Exploring the effects of employee and organisational characteristics on two models of employee well-being within an organisational health research framework

[Abstract]Research within clinical, organisational and community contexts, generally equates an individual’s sense of well-being with the absence of adverse psychological states. More recently, proponents of ‘positive psychology’ have drawn attention to positive affective states, like happiness and joy. The focus on affective states relates to a Subjective Well-Being (SWB) approach to well-being. In contrast, a Psychological Well-Being (PWB) approach considers the role of mastery and efficacy beliefs, a sense of autonomy and positive relatedness with others, as separate dimensions that are related to SWB. Two studies tested the hypothesis that two affect dimensions of SWB, Positive (PA) and Negative (NA) Affect, were independently related to PWB. In both studies, factor analysis differentiated between items from two SWB and PWB measures, whilst correlations between the well-being factors were moderate. A preliminary study reported PWB to be a significant predictor of SWB after controlling for Demographics and Negative Life Events. A lack of association between Negative Life Events and PA suggests independent effects for two broad SWB dimensions. Using an Organisational Health Research Framework (OHRF), a study of high-school teachers further controlled for a five-factor model of personality and both Positive and Negative Organisational Climate. PWB was still identified as a significant predictor of SWB after controlling for demographic, organisational climate and personality variables. Independent effects on positive and negative SWB dimensions were also identified. Assessing change of both dependent and independent variables with two waves of data supported the independence of SWB outcomes and the strong effect of PWB on SWB across time. Higher levels of PWB were mostly related to better SWB outcomes (lower negative and higher positive SWB states). Although the OHRF proposes reciprocal effects of employee wellbeing and personality on perceptions of climate, the strongest effects were those reported whereby organisational climate and individual characteristics, being mostly independent of each other, strongly predicted employee SWB within and across waves. Implications for future employee well-being research are that organisational interventions need to address reducing negative and improving positive facets of the organisation. Individual interventions which promote PWB components would appear to be a most important avenue by which to improve employee SWB, by reducing NA and improving PA states