a rational to an emotional and embodied mindset. Additionally, as repeated positive experiences of that form are necessary, we added a third analysis code: from single to multiple events. All three codes were used to analyze the interview transcripts.

The data was first analyzed by all authors individually. Thereafter, the results were commonly discussed and, where doubt arose, re-analyzed by all authors to find common understanding. In the following section, we present the outcome of our analysis, categorized into the three development dimensions: from an individual to collective mindset, from a rational to emotional mindset and frequent positive experiences including freedom, knowledge and virtue. To open the chain of evidence in the analysis, we present extracts from the interview data. However, these are only a small excerpt of the data on which our interpretations are based. The analyzed development dimensions were embedded in the data broadly, and their existence cannot be fully demonstrated with a narrow quotation. Thus, the purpose of the extracts is merely to offer an example of the data on which the interpretation is based.

4. Findings

5. Discussion

Our data analysis revealed that CV enables transitions within volunteers' mindsets not only from individual to collective and from rational to emotional; a third transition was also identified, what we call “from actual to potential”.

Our findings indicated that CV allowed volunteers to make a mindset transition from individual to collective. In sustainable happiness literature, this kind of departure from a self-oriented view has been argued to be a central element of the emergence of a sense of happiness (Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021). In addition, the CV experience also advanced a collective mindset in terms of spreading the experiences and willingness to engage CV within the surrounding social environment such as among co-workers. It resulted in concrete actions. The managers supporting CV activities in companies should create opportunities for individuals to share about the experience in concrete ways, such as in communications about volunteering or how employees could engage more widely in CV activity.

In terms of the rational to emotional mindset transition, our study revealed that CV indeed offer volunteers opportunities to engage in emotionally deep experiences, both by being able to do good through CV but also in being a member of an organization engage in concrete CSR activities. Positive emotional experiences, being a key element in the emergence of happiness (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005), were strong throughout our data. As our analysis indicated, responsibility and social and environmental concerns, however, are not merely about emotions, but also about knowledge that increases awareness of sustainability issues. Thus, CV appeared to extend cognitive awareness but also to strongly strengthen the emotional aspect of responsibility among the CV participants. We suggest that CV is a way to create sustainable happiness through two dimensions: mindset transitions moving from individual to collective and from rational to emotional, identified from the earlier literature (Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021).

In addition, however, our analysis also revealed an important third transition, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life which we describe as from actual to potential. This process is a transition from being to becoming; actual represents the being state while potential is the becoming state (Nelson, 2015). In the previous literature, life as a project of becoming has been suggested to be a strong indicator of a happy life (Şimşek, 2009, p. 511). Moreover, becoming is a journey with meaning and purpose, and it is also a continuous journey, while being is specific space-time snapshots (Nelson, 2015). Based on our findings, volunteers can become or obtain something such as becoming a more responsible citizen or making a difference in beneficiaries' lives. This finding is in line with the human development that is critical for human flourishing and happiness. In human life there is a being-becoming gap between “the ways things are, and the way things should be” that is bridged by development and moving towards something different from what we are (Marquez, 2006, p. 151). In other words, our potential to become is linked to our actual being (Gibbs, 2014).

Earlier in this study we discussed how happiness derives from three key characteristics: knowledge, freedom and virtue (Gavin and Mason, 2004). On the basis of our empirical insights, we suggest that these characteristics relate to the third identified transition, from actual to potential, because through CV companies provide employees an opportunity to “spend their days not only earning a good living but also feeling as if they are contributing to the ‘greater good’” (Gavin and Mason, 2004). Employees feel happiness because they move toward becoming a better citizen and a more responsible and altruistic employee (Gavin and Mason, 2004).

In the CV activities, employees acquired new knowledge and they learned about other people. This extends the previous studies which suggest that in our contemporary life, happiness is highly related to becoming, so that there is no room for “to be or not to be” but only “to become or not to become” (Şimşek, 2009, p. 511). For human beings there is always a connection between being and becoming, between constancy and change, which leads to human development (DeRobertis, 2021). In our data, during the CV activities, volunteers develop themselves and increase their awareness and consciousness. In other words, they transcend themselves, and this transcendental awareness and consciousness leads to self-actualization and happiness, according to Amram (2005). The tendency to repeat CV in our data indicates that employees first do concrete work such as CV, and then they acquire more knowledge and awareness that reveal and uncover their potential for taking pro-social roles and responsibilities. This finding is in line with a previous study by Supanti et al. (2015) who found that CV as a form of CSR engagement reveals and develops potential capabilities among employees involved in these activities.

In our analysis volunteers experience the freedom to participate in the CV projects and choose the activity to participate in. They see a need for help and move towards that need. In other words, they try to complete something, thus finding happiness. This resonates with the claim that “all happiness is rooted in an experience of incomplete completion” (DeRobertis, 2016, p. 76, italics original). This completion is important because in addition to having a positive feeling and well-being in the work environment, happiness is related to the success of a project (Krasnopolskaya, 2014). As we discussed earlier, moral character is one of the characteristics that leads to happiness. Our data demonstrates that CV is an action that develops the character of the volunteers as moral agents by becoming responsible citizens (Nguyen and Crossan, 2022).

Concerning virtue, the data also indicated that for volunteers, the type of activity is not important. It is rather the nature of the CV that is inspiring and provides them with opportunities for becoming. This is supported by previous studies which argued that “for the process of becoming a person to unfold one must be able find a milieu in which to act and grow according to one's truest nature, which entails bringing one's most genuine, prosocial, value-oriented potentials to realization” (Winthrop, 1961 cited in DeRobertis, 2021, p. 23–24). CV as a prosocial activity leads to happiness because it opens unlimited horizons of possibility that move in the direction of an “always more to come” (DeRobertis, 2016, p. 77). The value-laden nature of CV fosters moral virtue in employees. Moral virtue is in becoming. As Landes (2014, p. 160) correctly points out, “a virtuous person would need to cultivate a practical wisdom (phrónēsis) in order to negotiate values and norms in a productive and responsible way, a non-virtuous person withdraws from relations and becoming, and a vicious person attempts to freeze becoming or to block alternatives within the metastable set of possibilities.”

We also found that the future also represents an essential aspect in sustainable happiness because becoming is related to the future. It is about creating or changing something (Nelson, 2015), to become something other than what somebody has been (DeRobertis, 2021). This future-orientation and intention to change is seen in our data in the volunteers' intentions for CV continuation. This continuation gives them an opportunity to exercise what they want to become. This is in line with the existing research that shows happiness is situated in an open-ended becoming (DeRobertis, 2016) because “human becoming never ceases” (Di Paolo and De Jaegher, 2022, p. 244).

Participating in CV increases employees' happiness (Gorovei, 2020) because they become more involved in a CSR program, experience a greater sense of identity and become independent in their sphere of influence (Krasnopolskaya, 2014). CV creates possibilities for becoming which is important in the transition to a sustainable level of happiness and well-being. Figure 1 represents the three transitions towards sustainable happiness. These transitions are interconnected and cultivate the state of becoming as a historically human aspiration. As Strasser (1997, cited in DeRobertis, 2016, p. 75) has argued, “individuals, communities, nations, and cultures are in the perpetual process of becoming, making a strict taxonomy of happiness.”

6. Conclusions

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from employees' perspective (Raab, 2020; Colantonio, 2009), the present study has focused on examining the way that CV, as one form of CSR, can create sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Our study concludes, firstly, that CV allows individual employee volunteers to change their mindsets from individual towards collective and from rational towards emotional, both of which have been identified as key dimensions of the emergence of sustainable happiness in previous literature (Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021). Thus, CV can be considered a happiness management tool. In addition to these two dimensions, our study also identified a third dimension that allows us to understand the way CV can create sustainable happiness at a deeper level. CV can be seen as the starting point for employees in their journey from being towards becoming. Becoming can be regarded as an endless process, and it involves a continuous transition towards something more than what someone is now. The journey of becoming is, first, an exploration to discover deeper emotions, thus moving from a rational mindset to an emotional mindset; and second, it is a constant shift from an individual to a collective mindset. In the ongoing process of becoming, people discover new lands of the unknown that have the potential to make a change and difference. They find happiness because of the new horizons of possible development (DeRobertis, 2016). Becoming never rests on the idea of stability and the present, so it relates to the dynamics of the future and is located on the path to sustainable happiness. For sustainable happiness, people need to make a new pattern of activities, such as CV, to generate fresh positive experience in order to achieve a higher level of happiness (Sheldon et al., 2010). This higher level of happiness “requires us to examine who we should become and who we are becoming while we are reflecting” (Nguyen and Crossan, 2022, p. 185).

Our study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management (e.g. Şimşek, 2009; Sánchez-Vázquez and Sánchez-Ordóñez, 2019; Chia et al., 2020; Bhojani and Kurucz, 2021) by identifying a third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a being to becoming state and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. Being is renewed by becoming because becoming is about a movement to create positive change towards a better future (Nelson, 2015). Through CV employees have the potential to create this positive change leading to maximizing employees' potential and happiness (Gazzola and Mella, 2017). This contribution re-emphasizes the following argument made by Nelson (2015, p. 5): “the more abstraction into self-awareness, reflection and change towards a future potential [becoming], the less fixed of a self-concept in the permanence of now that resists or fears change [being]”. The positive changes employees made through CV are associated with increases in well-being and sustainable happiness (Bao and Lyubomirsky, 2014).

The present study also contributes to the existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. While the large number of benefits achievable by volunteers and organizations engaging in CV has received extensive research attention (Plewa et al., 2015; Haski-Leventhal et al., 2019), happiness has remained somewhat less explored. So far, CV has often been seen as rationally and cognitively organized and implemented, but our study suggests that CV can create happiness when emphasizing the becoming aspect (emotional, embodied) and raising it from the individual to the relational level.

The present study suggests several managerial implications. Companies' strategic activities to engage with society through CV can be part of happiness management because participating in those activities affects how employees experience the workplace. There are some issues to address when considering CV as a CSR strategy tool to improve sustainable happiness management. While organizing the activities, managers should consider how to help the early, active participants to share their experience and how to make the activity continue and grow into becoming a collective experience. Managers should also create space for volunteering employees to share and reflect on the volunteering experience and connected emotions (Nguyen and Crossan, 2022) to be able to shift from rational thinking towards an emotional experience of sustainable happiness. An important managerial contribution is that CV can create an experience which opens the route for imagining the future possibilities of becoming something else than what a person is now, and in doing so create the possibility for sustainable happiness. This can be supported through giving volunteers the possibility to continue CV not simply as a one-off activity, but to make it more frequent. Volunteering was a kind of triggering event for growth towards sustainable happiness, and for that process to continue there needs to be continuous support and resources, such as time to do volunteering from managers.

In terms of limitations, the present study needs to be assessed through the limitations resulting from our empirical choices. To allow this, we have carefully explained the critical choices made and the contextual issues such as the organizations and their CV activities. However, the crucial part of the research phenomenon, happiness itself, represents an empirical phenomenon that is difficult to capture empirically. However, to capture happiness from the empirical data, we conducted a thorough conceptual analysis based on the literature.

Regarding future research, we see it as important to investigate whether there is variation in how volunteers experience happiness connected to volunteering activity. Although not directly in our focus, our data gave some indication of this. Raab (2020) has found that elderly employees' workplace happiness experience may differ from younger colleagues. The experience of younger workers, so-called Generation Z, in particular may vary as there is evidence that they are more aware of sustainability than previous generations (Gaidhani et al., 2019).