Guest editorial: Happiness management: key factors for sustainability and organizational communication in the age of Industry 4.0

Happiness is a personal and social concept that we all aspire to at some point. In our lives, it can come to be considered as a tool that facilitates human development in its various individual and collective dimensions (Ahumada-Tello, 2019; Ravina-Ripoll et al., 2019a). It is even a topic that has led to quantitative organizational indices that assess the population’s happiness and wellbeing. From this perspective, happiness is not only a utopian guide or an inspirational attribute but also becomes an organizing principle to improve governance and public policy development (Esmark, 2019; Acharya, 2021). This is how, in a competitive and complex environment, happiness can promote the development of a nation if it is oriented toward improving the productive results of human capital from the integration of actions by companies and governments to raise the perception of this construct (Ahumada-Tello, 2017; Orekhov et al., 2020). It is from the advent of an approach based on human capital that the need arises to recover a perspective based on people as an essential asset in companies. Under this approach, concepts such as subjective wellbeing and happiness are accessed, which are analyzed as key factors for economic development in a global space where, due to the accelerated emergence of technological and scientific capabilities in production processes, the focus on the processes, tools and economic and technological results above the aspirations, perceptions and satisfaction of the members of the organization (McConvill, 2020). In this way, happiness management has emerged as a critical element for the development of organizations in this new century. The state of wellbeing has been part of the economic growth policies of the most developed countries. This concept is associated with happiness as a key element that allows individuals to find a natural balance between their work and their personal, family, social and emotional life (Dumitrescu, 2020). Like all conventions of human nature, it is part of the culture of practically every social group. Despite the positions that philosophers, poets, diplomats and even politicians may have, there is always a level of anxiety that has to do with the focus on this concept, mainly on the subject of good governance, which applies to the extension of individual perception to a collective one (Marsico, 2020). The need then arises to consider issues such as the members and decision-makers within the organization and the context in which corporate governance adheres to the study of happiness as a growth strategy in the organization (McConvill, 2020). In the same way, the value of participation is incorporated into this perspective because the role of shareholder members has been studied, and their involvement is among a limited number of factors that have a significant correlation with the level of happiness that they generate. Other fundamental aspects that have been included in the study of happiness are those that address health issues and the promotion of physical activities that improve people’s quality of life. In the literature, we find studies that have carried out the analysis of happiness perception indices so that they can be assessed from the development of strategies that encourage people to start or increase the practice of exercises that improve their health, as well as the development of healthy habits that help increase people’s abilities and finally based at the University of develop their self-confidence and look for alternatives that confirm the result of a deep analysis where, through the use of quality of life, areas for improvement can be found (Lee and Yoon, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021; Danish and Nawaz, 2022). We must not forget that, in the past two years, the COVID-19 outbreak has occurred in the world and that it has caused serious challenges for governments, companies and people in general. The environment surrounding organizations, people and governments, in general, has been complex and with a high level of challenges to sustain socioeconomic operations. The effects of this pandemic have not only attacked international markets and directly impacted the economic growth of practically the entire world. Nevertheless, they have also had a high emotional effect on individuals who bring their concerns and feelings to social networks. These public demonstrations can help assess alert actions as natural affections to happiness and announcements of opening of activities to improve the same construct considerably. It is, therefore, important to highlight that the regions with the greatest vulnerability to the virus are the ones that have deteriorated the most in their perception of happiness, and it is immediately manifested in the applications that individuals use to communicate on social networks. (Duan et al., 2021; Feng and Zhong, 2021). To conclude this approach to the phenomenon of people’s happiness and especially its effect on the state of wellbeing and its implications for organizations, it is important to consider that there are other aspects where the study of this construct requires an adequate analysis. These include information and communication technologies, which have influenced human beings over time by disseminating knowledge, saving work time, facilitating communications, increasing communication networks, as well as recently facilitating access to information through the use of artificial intelligence and increasing the intellectual capacity of individuals and organizations alike (Suhaimi et al., 2019; You, 2021). In addition to growing productivity, improving transparency and governance, being a fundamental axis in the construction of social capital and the empowerment of individuals through the construction of knowledge, they have also become a latent risk for the privacy of individuals, they have affected the labor structure and disappeared jobs, they have also impacted behavior habits in terms of a sedentary lifestyle and physical activity and finally, they have generated a new form of social classism where the digital world is now the way to differentiate groups. All these aspects have been evaluated in different environments to see how ICTs have built a new notion of happiness and the difference between countries (Maiti and Awasthi, 2020; Nun ˜ezBarriopedro et al., 2020; Ravina-Ripoll et al., 2019b; Ahumada-Tello et al., 2018). ICTs have also impacted the development and planning of cities as an alternative to improve the quality of life (Zheng and Yang, 2019; Souza et al., 2019; Musa et al., 2020) and in the use of green technologies (Anand and Gaur, 2019). The study of happiness now needs to be covered to carry out the proposal of strategies in organizations and their governance scheme. People are the essential value of a company, basically because they are responsible for the development of knowledge and, therefore, the acquisition of value in the products and services offered to the customer market. This element is highly complex, and the study of its motivations, emotions and intentions has been relegated to productivity and profitability. However, in a complex environment such as the one now observed globally, it is required that people and their perceptions be taken into consideration to increase companies’ survival.