Helping others is the origin of happiness?! The serving experiences of corporate EAP volunteers

• Main Authors: Yen-Chen Hsu, 徐妍榛
• Other Authors: Dr. Ya-Hui Lien
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/kdg6pd

博士 === 國立中正大學 === 企業管理研究所 === 103 === Although attaining happiness is an important lifelong goal for many people, surprisingly little research has stressed on how happiness can be increased and then sustained. Drawing on the affective events theory, the author suggests that EAP corporate volunteers’ helping behavior for their coworkers can intrigue these volunteers’ emotion reaction. Cognitive appraisal theory was used to explain the raisons of the EAP corporate volunteers’ emotion reactions. A qualitative interview study was used to explore the helping events and cognitive appraisals that elicit specific discrete emotions during giving helps to their coworkers. Models were grounded from the analysis of the helping experiences of 15 EAP corporate volunteers with 27 helping events. The results showed that helping coworkers solve their problem was most likely to trigger positive emotions. The configuration of the appraisals, such as self-agency with the goal achievement and ego-identity may play an important role for sustainably increasing happiness. These two cognitive appraisals also contributed to explain why some initially negative helping events ultimately become a positive experience. By unpacking the serving experiences of EAP corporate volunteers, we discussed the issues of helping others and the pursuit of happiness. The implications of the study for managers to design the effective strategies for employees to pursuit sustainably happiness are also discussed.