When Companies Make Your Day

Abstract

Pre-digital organizations were established before the digital and collaborative economy. Faced with this new economy, they are carrying out organizational transformation projects that involve significant changes in tasks, working conditions, and employee well-being. A positive emotional climate can support these digital transformations. Companies have therefore developed specific change management practices focusing on happiness at work to support these digital transformation programs of work practices. This research explores the role of happiness management as a change management practice for digital transformation. Using a multiple case study method, it illustrates how happiness management practices are enacted in three French pre-digital organizations from different industries. It identifies characteristics of happiness management mobilized differently by each organization. Some combinations of these characteristics and employees' control perceptions are shown to lead to a positive emotional climate which in turn affects the success of digital workplace transformations.