Psychological Empowerment: A Case Study

2.2 Happiness

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of wellbeing defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy ( Diener, 2000; Wallis, 2005). Ruchi and Ravindra (2014) defined happiness as a emotional or mental state of wellbeing characterized by pleasant as well as positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy where as White (2010) and Ryff (1995) emphasised happiness as a dimension of wellbeing. Religious thinkers and philosophers generally explains happiness in terms of flourshing and living a good life, rather than simply as an emotion. Happy people are healthy people. Happy people live longer and enjoy a greater quality of life. They function at a higher level, utilizing their personal

Psychological empowerment encourages employees to think that they are capable of accomplishing their tasks, developing meaning from the task, and they have some impact on their work environment. Spreitzer (1995) defined psychological empowerment as a motivational construct manifested in four cognitions that is; meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. He argued that these four dimensions are necessary to constitute the overall construct of psychological empowerment; any lack of single dimension decreases the overall extent of perceived empowerment.

a. Meaning: Meaning is the perceived value of a work or task.

b. Competence: Competence (self-efficacy) defined as the extent to which an individual believes that he or she has the necessary skills to perform the organizational activities.

c. Self-determination: is an individual’s choice of initiating and regulating actions.

d. Impact: Impact is the degree to which an individual perceives that he or she has some influence on his or her working

These facets of wellbeing, have been found to have certain predictable consequenceslike self confidence, leadership, active engagement ans sociability. Hence in other words positive affect produce a state that appears to be similar to psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment includes psychological feelings of competence, energy and the desire to act. It consists of both the actual ability to control one’s environment (external empowerment) and the feeling that one can do so (internal empowerment), which is influenced by psychological wellbeing (Deepa, 2005). Many research shows the wellbeing program has impact on empowerment of an individual, as these programs are enriched with seeks to empower participants through personal transformation that involves harmonising physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of life and applying this to practical, day-to-day life (Austrailia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torrestrail Islander Health Research ). In order to be empowered, people need to possess the resource to reach their goals, and they also need to have the psychological mind set that they can and will reach the goals. Thus objectives resources, feelings of self efficay and positive emotions all work together to creat empowerment (Biswas et al.,