Eudaimonic well-being of halal executives in the halal food and beverage industry / Jalilah Ahmad

Malaysia has earmarked the Halal industry as its new income generator. Though an Islamic legal concept, Halal has emerged as one of the most lucrative and influential brands globally; a globalized symbol of quality assurance and lifestyle choice with large stakes in the annual volume of USD3 trillion in the hands of non-Muslims. In its Quranic usage, Halal is synonymous with tayyib, that which is clean and lawful. Most production of these commodities however, is profit driven, exploiting the rise of a new Islamic paradigm, and not necessarily created with the objective of honouring religious practice and sentiment. A HE’s endeavors are therefore realities of complex demands and uncertainties in an evolving and dynamic environment that require superior personal competence and professionalism wrapped in virtues found in EWB. Positive psychology provides the foundation for the conceptual framework that seeks to identify the synergies between the different domains of HE’s professional positive functioning and EWB. The appropriation of EWB in organizational behavior means that EWB can function as a personal competence in which virtue, knowledge and authority remain with the HE. Understanding EWB by examining its origins within the phenomenological tradition as a mode of intersubjective understanding, offers a novel and enriching approach to knowledge discovery in EWB research as it validates the existence, importance and impact of EWB, and provides a more integrated and less factorial account of its subtle and multidimensional qualities that are momentary, dynamic, and responsive. It is therefore the objective of this study to discover the nature and the constituents that make up the invariant structure in the lived experience of EWB of HEs in the Malaysian Halal F&B sector; and the constituents that make up their post-EWB experience. Three Halal executives from the Halal food and beverage industry were interviewed and each gave a descriptive account of their EWB experience. Subsequently, it was found that HEs experience complex decision-making challenges requiring rapid interpretations and understandings of the situation as the activities of EWB. The constituents found in the general structure are listed under descriptive titles as follows: (1) Alerted to an urgent need for change, (2) Role identification in the situation, (3) Information gathering and conceptualizing the events, (4) Clearly defined goals, (5) Sense support and valuing by authoritative other(s), (6) Planning and deliberations in anticipation of events, (7) Heightened awareness of limiting beliefs, (8) Anticipation/Observations of challenging actions by significant other(s), (9) Sense saliency of the Divine, (10) Embracing a giving and receiving mind-set, (11) Intense involvement in inner potencies, (12) Sense support and valuing from significant others, (13) Striving for excellence, (14) Sense of relief when limiting beliefs were gone, (15) Ecstasy in the freedom to be, (16) Feeling of healthy pride, (17) Finding meaning in the experience, (18) Felt sense of self-transcendence, (19) Expansion of personal worldview, (20) Desire to relive the experience, (21) Post-EWB personal enrichment. Even though some constituents e.g (11), (13), (18) and (21) are apriori, the descriptive invariant psychological structure of the experience for the HE consists of distinct psychological parts that assemble interdependently, though not perfect, but sufficiently like a Criblock retaining wall. It is the psychologically rich and deeply personal experience that has been explored for a better understanding of the HE’s experience. Principles from the dynamic systems theory provided useful insights for intervention strategies and policies for sustainable EWB transformation of HEs.