In virtually every textbook and definition in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology, we are taught about the ultimate criterion (e.g., Cascio & Aguinis, 2011; Levy, 2010; Rogelberg, 2007), which is understood, and operationally defined as job performance. For example, in an I-O textbook, Levy (2010) states that “the ultimate criterion encompasses all aspects of performance that define success on the job” (p. 84). In the Encyclopedia of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (Rogelberg, 2007), the ultimate criterion is synonymous with “the full domain of employees’ performance” (p. 132). This is also echoed in the field of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources (OBHR), where a popular textbook emphasizes the term “ultimate criterion” as the “full domain of performance” (Cascio & Aguinis, 2011, p. 54). Colloquially, this is often referred to in accounting terms as the “bottom line” for organizational performance, where the emphasis is on the profitability of the organization. This in itself is the performance metric and serves as the ultimate criterion for organizational leadership, stakeholders, and stockholders. Despite recognizing the limitations of equating the ultimate criterion with performance, we have somehow continued to adopt this stance and have reflexively passed this perspective on from one generation of scholars to the next. It has become as rote as dogma.

The issue of the ultimate criterion goes beyond a mere labeling choice or a scientific definition of terms. It illuminates that what ultimately matters—or what ultimately motivates and directs our efforts as a field (as our goal-oriented colleagues would remind us)—is job performance or organizational performance in financial terms. Practically, it means that organizational research on different topics such as recruitment, selection, training, leadership, motivation, and culture should ultimately seek to promote performance and raise the bottom line for organizations. Yet, this narrow focus ignores the many other critical organizational goals and research streams, such as occupational health and safety, work-nonwork dynamics, and diversity and inclusion, to name a few.

Is performance the be-all and end-all of our efforts in organizational research? A quick reflection on our history of seeking to define the ultimate criterion or the bottom line should give us pause. From the outset, the pioneers of organizational sciences in the USA and beyond have pushed to broaden the ultimate criterion beyond merely performance. Thorndike (1949) notes that “the ultimate criterion is the complete final goal of a particular selection or training” (p. 121). One interpretation is that all-encompassing success on the job goes beyond job performance—there are other areas that define success. Similarly, Campbell (1990) called for broadening the criterion space beyond task performance. In response to this, researchers have sought to include additional performance constructs (e.g., counterproductive behaviors and organizational citizenship behaviors) and non-performance constructs (see Ryan & Ployhart, 2014). In this regard, Cleveland and Colella (2010) have proposed that our criterion needs to include dimensions such as worker health and work-nonwork conflict, clearly indicating that there are other goals beyond performance.

Within the business accounting and sustainability conversations, this notion is also reflected in the push for the broadening conceptualization of the bottom line to consider not merely the economic but also the environmental and social dimensions, creating this idea of a “triple bottom line” (Elkington, 1998). This idea has also been cast as 3Ps—profits, people, and planet—in leading business schools (Miller, 2020). As with the discussions around ultimate criterion, there is a common theme to move beyond a simple metric of profitability to capture other important goals the field should strive toward.

The desire for a broader vision of what matters is reflected in these proposals and discussions. Yet, what could a broadened ultimate criterion be? Or what terminology can be used that succinctly communicates a broader focus beyond bottom-line profits? Historically, well-being has been put forward as a possible candidate. In the launch of the flagship journal for I-O psychology, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Chief Editor Stanley Hall and colleagues referenced the goal of “successful achievement in a given vocation” (p. 6) while also advocating for the broader goal that “findings… contribute their quota to the sum-total of human happiness; and it must appeal to every human being who is interested in increasing human efficiency and human happiness” (p. 6, Hall et al., 1917). Although performance was underscored at the inception of the Journal of Applied Psychology, human well-being was doubly emphasized. We view this as analogous to the Maslovian pyramid of needs (Maslow, 1943), where performance is the foundational base of the pyramid—but what organizations and organizational researchers should aspire toward is well-being (e.g., a state of self-actualization). In other words, performance is but a stepping stone toward well-being. This is also aligned with our role as psychologists, more generally, whose broader purpose is benefiting society and enhancing lives (American Psychological Association, 2013). Indeed, Lefkowitz (2008) has argued that “corporate economic objectives” has occluded our broader “societal responsibilities” as organizational psychologists.

This idea of contributing to societal well-being is also emphasized in the importance of management research to address “grand societal challenges” as set forth in the Academy of Management Journal (George et al., 2016). In this regard, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been put forward as a framework to guide current and future management research. The SDGs focus on conditions and contexts that promote well-being (e.g., decent work and economic growth, no poverty, affordable and clean energy), addressing structural issues that limit societal well-being (e.g., reducing inequalities), and directly enhancing well-being (e.g., good health and well-being) (George et al., 2016).

Some international perspectives have also taken a more balanced approach in recognizing the importance of psychological well-being and health within a work context—though, again—often to create conditions for more effective performance as “employees are regarded as the human capital in organisations” (Bergh, 2011, p. 344). Moreover, the criterion and criterion-related validity is ultimately about performance. For instance, in a European work psychology textbook (Arnold et al., 2005), the criterion is taught as “job performance” although the term “ultimate” is omitted (p. 175). Nevertheless, some global scholars have begun to address this historic neglect of the construct by researching psychological well-being as an outcome worthy of exploration in its own right (e.g., Coetzee & van Zyl, 2014; Day et al., 2015). Some go as far as to acknowledge employee well-being as an essential outcome to reference in criterion-related validation—alongside performance (Peeters et al., 2013). Despite this, we believe that the idea of well-being needs further explication and expansion. For instance, the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP, n.d.) on its website states that the association is contributing to “meaningful and decent work, to improve management and organizations.” Focusing on meaningful and decent work can guide researchers and organizations in their work; at the same time, we believe this vision can be broadened, clarified, and made into a rallying call.

We propose that well-being, defined succinctly as optimal functioning, should serve as the ultimate criterion for the organizational sciences. This conceptualization does not preclude performance but rather encompasses it and holistically covers many other aspects important to the organizational sciences. At the micro-level, this includes (but is not limited to) physical and mental health, safety, diversity and inclusion, work-nonwork balance, doing well at one’s job, and satisfying social relationships; at the macro-level, this includes (but is not limited to) issues of equality, addressing poverty, and economic growth. The concept of well-being spans multiple levels: individual, team, organizational, community, and societal levels. Broadening our ultimate criterion helps set our sights further to not merely improving individual and organizational performance but holistically enhancing individuals, communities, and societies.

Historical and Current Perspectives Undergirding Well-being as the Ultimate Criterion

Our perspective has not arisen de novo but has been echoed in the past. As we will discuss, optimal functioning of an organization is dependent upon its employees, consumers, environments, and the societies they inhabit. This perspective can be traced back to early in our field of human relations (Dickson & Roethlisberger, 2003) and echoed in humanistic traditions of organizational research (Lefkowitz, 2008). We propose that more recent perspectives from Psychology of Working, Critical Studies, Humanitarian Work Psychology, Occupational Health Psychology, and Positive Organizational Scholarship further emphasize particular aspects of and approaches to well-being; these serve as foundational building blocks for our thesis that well-being should serve as the ultimate criterion. Furthermore, we highlight some topic areas in present-day focus that implicitly but increasingly emphasize the notion of well-being. Illustrative examples can be seen in the meaning of work, diversity and inclusion, and corporate social responsibility.

Historical Perspectives

The adoption of performance as the ultimate criterion stems from the scientific management perspective, which was steeped in construing workers in engineering terms and manufacturing units. Hugo Münsterberg, credited as one of the founders of our field, authored the first textbook, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (Münsterberg, 1913), where he set the course of the field toward efficiency and productivity at its inception. Similarly, Frederick Taylor, a mechanical engineer by training, advocated optimizing and standardizing work to enhance efficiency, particularly along a manufacturing line (Taylor, 1911). This perspective of underscoring productivity, efficiency, and performance became dominant. In this paradigm, the worker was viewed as nothing more than a resource that could be spent and manipulated in service of production and profit. Hence, performance as the ultimate criterion is entrenched in the foundations of organizational scholarship.

What balanced the scientific management perspective was the human relations theory of management spearheaded by Elton Mayo. The Hawthorne Studies (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939) revealed that human motivation and employee-employer relationships were vital to performance. Critically, this view stressed the importance of taking into account employee well-being by emphasizing the whole person and a common set of needs people share (i.e., belonging, being liked, being respected) (Miles, 1999). Through participative leadership, people can meet these needs and be intrinsically motivated. It represented the beginning of an emphasis on well-being, albeit instrumental for performance.

Beyond Human Relations

Recent perspectives also exemplify the importance of well-being, seeking to stress well-being as the overarching central issue. Nevertheless, because the form of well-being emphasized and terminologies differ, there has not been a cohesive call for well-being as the ultimate criterion. We highlight relevant aspects from these perspectives and approaches to integrate them into a general model, as summarized in Fig. 1.

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Perspectives and approaches to well-being

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Recent Perspectives

Foremost, the Psychology of Working has sought to place work as a centerpiece in the human experience beyond what has been offered within vocational psychology, career counseling, and I-O psychology (Blustein, 2006). The call is for the conceptualization and study of the psychological experience of working for its own sake rather than working in relation to performance outcomes. One key proposal in the Psychology of Working is an “experience-near” rather than “experience-far” approach to the study of work and the lives of people at work. This has also been echoed by leading researchers calling for a person-centric approach to work research (Weiss & Rupp, 2011). Another key proposal is inclusiveness from a social-justice lens, where scholarship should include “space for poor, working class individuals as well as [those] marginalized due to their gender, sexual orientation, psychological and medical health issues, and racial or ethnic status” (Blustein, 2006, p. 26). Leveraging these two proposals, the emergence of the Psychology of Working Theory places the construct of “decent work” as the centerpiece of the empirical model, seeking to understand the predictors and outcomes of performing decent work for all (Duffy et al., 2016). This pioneering approach speaks to well-being—in particular, worker well-being—by seeking to elevate the worker experience and the necessary basic working conditions for all workers.

While Psychology of Working emphasizes the individual and their experience, Critical Studies emphasize structural dimensions in both explaining and conceptualizing well-being. In describing the intersection between critical psychology and work psychology, Prilleltensky and Stead (2011) seek to go beyond individual terms to ecological terms such as relationships, organizations, and communities. According to this critical stance, unequal power and structural inequalities are the primary explanations for lowered well-being. Therefore, the focus should be on addressing structural and ecological dimensions in terms of power, norms, and privileges to redress this issue. Some scholars have also noted that these structural disparities become internalized to affect “the formation of self-identity” (p. 600, McDonald & Bubna-Litic, 2017). From this perspective, well-being is conceptualized and understood in relation to concepts of oppression and liberation (Prilleltensky, 2008). We believe this is a vital perspective and aligns with our broader argument for well-being as the central goal—though we consider structural aspects one among multiple explanations for well-being.

Another perspective that has gained traction comes from the emerging field of Humanitarian Work Psychology (HWP), which applies I-O psychology to humanitarian issues, emphasizing how we should seek to advance humanitarian worker well-being and humanitarian work more broadly (Carr et al., 2012). Therefore, the focus is on humanitarian-related work (characterized as a community being overcome by man-made or natural challenges), although this also translates to a larger vision for decent work, gender equity, and poverty reduction. In this regard, HWP calls for us to strive for human well-being by establishing basic humanitarian conditions within and beyond the workplace.

The importance of well-being can also be seen in Occupational Health Psychology (OHP). As a field, OHP “concerns the application of psychology to improving the quality of work life, and to protecting and promoting the safety, health and well-being of workers” (CDC, 2013). While OHP traditionally focused on job stress, safety, organizational climate, and physical health conditions (Quick & Terick, 2011), there is also a growing emphasis on promoting health and wellness (Schaufeli, 2004). Importantly, the goal of OHP is not merely to generate greater levels of performance but to elevate worker well-being—both in the physical and psychological domains—and to enhance organizational conditions that support it. This trend and goal of OHP are aligned with the US nationwide initiative/program and an emerging field of Total Worker Health®, which integrates the protection of workers from health and safety hazards with the promotion of safer and healthier work in order to advance worker well-being—that is broadly defined as a state of good physical health, psychological health, and safety (NIOSH, 2016; Tamers et al., 2019).

Finally, the perspective of Positive Organizational Scholarship, which has significant roots in positive psychology, has heavily emphasized well-being. In the founding of the field of POS, Cameron et al. (2003) provided two contrasting visions. A traditional view in which productivity and wealth creation are the ultimate metrics of success, and another updated view in which “abundance and human well-being are key indicators of success” (p. 3). In other words, well-being is the ultimate criterion, a core tenet of POS. And indeed, the field of POS recognizes the “instrumental concerns” but sees them as an intermediary to the final fulfillment of what organizations should strive for. In particular, stemming from positive psychology and POS, there is a growing consensus that employee well-being is at least as central to consider as performance (given its implications for performance and beyond) (De Neve et al., 2013; Judge & Klinger, 2007; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Sonnentag, 2015; Wright & Cropanzano, 2000), and some have developed models with employee well-being as the ultimate outcome (Spreitzer et al., 2005).

Approaches

These different recent perspectives we highlight here are integral to our thesis on the centrality of well-being. They are also a collective mosaic touching on the different ways well-being is developed and enhanced. As synthesized in Fig. 1, on the one hand, there is the perspective of Critical Studies which emphasizes mitigation, or “decreasing the dispreferred,” and prevention, or “avoiding the dispreferred” (Pawelski, 2016b) because it views the current systems and structures as flawed and actively seeks to reshape these conditions for a fairer and more inclusive world. On the other hand, POS approaches well-being in terms of preservation, or “maintaining the preferred,” and promotion, or “increasing the preferred” (Pawelski, 2016a, Pawelski, 2016b). It seeks to highlight and maintain the current strengths of individuals, organizations, and communities while also building new capacities and capabilities (Cameron et al., 2003; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Within this spectrum of different approaches, one can also find the perspectives of Psychology of Working (which seeks to reduce poverty and secure decent work), HWP (which seeks to reduce negative conditions like crises and build community capacities), and OHP (which seeks to both reduce hazardous conditions that can harm psychological and physical health while also promoting favorable conditions that enhance psychological and physical health). Therefore, in putting forward a vision of well-being as the ultimate criterion, we need to include these different approaches. We will discuss more of this in how we should approach this in Future Research.

What Is Well-being? Optimal Functioning in and Beyond Performance

Drawing from these important foundational perspectives, we propose a broad definition of well-being as the ultimate criterion. It embeds performance as a critical component but also goes beyond it. Succinctly put, well-being is optimal functioning (see Gable & Haidt, 2005). Applied to the organizational sciences, the concept of well-being covers multiple levels, multiple domains, and includes multiple approaches. It includes workers, organizations, consumers, and environments. We discuss how well-being might be manifest in each of these areas and show how rich and textured the criterion of well-being is as compared to merely job performance.

Worker Well-being

Well-being for workers comprises not merely feeling good (e.g., positive emotions; Diener et al., 2020), but also the broadest sense of well-being. In other words, it is to lead a flourishing life, whether at work or outside work. Within the workplace, job performance (i.e., task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior), which is what organizational researchers typically view as the ultimate criterion, is part of optimal functioning (e.g., Fernet et al., 2015). However, optimal functioning also includes companion behaviors, experiences, and physical states beyond performance, such as fulfilling vocational interests (Nye et al., 2012), experiencing flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), mastery orientation in learning new skills (Fisher & Ford, 1998), developing strengths (Luthans et al., 2007), achieving personal work goals (Sheldon et al., 2009), regulating dynamic positive and negative emotions in service of goal striving at work (Yang et al., 2016).

Beyond the work domain, it is critical to consider the well-being of the workers in terms of their nonwork domains. It has been proposed that worker well-being should comprise both work and nonwork domains (Hart, 1999; Ilies et al., 2007). As such, there needs to be a consideration of specific life domains such as financial, familial, social, and leisure, to name a few (Viñas-Bardolet et al., 2019). Given that worker well-being goes beyond the domain of work, organizations should seek to enable workers to be able to craft their nonwork lives (de Bloom et al., 2020; Kuykendall et al., 2017).

Going beyond the distinction between work and nonwork, the physical health of workers is also a critical component that has been emphasized in occupational health and employee well-being. For instance, the Total Worker Health (TWH) (Tamers et al., 2019) program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC/NIOSH) includes key components of workplace safety and physical health. In short, when organizations consider worker well-being as the ultimate criterion, they will need to broaden their vision and care for workers to consider these multiple dimensions and how they can interact (Kuykendall & Tay, 2015).

In this vein, both preventive and promotive actions by the organization can be taken in support of the well-being of workers. Leaning toward the preventive aspects, lowering anxiety and stress, preventing accidents, and increasing safety are significant dimensions (e.g., occupational health and safety; Quick & Terick, 2011). Therefore, objective workplace conditions serve worker well-being, including protecting human rights, removing discrimination, and fair remuneration (United Nations Global Compact, 2021). Apart from the preventive, the concept of well-being is inclusive and promotive. For example, it is not merely for those who are able but also disabled. Ensuring worker well-being encompasses fairness, reasonable accommodations, and welfare benefits for ensuring optimal functioning for all employees (Vornholt et al., 2017). As another example, results from a global survey of 7000 recruiters and hiring managers indicate that ensuring employees’ positive experiences on the job—part of worker well-being—is one of the most important leverages to promote the acquisition and retention of talented workers with diverse backgrounds (LinkedIn, 2020).

Organizational Well-being

While the concept of well-being is typically used in conjunction with the individual worker (Tay et al., 2014), it does not only belong in that domain. Organizations themselves need to flourish to both protect and promote the workers’ well-being. Organizational well-being refers to optimal functioning in performance and effectiveness, culture and climate, and leadership. Just as performance is a crucial criterion at the individual level, organizational performance is similarly vital at the organizational level. Organizational performance has been defined as financial performance, product market performance, and shareholder return (Richard et al., 2009). Indeed, at the most basic level, being able to be fiscally responsible and viable is necessary for the survival of the organization. However, the broader construct of organizational effectiveness touches not only on economic valuation but “efficient or effective operations” (p. 722, Richard et al., 2009); it would include well-functioning organizational systems (e.g., selection and promotion systems, organizational communication).

Organizational well-being also entails a positive organizational culture and climate. Organizational culture includes beliefs, values, expectations, norms, structures, practices, and even leadership (Ostroff et al., 2013)—and a positive culture of well-being has these elements working together to promote organizational performance and functioning. It translates into a positive climate of well-being as organizational members collectively perceive organizations as well-functioning and supportive of multiple markers of well-being (e.g., worker health, diverse perspectives, worker performance) and take actions to ensure and improve these markers. An organizational environment and leadership that is not discriminatory or biased but rather one that is diverse and inclusive across all identities is also a mark of organizational well-being (Wood et al., 2013). Hence, much like individual well-being, organizational well-being is a multi-dimensional representation of optimal functioning with respect to performance, positive culture, and inclusive leadership.

Customer Well-being

While organizational researchers typically focus on workers and organizations, the concept of well-being also encompasses the customer, which we view broadly as any external entity served by the organization, its members, and its product. Notably, customer well-being goes beyond the common understanding of customer satisfaction, positive emotions, and positive behaviors (Susskind et al., 2003; Tsai & Huang, 2002). From a pricing perspective, organizations should ensure that necessary products and services are priced affordably rather than exploitatively (Samli, 2016). This is because financial solvency, while necessary for organizational viability, should not morph into pure profit maximization for organizations. Indeed, Adam Smith, commonly regarded as a foundational thinker on capitalism, did not view high profits as desirable—but rather high wages for workers (Rosenberg, 1974). This contrasts the conventional perspective of performance as the sole indicator of the ultimate pursuit for organizations. From a quality perspective, organizations can provide services and products that meet reliability, durability, and safety standards (Sirgy et al., 2016) to protect the physical and psychological welfare of customers. It is also important to consider customers’ physical and psychological needs and determine the right products and services to cater to those needs (Sirgy et al., 2016).

Societal and Environmental Well-being

As organizations are embedded within the larger social and environmental structures, there is an onus for organizations to consider their impact on the broader societal and environmental well-being. This can be seen in the discussions of corporate social responsibility (CSR), where businesses address social concerns, promote economic development, and ensure environmental sustainability (Dahlsrud, 2008). Efforts of this nature can encompass everything from organizational-wide policies that promote alignment with the goals of the United Nations Global Compact (Cetindamar, 2007) to efforts that support the surrounding communities (Deigh et al., n.d.) to green initiatives that engender environmental citizenship behaviors (Lamm et al., 2013). These goals and initiatives are all part of the effort to increase societal and environmental well-being.

Well-being: Synergy, Tension, and Sustainability

Our proposal for the ultimate criterion of well-being is an all-encompassing one. It recognizes well-being from different perspectives and at multiple levels and domains. We view this complexification of the ultimate criterion—beyond performance—as an advantage. It moves our science and practice toward a more realistic and holistic consideration of multiple demands that workers, organizations, and societies need to navigate to promote optimal functioning for all. When a broader vision of well-being is the goal, it serves as an impetus to embrace synergies and tensions in our modeling of organizational phenomena and practices. By contrast, a simplistic criterion of performance or profit, by extension, blinds us to other potential costs involved.

Many synergies and tensions are involved when thinking about well-being holistically (Pawelski, 2016a). Synergies between worker well-being and organizational well-being can have multiplicative effects. For example, past work has tied worker well-being to be causally related to organizational-level financial performance (Harter et al., 2010). A greater level of worker well-being has also been tied to increased customer well-being (Barger & Grandey, 2006; Tsai & Huang, 2002). Furthermore, greater levels of positive emotions and better regulation of dynamic positive and negative emotions among workers are tied to higher job performance (Diener et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2016). Recognizing such synergies helps organizational researchers adopt a multi-faceted and multiplicative mindset toward our science and practice’s end goal. We need to consider how promoting well-being on one level enhances well-being throughout the system.

Alternatively, there are also possible tensions within the broad conception of well-being. Consider that performance and diversity goals are not necessarily always commensurate (Pyburn et al., 2008), yet both represent essential aspects of well-being based on this conceptualization. Living amid this tension forces us to move beyond a single-valued outcome, such as performance, to multiple-valued outcomes in well-being, such as performance and diversity. This is an inevitable tension that can occur as organizations move toward greater inclusion, which can only be resolved by a strategy where business goals go beyond profit to consider social goals. Researchers and practitioners have to innovate and incorporate newer approaches, such as Pareto optimization (Rupp et al., 2020), to not only recognize such tensions but to pursue multiple valued goals at once.

Other tensions exist, such as prioritizing a firm’s financial performance, which may not always align with societal and environmental well-being (Shepherd et al., 2013). The pursuit of well-being dictates that strategies must be undertaken to ensure that organizations operate sustainably while also balancing financial performance (Ameer & Othman, 2011). The issue of sustainability also raises the issue of short-term versus long-term well-being. We propose that the ideal form of well-being not merely considers the immediate but provides benefits over sustained periods of time over different people and structures (Pawelski, 2016b). The implication is that considering well-being as the ultimate criterion requires incorporating a temporal perspective. Individuals, organizations, and societies dynamically change, grow, and develop over time, along with having different needs and challenges. While well-being as the desired criterion is enduring, the flavor and nuances of well-being may differ over time.

We emphasize that well-being is a directed concept—the goal is optimal functioning for all. Nevertheless, the issues above underscore how it is also an open concept that allows for dialogue and different perspectives and preferences. In other words, while well-being is the ultimate criterion, there is no one-size-fits-all for how well-being is construed and enacted—and this may change over time as workers, organizations, customers, and societies face new challenges and obstacles. We believe that expanding our criterion to broader well-being will direct and energize the decision-making processes to more realistically and strategically consider multiple factors as essential in optimizing and sustaining organizational functioning.

Clarifying Potential Challenges

In the past, it was supposed that positing well-being as the criterion was problematic because the conception of well-being was very narrow. This can be an issue if well-being is defined traditionally as purely a subjective phenomenon, such as subjective well-being (Diener et al., 1999). Many have been cautious of such a conceptualization because findings show that the relationship between pay and job satisfaction is small (Judge et al., 2010); unscrupulous organizations can use this as a pretext to offer lower pay when employees feel satisfied with their work. This can lead to wage inequities, with the gender wage gap being a prime example, where women are equally or more satisfied with their jobs despite lower average pay (Clark, 1997; Davison, 2014). We seek to clarify here that we are proposing a broad notion of well-being that goes beyond the subjective. It includes more objective job characteristics and physical health outcomes. As such, all these different aspects need to be considered in the pursuit of well-being.

Another traditional conceptual variant of well-being can include not only subjective dimensions of well-being but also physical and psychological health (Sonnentag et al., 2023). In this conception of well-being, organizational researchers had been concerned that such a criterion, for say, selection, would be discriminatory against individuals with specific health issues or disability status (e.g., Cleveland & Colella, 2010). We agree with this criticism. In our current proposal of well-being, we explicitly include performance. Therefore, performance can and should be prioritized in selection instruments for organizations. At the same time, well-being entails that multiple goals beyond performance are considered at a foundational level. This includes working toward diversity and inclusion in the recruitment and selection processes, actively promoting positive experiences and health, ensuring equitable pay, and making necessary accommodations amid the selection processes.

Relatedly, it may be challenging for organizations to manage the tension between different goals entailed by the broader well-being that sometimes compete for resources within the organization, especially during organizations’ day-to-day management of talent, such as performance management processes. For example, when the performance of a manager is evaluated based on both task performance goals (e.g., production goals) and safety performance goals (e.g., few accidents) as two key indicators of their unit’s well-being, it can be challenging to manage the trade-off between the two often competing sets of work goals (e.g., Zohar & Luria, 2004). Specifically, how would the performance management system weigh a manager’s accomplishments in these two types of goals? In other words, would you promote a manager who achieved relatively low-level production goals and relatively high-level safety goals or another who achieved medium-level goals in both domains? With a broader criterion of well-being—organizations need to ensure that workers can be healthy and happy while performing well on the job. This may require striking a balance between workload (to maximize performance) and worker stress/safety, especially in terms of strategic resource allocations (e.g., funding training programs for both skill development and stress management).

Critically, we believe that the ultimate criterion of well-being is relevant to the entire lifecycle of an organization, emphasizing different aspects while seeking to maintain a balance among different objectives (e.g., Grant et al., 2007). Organizational leaders and researchers must be open to adjusting the scope and exact components of well-being over time to meet the needs of the employees, organization, and society at different developmental stages of the organization.

Implications of Well-being as the Ultimate Criterion

We believe that defining the ultimate criterion is not simply a matter of semantics. Changing the ultimate criterion from performance to broader well-being has vast implications across science, pedagogy, and practice for organizations and organizational researchers. This is because the seemingly innocuous label carries vast weight in terms of what ultimately matters. It serves to direct us as a field in organizational sciences and has trickle-down effects in many related fields. In the following, and as summarized in Table 1, we describe different generative areas this can bring to the field of organizational research. Within the domains of science, pedagogy, and practice, we illustrate emergent themes and potential actionable areas to which we can direct our efforts.

Table 1 Illustrative generative areas for science, pedagogy, and practice
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Science

There are significant implications for reenvisioning a broadened criterion of well-being beyond performance for our scientific endeavors and approaches. Because of the complexification of the ultimate criterion, organizational researchers will need to bring in new perspectives that can usher in a new era of theoretical and methodological development. With regard to theory, a simple approach of having a single variable (e.g., performance) as the outcome in our theoretical models will be insufficient. At one level, this limitation has been increasingly recognized, and organizational research has more recently incorporated multiple outcomes in our theoretical frameworks. For example, a recent theoretical model of crafting includes an integrative criterion of “optimal functioning,” where there are work-related well-being indicators, performance, general subjective well-being, and family-role performance (de Bloom et al., 2020). We believe this is increasingly the paradigm researchers are using, and we envision theories that explicitly incorporate this multivariate criterion. This is depicted as the “multiple-outcomes model” in Fig. 2. Empirically, more work will need to specify and estimate the relative effects of individual, organizational, customer, and societal factors on multiple well-being outcomes. It is critical in future research to not only show the statistical significance but the effect sizes and practical importance of these different outcomes to advance organizational research.

Fig. 2
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Current and new models of theorizing around well-being as the ultimate criterion

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At another level, the complexity of well-being as the ultimate criterion has yet to be sufficiently addressed because this issue goes beyond merely listing variables as the outcome in our theoretical models. Given the complex and interactive nature of different well-being components, we need to specify how these components interrelate with each other in order to advance organizational research. One perspective is the multiple-goals pursuit of developing theory and research, which focuses on maximizing well-being amid the tensions surrounding the different components of well-being, as suggested earlier. This is shown in Fig. 2, “Multiple-goals model.” Theoretical work will need to clarify the specific mechanisms that create these tensions (or synergies), whether within individuals (e.g., preserving wellness vs. maximizing performance) or between different levels of analysis (e.g., improving firm profitability vs. enhancing environmental outcomes). Importantly, theoretical work will also need to consider the degree and the levels where these tensions (or synergies) occur. The famous Yerkes-Dodson curve showcasing the relation between stress and performance is instructive as we need more research to move beyond a linear function of well-being variables. For instance, is there a point where increasing autonomy for workers diminishes productivity or even backfires? Within this multiple-goals perspective, researchers should further seek to understand human decision-making within organizations, communities, and societies on how these goals are weighted and navigated over time to achieve greater well-being personally and collectively (e.g., Kung & Scholer, 2019).

Another perspective comes from a stepwise or stage theoretic approach to our criterion of well-being as initially cast by Maslow (1943): there are different lower-level components that are necessary (e.g., basic needs) for higher-level components (e.g., self-actualization). As seen in Fig. 2, “stage-theoretic model,” one instantiation of this is that performance is the basic requirement for further higher-order well-being needs to be fulfilled. Such models are intuitively appealing but often not formally developed within organizational research. For example, it is not uncommon to believe that performance and financial needs have to be met by organizations at the minimum to have the capacity to fulfill other needs, yet no specific theoretical models explicitly illustrate this idea. Theoretical specifications in future endeavors will have to consider the necessity and sufficiency of specific well-being components in order to achieve different aspects of well-being.

More generally, researchers can seek to specify the ordering of well-being fulfillment that would enable organizations and organizational researchers to prioritize dimensions of well-being that need to be fulfilled before others. For instance, it is commonly regarded that well-being is a bipolar continuum of languishing to flourishing, so the theoretical ordering of reducing “negative” components of well-being (e.g., negative emotions) will occur before enhancing “positive” components of well-being (e.g., positive emotions) (Zhao & Tay, 2022). In part, this requires the careful specification of how well-being components unfold over time through a temporal lens (Mitchell & Lawrence, 2001). To be clear, we are not saying that well-being theories are only valid if they specify an ordering, but we believe specifying and empirically testing ordering would become an area of fruitful development.

In short, we believe that the careful consideration of well-being as the ultimate criterion will motivate researchers to develop greater nuance in their theories and research questions beyond single variable outcomes or variable outcome lists because these outcomes are equally vital in different ways, and the questions of ordering and tensions will move toward the forefront for organizational researchers. This can engender a paradigm shift in our substantive approach to theory development.

Beyond theory, the research methods that organizational researchers use will be expanded and can generate new approaches. Indeed, the consideration of multiple outcomes has been addressed through structural equation modeling within organizational research to simultaneously model various outcomes (Zyphur et al., 2023). However, there is a need to incorporate other innovative methods given the multiple variables in the concept of broader well-being as a criterion. This would include the use of configural techniques that capture inherent interactivity in multiple outcomes and variables when modeling our data. An instance of this is latent class cluster analysis, where configurations of multiple outcomes are seen in different groups of individuals or organizations (Woo et al., 2018). This enables researchers to understand if the conceptual models of well-being hold across different individuals and organizations.

As discussed with multiple goals, because multiple components of well-being may exist in tension, it is also vital for researchers to adopt and develop innovative methods to balance multiple goals, such as Pareto optimization (Rupp et al., 2020). Pareto optimization enables researchers to model the best possible situation among different competing outcomes (e.g., diversity vs. performance) so that researchers and practitioners can find the optimal outcome (e.g., level of diversity) given a level of another outcome (e.g., level of performance) (Song et al., 2017). Furthermore, the new age of data science and big data to predict multiple outcomes from many different variables can also help us broaden the scope of our work (Woo et al., 2020). Researchers can incorporate more of these data and techniques in their work.

In terms of the stage-theoretic models, researchers are using mediational chain models to examine a form of variable ordering. Nevertheless, these approaches are often limited for testing stages, and often, the ordering of mediators is interchangeable within an SEM mediational chain to produce the same fit statistics (Vandenberg & Grelle, 2009). Apart from the use of more longitudinal data and models (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2009), we propose that researchers should seek to explore other methods, which include qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) (Fiss, 2011), where researchers use set-theoretic approaches to understand the necessary and sufficient conditions and the ordering of conditions (e.g., Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) for which different components of well-being can be achieved.

Finally, we believe a more person-centric approach to our research is needed. The initial proposal for a person-centric approach is to elevate the subjective and qualitative experiences of workers (Weiss & Rupp, 2011). This goes beyond mere quantification of individuals as a multivarate data point—to understand the nuance, history, and uniqueness of individual experiences and uphold the dignity of the individual. To this end, we can adopt more qualitative research approaches to understand the experience of workers—and other stakeholders within and beyond the organization. Beyond the traditional person-centric conception, we believe that being person-centric means including a greater representation of different samples, especially underrepresented minorities. While we have recognized the WEIRD-ness (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) of our samples (Henrich et al., 2010), we need to take active steps in our work to encompass all people’s well-being fully in our theories and methods. For instance, to unpack and address specific phenomena, such as Anti-Black racism, unique to Black employees (King et al., 2022). Indeed, there is increased recognition of this in organizational and psychological research (e.g., Buchanan & Fitzgerald, 2008) and recent advocacy for greater representation to enhance the scientific process itself (Avery et al., 2021; Buchanan et al., 2021).

Despite the number of important implications this shift would have on our scholarship, we feel it is crucial to acknowledge the potential for resistance such work may face for challenging the status quo—particularly among North American audiences. While editorial gatekeeping is often an effective means by which the quality of research may be assessed, some work has suggested errors are possible such that articles that are highly cited face desk rejections at more prestigious outlets (Siler et al., 2015). It is well understood that bias, even in subtle forms, may influence the peer review process—including cognitive biases (i.e., confirmation bias) that leads reviewers and editors alike to favor manuscripts that align with currently held beliefs (such that job performance is the ultimate criterion), failing to appropriately consider the quality or strengths of the manuscript (King et al., 2018). Additionally, social processes (i.e., social conformity) may lead reviewers and editors alike to be less open to studying well-being as the ultimate criterion given our collective socialization of values that emphasize purely organizational criteria such as performance and turnover (King et al., 2018). Despite many journals aiming to publish diverse perspectives and ground-breaking work, most journals are susceptible to parochialism, reflecting “the orthodoxies of the community of scholars that emerge around it” (Daft & Lewin, 2008, p. 178). Such challenges may prove particularly divisive and difficult at the forefront, but we believe advancing scholarship with well-being as an ultimate criterion is a worthwhile endeavor despite these potential obstacles. A goal for the present work is to provide a foundation on which others may pursue this endeavor and provide evidence to facilitate editorial openness for such a perspective.

Pedagogy

Shifting to well-being as the ultimate criterion has critical implications for our pedagogical work. One important aspect related to pedagogy is that this would drastically influence and expand what we teach. Whether the course is within the field of I-O psychology, human resources, or more tangentially related business fields such as management, marketing, and economics, the present focus is on teaching content, skills, and strategies that have a positive impact on profitability and efficiency (i.e., performance). However, we propose that the emphasis should shift to focusing on the knowledge, skills, and strategies that positively influence the broader, more all-encompassing outcome of well-being. This shift would put the broadened vision of well-being at the center of every topic rather than on the periphery. It would no longer be one of many chapters in the textbook, but a part of every chapter in the same way performance is today. This would meaningfully shift and expand what we teach in these fields.

Within industrial-organizational psychology, we may consider how job analysis, a primary building block on which much of the field relies, would be critically more inclusive with this shift. First, our understanding of this systematic data collection of important work and worker-related aspects of the job would change from understanding the behaviors required to perform a job and the criteria on which to base successful performance in the job, to behaviors that foster optimal functioning and the criteria on which to determine what optimal functioning looks like in the role. While a seemingly minor change, this shift in how we describe and discuss job analysis would have far-reaching consequences as this evaluation becomes the basis for hiring, staffing, and training. The critical information gathered about a job would no longer be restricted to only collecting information on the qualities and task responsibilities that lead to performance but also include the dimensions that foster a sense of purpose, fulfillment, inclusivity, and the like, all-encompassed within our ultimate criterion of optimal functioning.

Related fields within the business curriculum, such as economics and management, would also see meaningful shifts. For example, economics courses focus on economic principles, theories, and calculations that ultimately strive to drive demand, manage supply, and balance costs and benefits, in ways that maximize profits—often at the expense of the consumers. This is a short-sighted consideration of the influence economic principles have on human beings lived existence. Our proposed shift in such curriculum can be including the management of supply and demand in ways that focus more so on meeting the needs of the consumer rather than solely the profitability of the stakeholder or can be cost-benefit analyses considering beyond the financials to also include a focus on the health and well-being of consumers. Another example would be within the field of management, where the courses focus on training the next generation of leaders who are being taught to maximize the productivity of organizations’ most valuable resource—people. Conversations focus on the best approaches within management’s primary functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling in a way that drives efficiency and effectiveness among their teams and organizations—often failing to consider the influence of these strategies on the people doing the work. Instead, the focus could be on how managers can plan, organize, lead, and control work in a way that drives people’s optimal functioning—which would enrich our workplace experiences tremendously.

This shift not only broadens the scope of the knowledge, skills, and abilities students walk away with from their classroom experiences, but it also better aligns content with students’ values and goals. Younger generations—including Generation Z currently filling our classrooms—do not want to learn how only to perform to produce—they want to learn how to make a difference, have a positive impact on society, and live full and enriched lives (Diener, 2000; Francis & Hoefel, 2018). Training students in our classes with a broader focus on well-being can engage students more fully because it enables students to see the connection between the content we teach and their ultimate goals in life, equipping them to fulfill these goals and training them to consider these multiple aspects of pursuing well-being as future leaders and decision-makers. There is also greater coherence for students as they are taught to develop their sense of ethical and social responsibility to our community and our world as part of their ultimate goals (American Psychological Association, 2012).

Apart from changing the content and its relative emphasis, another area of practical action is how we teach. This moves from focusing on instructional methods that exclusively seek to improve student performance to, instead, focusing on methods that seek to enhance students’ all-encompassing well-being. This even goes beyond how faculty in I-O psychology and other organizational sciences teach—to all faculty—because if we can change educational institutions’ goals and responsibilities to focus on well-being as the criterion (Tay, 2021), we can eventually shape how faculty view their roles.

The ultimate learning objective historically has been to prepare students to perform well. In the immediate, faculty undertake pedagogical strategies and methods for students to perform well on an assignment, project, or course exam. In the long term, faculty seek to ensure that a degree in their field deems them equipped to perform in their future job roles in ways that make their organizations more productive and profitable. However, while we focus on increasing student performance in the shorter and longer term, a student health crisis across all levels has become a national crisis (Bruffaerts et al., 2018; Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010). A study of more than three-quarters of a million students found that more than half reported overwhelming anxiety, and almost half reported difficulty functioning (Duffy et al., 2019).

These startling statistics highlight a presently unmet need among students where educators have a narrow view of their pedagogical responsibilities and subsequent strategies that may not be incorporating the well-being of their students. Rethinking the ultimate criterion toward well-being means that educators must instead see the maintenance and enhancement of students’ well-being as their primary responsibility—and undertake pedagogical changes that align with this. If faculty fail to make this shift, performance too will ultimately suffer as extensive work has shown how depression and anxiety that plague college students impede their ability to perform to their fullest potential (Bruffaerts et al., 2018).

Educators can play a meaningful role in supporting student well-being through the teaching of life skills such as time management, coping skills, resilience, and stress reduction techniques to not only allow them to thrive in the classroom but to set them up to thrive throughout their lifetime (Eisenberg, 2019; Moore, 2021). While this list is not exhaustive, they illustrate how faculty may seek to make pedagogical choices that improve students’ well-being. This shift may not only enhance students’ learning—and subsequently their ability to perform—but can set them up to face the challenges and stressors that await them following graduation. It sets the expectation that performance does not preclude well-being, but instead, failing to take care of oneself by not having healthy habits and relationships with work in place will limit one’s ability to thrive.

Finally, as Lefkowitz (2008) observed, future generations of organizational researchers are “conditioned” to our ethical values and concerns. By espousing, focusing on, and driving toward performance, we are upholding a set of values that have “a pro-management bias” rather than reflecting a profession with “broader societal responsibilities.” Upending the ideal and goal of performance as the ultimate criterion and replacing it with well-being will provide the language and lens through which students can widen the scope of their ethical duties beyond the organization’s performance and profitability.

Practice

Well-being serving as the ultimate criterion has beneficial implications for practice. Historically, the focus has been on making a business case for applying organizational research to improve performance and the bottom line. Well-being as the ultimate criterion challenges this narrative and increases the relevance—and potential impact—of organizational research to a wider range of stakeholders beyond the organizational leaders. Well-being is a shared goal that becomes relevant for employees, policymakers, and the broader community.

We believe that one positive change is that the positive impacts of initiatives can be evaluated on their own merits without necessary reference to performance. To give concrete examples, work on key organizational topics such as diversity and inclusion and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often constrained by the need to demonstrate a positive impact on performance. However, this explicit focus on well-being expands these other goals as important independent considerations that do not need to ultimately reference performance. We provide a couple of examples from the topics of diversity and inclusion and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Efforts to increase and manage diversity and inclusivity both implicitly or explicitly aim toward well-being. This is because a central goal of increasing opportunities and improving inclusion for underrepresented minorities not only enhances their well-being, but also creates positive ripples for the organization and the society at large (Roberson, 2019; Shore et al., 2010). When performance is placed as the ultimate criterion, it requires a business case to be made for diversity and inclusion (e.g., Horwitz, 2005). While there is evidence that diversity and inclusion can improve performance, there is also evidence showing that not all forms of diversity and inclusion are always helpful for increasing performance—with its impact often being difficult to quantify in economic terms (Bell et al., 2010; Jackson & Joshi, 2004; Jehn & Bezrukova, 2004). However, research on diversity and inclusion programs often faces criticism due to the conflicting results regarding its impact on performance. With well-being as the ultimate criterion, diversity and inclusion do not need to serve the purpose of performance, nor does it need to justify their value from performance. Organizations should ultimately value and care for diversity and inclusion because it is part of the ultimate criterion of well-being.

Another example of a topic area in which well-being will change the conversation is the application of CSR. CSR highlights organizations’ responsibility to engage in initiatives designed to support social good—often conceptualized as a broader form of social well-being (Aguinis, 2011). In fact, the primary objective, and definition, of CSR remains centered around an organization’s focus on positively contributing toward social well-being (Orlitzky et al., 2003). It stems from an increasing expectation, both internally and externally driven, that businesses should advance social objectives that support the flourishing of their stakeholders (Aguilera et al., 2007), including not only their owners and leadership, but employees, customers, suppliers, and their broader community (Aguilera et al., 2007). However, the positive impact of CSR is often considered in terms of its influence on organizational performance—specifically financial performance—and is used to legitimize these efforts. However, this often proves to be an unproductive approach as it delegitimizes organizational efforts in the court of public opinion, subsequently minimizing the potential positive impact on organizational performance. Therefore, conversations around the pursuits of social well-being should be independently considered without a need to reference performance to legitimize efforts.

We also believe adopting the expanded ultimate criterion of well-being can significantly change the conversations among organizational researchers, organizational management, industry leaders, and policymakers around the topic of interventions and policy change in an effort to enhance employee, organizational, consumer, and societal well-being. For example, the US national program and the emerging field of TWH have led and facilitated the conversation on the significance of integrating the prevention and promotion goals in designing and implementing interventions and policy changes to most effectively sustain and enhance the quality of work life and the overall well-being of the workforce (Hammer, 2021; Tamers et al., 2019). Indeed, such efforts to address multiple goals have led to strong evidence that having multifaceted interventions (e.g., training program to address more than one workplace hazard) or implementing policies that address multiple priorities within the organizations (e.g., diversity and inclusion, employee safety goals) is more effective in improving employee, organizational, and client/patient well-being (e.g., Hammer, 2021; Hammer et al., 2021; Leiter et al., 2011; Nagler et al., 2021). Therefore, future practices within and across organizations can benefit from capitalizing on the synergies between different goals (focusing on different components of the broader well-being) and navigating the tension between them.

Apart from changing the general conversations within and across organizations, our field can provide specific guidance to organizations and societies by offering valid and reliable metrics on well-being. More organizations are seeking to assess the well-being of their workers and customers; in addition, more societies are beginning to challenge the sole reliance on economic metrics and to include well-being indices. The idea is to move “toward an economy of well-being” (Diener & Seligman, 2004) and “promoting well-being for all” (United Nations, 2021). The metrics serve to track and guide many different policies that aim to enhance well-being.

In this regard, organizational researchers can contribute by creating reliable and valid assessments of well-being. This entails integrative indices of well-being for organizations, communities, and also for societies as well. Examples of these include affective well-being at work (Daniels, 2000), meaningful work scales (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012), subjective unemployment scales (Allan et al., 2017), general integrative flourishing measures (VanderWeele et al., 2020), and community-level well-being assessments (Prezza et al., 2001). Beyond that, organizational researchers can ensure the measurement equivalence of such measures across groups and cultures to reduce the possibility of bias (Wiese et al., 2018). Organizational researchers are also exploring new modes of assessment through big data approaches so that metrics can be obtained at scale. Researchers have started to use Twitter data to assess job satisfaction (Saha et al., 2021), work stress (Wang et al., 2016), and the COVID work-from-home impact on emotional well-being (Min et al., 2021). There is also the use of Google Searches to index well-being which shows convergence with CDC data (Ford et al., 2018).

Conclusion

We believe that the case we have made to broaden our ultimate criterion from performance to well-being is a strong one. And yet, regardless of whether organizational sciences fully embrace this, the larger currents of organizational research, practice, and applications are unwittingly moving in this direction. We hope that the field of organizational sciences can recognize this and formally adopt well-being as our ultimate criterion. This paradigm shift will not only enlarge our vision but create a more rigorous and inclusive science and practice.