Applying Well-being Assessment for Service Design

Abstract

Service design is transformative when it has a measurable, even optimizing, positive affect on human well-being. Any prospect for such felicitous outcomes, however, requires accurate assessment or measurement of well-being in and for target populations. Such assessment raises two immediate issues: conceptualization (How should well-being be conceptually operationalized?) and measurement (Given an operationalization of well-being, how can it be measured?). We begin to explore and address both questions in this paper by reviewing existing conceptualizations of well-being and then by describing the relevance of well-being measurement (and it methodologies) which are presently available.

Full text

APPLYING WELL-BEING ASSESSMENT FOR SERVICE DESIGN
Margeret Halla, Steven O. Kimbroughb and Christof Weinhardta
aKarlsruhe Service Research Institute, Germany
bUniversity of Pennsylvania, USA
ABSTRACT
Service design is transformative when it has a measurable, even
optimizing, positive affect on human well-being. Any prospect for such
felicitous outcomes, however, requires accurate assessment or
measurement of well-being in and for target populations. Such
assessment raises two immediate issues: conceptualization (How should
well-being be conceptually operationalized?) and measurement (Given an
operationalization of well-being, how can it be measured?). We begin to
explore and address both questions in this paper by reviewing existing
conceptualizations of well-being and then by describing the relevance of
well-being measurement (and it methodologies) which are presently
available.
INTRODUCTION
There has been an upwelling of attention directed at understanding and
measuring well-being. Human flourishing, a marriage of well-being and
personal happiness, is being researched as a conceptual and practical
compliment to myriad macro and micro economic indicators, for mental
health assessments, and as policy- and decision-making tools. A
prominent example is the Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress, formed by Nicholas Sarkozy during his
recent term as president of France (Stiglitz et al., 2009). This working
group and report are the most notable examples of reconfiguring
“standard” measurements like GDP (gross domestic product) and related
constructs as measures of national progress and well-being. Due in part
to its provocative findings, on-going efforts are in place worldwide,
including the recently concluded Commission on Development, Welfare
and Quality of Life in Germany (Deutsche Bundestag, 2013).
Our specific interest in the study of well-being is occasioned by questions
arising in a research initiative on service design and management, viz.,
How can organizations discover how best to serve and engage their
stakeholders? Can the effects of organizational policy changes be
estimated prospectively? If so, how? Upon investigation, it quickly
became clear that it would be necessary to go beyond the “happy-
productive worker” thesis (Taris & Schreurs 2009). Merely assessing
stakeholder affect towards particular policies and arrangements is

insufficient. We find that general well-being is increasingly recognized as
a strategic indicator in a plethora of business-critical domains including
health, productivity, turnover, absenteeism, customer loyalty, profitability,
and overall cohesion (Diener and Chan 2010; Harter et al. 2003).
Institutions are finding it in their interests to monitor and respond
holistically to indicators of both happiness and well-being among their
stakeholders. Benefits accrue on the positive side (e.g., empowering and
encouraging top talent) as well as on the negative side (avoiding
unforeseen developments and the prospect of supporting actions to
mitigate them). Given this, the application of transformative service
design and management becomes more complicated (and more
interesting). Two urgent questions arise: (1) How should the concept of
well-being be constructed for service management and design? and (2)
What data already exists fulfilling this measurement and how were the
data obtained?
DELINATION OF HUMAN FLOURISHING
This research addresses the psychological construct of human flourishing
as a measurement of well-being. The construct is standardly understood
as combining both the feeling of happiness (hedonic well-being) and the
existence of conditions constituting or promoting a good life (eudaimonic
well-being) (Ryan and Deci, 2001, Huppert and So, 2011). Whereas
hedonism is the more thoroughly researched agenda across the social
sciences, there is notable hesitation to design services and policies based
on seemingly capricious assessments of personal happiness or even
pleasure (Ahn et al. 2011). In contrast, operationalizing eudaimonia (the
state of having eudaimonic well-being) is problematic, since the entirety of
conditions conducive to human flourishing are too varied, subtle, and
difficult to measure accurately. Due to these challenges, well-being is
thus delineated as the multi-layered human flourishing for use in decision-
making or as a consideration in service design.
CONSTRUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL WELLNESS
We propose a human-centric wellness system which holistically
measures hedonistic and eudaimonic flourishing for transformative
institutions. Figure 2 illustrates the service environment of organizational
well-being measurement as a modification of the transformative service
research framework in Anderson et al. (2012). Organizationally
sponsored well-being measures can help to create and maintain
transformative organizations (Rosenbaum et al. 2011). This includes the
interaction of personal and community assessment and environmental
factors affecting well-being, information which is usually off-limits due to
privacy concerns.

Figure 2: Well-being’s transformative service environment
Such a comprehensive service system builds customized reports based
on user attributes which actively complement the attainment of personal,
thus institutional, well-being. Strategic actors can access a wellness
management dashboard giving near realtime feedback on the areas of
aggregated health and wellness, with open space for recommended
assistance in the fulfilment of individual and institutional well-being.
EXPANDING THE VISION: WELLNESS AS A KEY PERFORMANCE
INDICATOR
Our research program, which is underway, and our proposed system
combines existing, validated measures for organizational management.
We have only described the starting point. The system serves as a
platform for testing alternative measures of well-being, and tracking
changes in behaviour and sentiment. Thus we envision delivering a
dynamic capability for institutions to monitor and track well-being, and
respond with appropriate policies. The platform itself will be used to refine
how well-being is measured. Increasing the wellness of individuals, and
leadership capability to foster wellness organizationally co-creates the
conditions necessary for healthy, happy institutions.
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