Over the past decade, societal happiness has increasingly been considered important to public policy initiatives globally, supported by interdisciplinary scholarly efforts spanning the social sciences, economics, and public health. Curiously, despite for‐profit corporations being core social institutions of modern societies, scant attention has been given to the social role and responsibilities of corporations in relation to societal happiness. In this article, we review and integrate research from positive psychology and related disciplines to examine happiness as a social outcome of corporate activity. We propose that corporations have a social responsibility to respect, preserve, and advance people's right to, and experience of, happiness—which we term CSR for Happiness. Within the existing literature, stakeholder happiness has generally been narrowly conceptualized in hedonic terms and has failed to consider the broader impacts of corporate activities on societal happiness. Drawing on advances in psychological theory and research, we provide a holistic conceptualization of happiness, which includes objective, subjective, hedonic, and eudaimonic dimensions of happiness. We offer an integrative conceptual framework, which includes the macro‐to‐micro and micro‐to‐macro pathways through which corporations directly and indirectly impact upon societal happiness. Finally, we consider implications of happiness research for the intersections of business and society.

Mindfulness, meditation, and other practices that form contemplative interventions are increasingly offered in workplaces to support employee mental health. Studies have reported benefits across various populations, yet researchers have expressed concerns that adoption of such interventions has outpaced scientific evidence. We reappraise the extant literature by meta‐analytically testing the efficacy of contemplative interventions in reducing psychological distress in employees (meta‐analysed set: k = 119; N = 6,044). Complementing other reviews, we also examine a range of moderators and the impact of biases that could artificially inflate effect sizes. Results suggested interventions were generally effective in reducing employee distress, yielding small to moderate effects that were sustained at last follow‐up. Effects were moderated by the type of contemplative intervention offered and the type of control group utilized. We also found evidence of publication bias, which is likely inflating estimated effects. Uncontrolled single‐sample studies were more affected by bias than were large or randomized controlled trial studies. Adjustments for publication bias lowered overall effects. Overall, our review supports the effectiveness of contemplative interventions in reducing employee distress, but there is a need for proactive strategies to mitigate artificially inflated effect sizes to avoid the misapplication of contemplative interventions in work settings.

While the past decade has brought growing interest in and focus on the subjective wellbeing of society, there have been few empirical studies that have explored the social responsibilities, roles, and contributions of business, despite the pervasiveness of businesses as one of the core social institutions of modern societies. Through a survey of 1,319Australians, this study examines public perspectives of the social responsibilities of business to enhance subjective wellbeing. The findings suggest that the public does believe that businesses have some social responsibilities for subjective wellbeing. Exploratory analyses suggest that support is stronger for less privileged segments of the Australian public, and that a greater degree of social responsibility is expected for high-proximity stakeholders (e.g., employees) than low-proximity stakeholders (e.g., customers). Further, business activities that enhance subjective wellbeing may translate into desirable instrumental outcomes relevant to business performance. While findings need to be confirmed in other samples and using alternative study designs, the results suggest that ongoing policy debates on the various social determinants of societal wellbeing might benefit from incorporating consideration of the roles and responsibilities of business.

Purpose Drawing upon a contractarian lens of corporate social responsibility (CSR), this study aims to explore community construals of happiness and evaluates conceptual boundaries of CSR for happiness. Design/methodology/approach Using a mixed-methods design, natural language processing and thematic analysis techniques were used to analyse large volumes of textual survey data collected from over 1,000 research participants through an online survey. Findings Results indicated that lay construals of happiness were primarily defined in terms of socioeconomic conditions and psychoemotional experiences. In explicating the boundary conditions, community perceptions regarding the extent of businesses’ social responsibilities for happiness were evidenced in five themes: that businesses have a responsibility not to harm happiness, a responsibility to enable conditions for happiness to occur, a responsibility to exercise awareness of happiness implications in decision-making, a responsibility for happiness that is limited by strategic purpose and resource capability and a responsibility for happiness that is limited by stakeholder proximity. Originality/value This study contributes to the theoretical and empirical foundation of CSR for happiness while simultaneously developing and applying a novel approach for processing and analysing large volumes of qualitative survey-based data.