Well-being as a staged social responsibility process: exploratory testing of a new theory

Purpose This paper aims to extend the conceptualization of well-being as a staged social responsibility process by undertaking further conceptual development of these ideas as well as exploratory, small-scale international testing. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprised 117 leaders from Alaska, India and Norway. Cluster analysis was used to determine systematic differences in the way leaders think about societal well-being (well-being action logics), and regression analysis was used to test positive and significant relationships between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness. Findings Cluster analysis confirmed the three theoretically derived well-being action logics of top managers: compensatory, integral and hybrid. The authors found preliminary empirical support for a systematic relationship between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness as per constructive-developmental theory. Practical implications Better adoption of societal well-being as a normative ethic hinges on building the capacity of top managers to process more complex understandings of the range of components of societal well-being and how these components interact, conflict and synergize. Social implications Being asked to embrace more complex views about societal well-being can be overwhelming, leading top managers to retreat into defensiveness. The result is resistance to change, preferring instead to stay with familiar yet outmoded conceptions. Societal well-being can thus suffer. Originality/value This paper opens the black box to find systematic differences in the way managers think about societal well-being. Further, the research has uncovered that these differences follow a staged developmental process of greater complexity.