Measuring organizational happiness in higher education - a data-driven approach

Abstract

The measurement of organizational satisfaction is a popular topic in organizational science; however, less attention is given to organizational happiness. There are very few measuring tools designed to evaluate organizational happiness. While the value-mediating role of higher education is indisputable, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to address organizational happiness in the context of higher education. In addition, this study proposes new data-driven approaches to analyze patterns of answers (i.e. regarding individual happiness); therefore, the relationships among individuals, groups, and organizational happiness can be better analyzed. This study is based on survey data; nevertheless, in addition to measuring organizational happiness in Hungarian higher education, this paper proposes using infrequently used data-driven approaches to determine who feels happy/unhappy in what areas.

Keywords:

• organizational happiness
• patterns of answers
• higher education
• biclustering

Jel codes:

• A23
• C38
• I23
• I31

Public interest statement

The measurement of organizational satisfaction is a popular topic in organizational science; however, less attention is given to organizational happiness. There are very few measuring tools designed to evaluate organizational happiness. While the value-mediating role of higher education is indisputable, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to address organizational happiness in the context of higher education. In addition, this study proposes new data-driven approaches to analyze patterns of answers (i.e., regarding individual happiness); therefore, the relationships among individuals, groups, and organizational happiness can be better analyzed. This study is based on survey data. The proposed approach has implications for scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers as well.

Acknowledgments

The research is supported by the Research Centre at the Faculty of Business and Economics (No PE-GTK-GSKK A095000000-4) of the University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary).

Code and Data Availability

We used R Studio, where the R notebook file contains both scripts and anonymous data sources. The R notebook is available upon request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Consent to participate

Yes.

Consent to Publication

Yes.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University of Pannonia [PE-GTK-GSKK A095000000-4].

Notes on contributors

Zsolt Tibor Kosztyán

Zsolt T. Kosztyán, Ph.D. habil. His research interest is the development of methodologies to manage complex management problems and systems relating to mathematical models and algorithms of project management, production, maintenance, and network science..

Tibor Csizmadia

Tibor Csizmadia, Ph.D. habil. His area of research interest and expertise includes quality management in higher education. He has conducted research in academic and industrial settings.

Beáta Sz.G. Pató

Beáta Sz. G. Pató, Ph.D. habil. Her research and development projects are supported by US and European Union grants. Her research focus is job descriptions, competencies, SCM, logistics, and an expert in these fields as well.

Szilárd Berke

Szilárd Berke, Ph.D. habil. His research interests include leadership, organizational behavior, and strategic management.

Ildiko Neumanné-Virág

Ildikó Neumanné-Virág, Ph.D. Her research fields are European integration, international economics, and international trade and their statistical analysis and modeling, such as the gravity model, which has empirical success in explaining various types of flows, including migration, tourism, and international trade.

Andrea Bencsik

Andrea Bencsik, Ph.D. habil. Her research and teaching areas are knowledge-change and human resources management.