Compulsory Happiness

I often come across people in my industry (software) that think the path to success is lined with an endless stream of foosball tables, bean-bags and beer-o-clock Fridays. It's almost as if they wish to blur the distinction between work and play to such an extent that workers lose any sense of where they are or what they're doing, incapable of recognizing when they are being paid to do something vs simply doing it for kicks. This desire seems to be driven by a couple of key industry attributes (i.e. its fast-moving and largely staffed with youngsters) but is ultimately built on the idea that a happy worker is a productive worker, however, is happiness really correlated with productivity in this way?

There's little doubt in my mind that miserable people aren't as productive as contented ones, but, since "happiness" is such a subjective thing is it really possible to legislate for it in a workplace that contains many individuals with many different roles? In my experience there's always a spectrum of personalities in any team, more often than not in technical teams (like engineers or programmers) the the people will be lower in extroversion and higher in conscientiousness whereas in more customer-facing teams (like sales or support) this is often the opposite. People with such diverse personality traits will almost certainly be motivated by very different environments, some thrive on "buzz" usually meaning plenty of distraction, noise, conversation and banter. But, others, such as engineering environments usually require a degree of quiet and tranquility for deep and extended-duration thought, it's hard to mix the two things together and achieve harmony. Whenever I encounter managers who are keen to turn their workplaces into extended "social-clubs" I always counsel caution, sometimes what's cheese for some is chalk for others.