Is Happiness a Factor in Business Success?  Tuugi Chuluun and Carol Graham write:  Economists—and other social scientists—are now using a burgeoning body of research based on surveys of reported well-being or, more colloquially put, happiness. They are studying areas as diverse as the effects of income, inflation, unemployment, exercising, smoking, and marital status on well-being. They are also exploring the effects of well-being on individuals’ attitudes about and investments in the future.

The results are not surprising: smoking, inflation, and unemployment (particularly the latter) are bad for well-being; while income, exercise, and marriage are, on average, good for well-being. Individuals with higher levels of well-being on average have better future outcomes in the health, labor market, and social arenas. The latter is due to innate optimism and intrinsic motivation on the one hand, and the capacity of individuals with higher levels of well-being to make choices about what kind of lives they want to lead on the other. In short, numerous studies show that higher levels of well-being are associated with all sorts of positive outcomes.

It is important to note that the use of these metrics requires methodological precision. Scholars do not ask respondents if particular things make them happy or unhappy. Instead, they use large-scale surveys with the well-being question of interest up front in the survey. They control for all sorts of socio-demographic traits (such as income, gender, age, education, and employment status) and assess how well-being levels vary with the variable of interest, holding all other things equal.
But does any of this have relevance for the business world? Here is what we examined:
Does happiness play a role in corporate economic behavior?
We recently explored whether well-being is relevant to our understanding of firm behavior and found, rather remarkably, that it is.  Does Happiness Improve Business