Free Management Dissertations - One Means Of Conceptualising Well-being Is In An Individual Psychological
One means of conceptualising well-being is in an individual psychological manner where the subject is linked with economic models in that individuals make rational responses in changing their behaviour due to changing prices and incomes. Another traditional aspect of the subjective activity of well-being focuses on the measurement of well-being for social policy purposes which historically has been concerned with tax return, pensions, use of health care resources and work environment affairs, (David & Smeeding, 1985). From this point of view there are vital implications in the sense of the psychological subject in human resource management and studies dealing with organisational behaviour since people as the essential elements performing tasks in these contexts. For example the recent broaden-and-build model has been designed to provide relevant evidence towards explaining the possible interactive role of physiological well-being (PWB) associated with job satisfaction and job performance which demonstrates significant relationships to employee performance, (Wright and Cropanzano, 2004). This is to say illustrating the strength of the correlation between the happier an employee feeling with the more productive they are in their everyday job performance.
Based on this viewpoint then human resource management approaches have aimed at building management models which draw from and benefit from PWB in order to improve an organisation’s performance in terms of quality and quantity. A principal point of consideration in this then is the environment in which people are working in as detrimental work environments pose potential health risks to individuals. Health risks can be seen in terms of the physical harm done to people’s bodies but also as having negative influences in a psychological manner including depression and stress which results in poor job performance and lowered productivity. Thus PWB suggests that a better and healthier working environment will be able to make employee feels more comfortable and happier through health gains in harm avoidance in the work place. In HRM literature environment not only includes physical environments such as machinery, organisational structure but also intangible contexts like organisational culture and leadership styles and these are equally as important in terms of employee well-being. Therefore Beardwell, Holden and Claydon (2004) argue that appropriate organisational structures in terms of physical power distance as well as intangible distance such as leadership style are important in contributing to employees job performance.
