Innovation and happiness management enhancing transcendence at work in the banking sector in Spain

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to delve into innovation and happiness management linked to the definition of transcendence at work. The paper analyses in the context of innovation and happiness management the relation of the three dimensions taken from Khari and Sinha (2020: Sense of we-ness, self-connectedness and work as a service. The paper also proposed indicators to applied transcendence and moral competencies to the banking sector guiding behaviour toward successful experiences at work as an antecedent of both, transcendence and employees ' performance.Design/methodology/approachThe article starts with a VOSviewer-based bibliometric analysis to examine the recent development of happiness management as an emergent topic of research. A co-word analysis served to identify that the main research theme related to the topic is transcendence at work. The theoretical framework serves for developing a conceptual model that is analysed by taking structural equations modelling (SEM) as the method and partial least squares (PLS) as the technique. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed a sample of 354 employees from the main banks in Spain in 2021 (Santander, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), CaixaBank, Bankia and Sabadell).FindingsThe results confirm that Innovation and happiness management is related to moral competencies, which refer to the set of knowledge, skills and abilities that facilitate ethical behaviour in the banking sector. Innovation and happiness management include individual attributes for good performance in each job; this research is in line with the prominent call in the literature to consider moral competencies in human resources management.Originality/valueOriginality lies on the answer of the question: what is the role of employee transcendence in the turbulent banking sector today? This paper seeks to approach and measure the relation of innovation, happiness and transcendence at work, Transcendence at work often arises when individuals connect their work to a higher purpose or mission, that connection is based on the idea that any effort to improve any of these three attributes provides successful solutions for the complex banking sector's performance.