About
What is
Happiness Impact?
A science-based framework for understanding how organizations affect people's happiness and wellbeing — and an international research initiative with the ambition to establish a new way of understanding organizations.
The framework
More than a ranking
Happiness Impact is a science-based framework for understanding how organizations affect people's happiness and wellbeing.
Developed by the Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness at the Stockholm School of Economics, Happiness Impact measures organizations through the experiences of the people whose lives they affect.
Its annual national studies are presented through the Happiness Impact Ranking. But Happiness Impact is more than a ranking. It is an international research initiative with the ambition to establish Happiness Impact as a globally recognized concept for understanding how organizations affect people's lives.
The ambition
To make “What is its Happiness Impact?” part of the international language of business, research and public policy.
The Founding Essay introduces the ideas behind the initiative.
Why Happiness Impact?
The question we rarely ask
Organizations shape almost every aspect of modern life. They influence our health, our learning, our relationships, our work, our opportunities and our quality of life.
Some organizations make life better.
Some make little difference.
Some may even make life worse.
Yet while we routinely measure financial performance, customer satisfaction and sustainability, we rarely ask one of the most important questions of all: How does this organization affect people's happiness and wellbeing? Happiness Impact was created to help answer that question.
The idea
From wealth creation to wellbeing creation
For more than two centuries, economists and social scientists have helped us better understand how organizations contribute to prosperity.
Building on the intellectual tradition of Adam Smith, Happiness Impact begins with a simple premise: organizations exist to serve human needs. How well they fulfil that role should not be assumed.
Happiness Impact extends this tradition by introducing another perspective: understanding how organizations contribute to people's happiness and wellbeing. It does not replace existing measures. It complements them.
A simple premise
How well organizations serve human needs should not be assumed.
It should be understood.
It should be measured.
Our principles
Science-based. Consumer-based. International.
Science-based
Built on contemporary wellbeing research and developed by the Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Consumer-based
Organizations are evaluated through the experiences of the people whose lives they affect — not through organizational self-assessments.
International
Designed as a globally scalable framework, enabling internationally comparable studies while growing through academic collaboration.
Beyond the ranking
A framework for research, decisions and public discussion
The annual Happiness Impact Ranking is one outcome of the initiative. The broader ambition is to develop Happiness Impact into an internationally recognized framework for research, decision-making and public discussion.
We hope that, in the future, asking “What is its Happiness Impact?” will become as natural as asking about financial performance, customer satisfaction or sustainability.
About the Center
Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness
Happiness Impact is developed by the Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness at the Stockholm School of Economics.
The Center conducts interdisciplinary research on wellbeing, welfare and happiness and develops new knowledge that helps individuals, organizations and societies better understand and improve quality of life.
The one question
“What is its Happiness Impact?”
Our long-term ambition is to make this question part of the international language of business, research and public policy.