Management QOL in the News - November 03, 2015
The Secret to Danish Happiness
Denmark consistently ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world. The reason might lie with the idea of "hygge."
Pronounced "hooga", the word derived from the Germanic phrase meaning to think or feel satisfied. There is no exact translation of hygge but some attempts are "cozy" or "homey". In Denmark it means being aware the cozy time is sacred and treating it as such. This is a powerful factor in Danish happiness.
Management QOL in the News - April 27, 2015
The Social Progress Imperative
The Social Progress Imperative (SPI) is changing the way we solve the world's most pressing challenges by redefining how the world measures success and putting the things that matter to people's lives at the top of the agenda.
The Social Progress Index revolutionizes the solving of societal problems by enabling leaders to systematically identify and prioritize issues. The Social Progress Imperative's network empowers leaders to convene all the right local actors, global partners, and subject-matter experts necessary to develop and deploy meaningful solutions. Together, the index and the network empower local actors to both identify shortcomings and deliver the solutions to improve them.
Relying only on a country's GDP as the measure of progress provides an incomplete picture of human and societal development because it overlooks factors like access to electricity, health, property rights, and religious tolerance.
The Social Progress Index is used in tandem with GDP to provide a holistic assessment of a country's overall progress.
The Social Progress Index examines social and environmental indicators that capture three distinct dimensions of social progress: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity.
The Index has four key design principles:
- Exclusively social and environmental indicators: The index focuses on indicators like indoor air pollution and women in school, not family income or individual employment.
- Outcomes not inputs: The index assesses performance on indicators like access to electricity and suicide rates, not inputs like policies, laws, or levels of funding.
- Actionability: The indicators used are specific enough, such as access to improved sanitation facilities, to pinpoint exactly what needs to be changed or maintained.
- Relevance to all countries (societies): The index has been designed to measure performance of societies at all levels of income and on any continent.
