Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Authors
- 1 Introduction: Developing Qualitative Research into Happiness and Wellbeing
- Part I Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Theories, Debates and Issues
- Part II Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Communities, Biographies and Identities
- Part III Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Methodological Innovations
- Index
11 - ‘Show Me What Makes You Happy at Work’: Visualizing Happiness in the Workplace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Authors
- 1 Introduction: Developing Qualitative Research into Happiness and Wellbeing
- Part I Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Theories, Debates and Issues
- Part II Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Communities, Biographies and Identities
- Part III Qualitative Research into Happiness/Wellbeing: Methodological Innovations
- Index
Summary
Introduction
What does happiness look like? How can we capture happiness to analyse the complex and often fleeting experience in order to really understand the phenomena? These were the two guiding questions when I started researching workplace happiness for a PhD. Having undertaken earlier quantitative studies into happiness (Suojanen, 2013), I had become convinced that numerical representations of happiness generated by quantitative surveys do not tell us enough about happiness.
I had recently moved to Edinburgh and as I was sharing the exciting, happy moments in the picturesque medieval city by sending pictures to friends abroad, I started thinking of visualizing happiness in research. We live in a visual world and the current accounts of postmodern culture emphasize the increasingly visual aspects of our lives (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010). As Belk (2017: 79) states, ‘the saturation of visual representations in our lives has never been greater’. There are global trends towards a greater role for, and new forms of, visual information. The arts, social media and advertisements ‘render the world in visual terms’ (Rose, 2012: 2). Also, as the focus in my study was on young employees, who are accustomed to sharing their lives in visual ways via social media (Millennial Impact Report, 2013), a photographic methodology would be an essential part of my data collection.
Despite the popularity of visual methodologies in organizational studies (Shortt and Warren, 2017), few studies had applied them to happiness research, and I noticed various challenges to overcome. An initial revelation was that photos alone were insufficient to understand the complexity of people's accounts of happiness. I wished to hear the actual stories behind the images from people themselves, to provide interpretations of happiness experiences documented by interviewees. Hence, the notion of ‘creating synergy’ (Warren, 2002: 236) between visual and narrative methods.
When I began my research, happiness was only beginning to be seen as an influential variable in employment relationships. Even though there were many studies on work satisfaction and wellbeing in a broader sense, relatively little attention was paid to workplace happiness (Fisher, 2010: 384; Thin, 2012). Happiness at work, as a distinct concept to job satisfaction and commitment (Van de Voorde et al, 2012), was not widely studied, apart from exceptions, such as Peter Warr's (1987) work on happiness in the workplace.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Researching HappinessQualitative, Biographical and Critical Perspectives, pp. 219 - 240Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021