Archives: Positive Organizations

Trust, Connectivity, and Thriving: Implications for Innovative Work Behavior

This study examines how trust, connectivity and thriving drive employees’ innovative behaviors in the workplace. Using a sample of one hundred and seventy two employees across a variety of jobs and industries, we investigated the relationship between trust, connectivity (both measured at Time 1), thriving and innovative work behaviors (both measured at Time 2). Trust and connectivity were hypothesized to create a nurturing environment that enables people to thrive and be innovative in their work. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate a sequential mediation model in which connectivity mediates the relationship between trust and thriving, and thriving mediates the relationship between connectivity and innovative behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications for employee thriving and innovative behaviors at work are discussed.

Building Positive Organizations: A Typology of Positive Psychology Interventions

Research indicates that Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) in the work context have a small positive impact on improving desirable work outcomes, and a small to moderate effect on reducing undesirable work outcomes, suggesting that the effects of PPIs are not trivial, but also not large. Whereas this may be related to the difficulty of changing oneself or one’s happiness levels, the relatively small effects of PPIs may also be due to the predominant use of one-off interventions instead of more structural interventions that reflect policy level commitment. Furthermore, since most PPIs tend to focus on the individual, one could question the long-term effectiveness of such interventions, especially when the work environment remains unchanged. In this manuscript, I introduce a typology of PPIs in organizations by distinguishing between the organizational level they target (the individual or group level), and between one-off and structural interventions. I argue that different types of interventions can strengthen each other, and that to make a sustainable contribution to the optimal functioning of workers, PPIs need to comprise a wide variety of one-off and structural interventions targeting both individuals and groups in organizations. Furthermore, I make suggestions for improving the long-term effectiveness of PPIs by drawing on the literature on transfer of training, nudging, and positive design.

Learning from Academia: The Importance of Relationships in Professional Life

In-depth interviews with business school faculty members suggest that work relationships are more than strategically chosen means to career mobility. Relationships are career-defining ends as well, and negative relationships may be as consequential as helpful ties. Findings also showed significant gender differences: women, more than men, told stories about harm; men, more than women, told stories about help. Work- place relationships may play different roles for professionals and managers, and men's and women's different relational experiences may foster different career logics, or ways of striving for success.

How Leaders Shape Compassion Processes in Organizations in the Workplace

This chapter focuses on how leaders matter for the expression of compassion in organizations. Leaders are imbued with both instrumental and symbolic power to shape individual and organizational responses to suffering. To understand how leaders impact a system’s compassionate responses, we focus on leadership moves, defined as actions taken by leaders in relation to those who are suffering and/or those who are seeking to alleviate suffering. We identify twelve leadership moves and offer a theoretical view of how these twelve leaders’ moves impact the way emergent compassion processes unfold. We focus particularly on the importance of (1) how leadership moves shape the expression of suffering; (2) how leaders draw attention to pain; (3) how leaders feel and express emotion; and (4) how they frame and narrate suffering. This review illuminates the variety of ways that leaders matter and invites further research into new questions about compassion and leadership.

Toward a Pedagogy of Connection: A Critical View of Being Relational in Listening

Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) perspectives define interpersonal work experiences such as positive work relationships and high-quality connections by the mutual growth and empowerment experienced by relationship or connection partners. Listening has been implicated as a key mechanism for building such positive interpersonal work experiences, but it is unclear how listening spurs on mutual, rather than one-sided growth, in relationship and connection partners. In this paper, we argue that management education currently focuses on the intrapersonal capability of listeners to execute key verbal and non-verbal behaviors. Less emphasis is placed on the mutual experience co-created between speaker and listener and, thus, on the potential for mutual growth and empowerment. We articulate what “being relational” in the listening experience means, and use experiential learning theory to articulate how educators might create learning spaces for “being relational” through conversations between listener and speaker. Throughout the paper we contend with issues of individual and structural power asymmetries inherent in understanding listening as a relational process.

Positivity at the Workplace: Conceptualising the Relationships Between Authentic Leadership, Psychological Capital, Organisational Virtuousness, Thriving and Job Performance

Purpose
Recognising the value of positive organisational behaviour at the workplace, this paper aims to provide a major review of the current state of research on positivity, and subsequently proposes new pathways for more theory building relating to important constructs conceptually related to positivity. Following the integration of emerging but disparate research on workplace positivity and related concepts, the paper develops a conceptual framework depicting the relationships amongst authentic leader behaviours, organisational virtuousness, psychological capital, thriving and job performance.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper offers a systematic critical review of published studies representing the literature addressing authentic leadership, organisational virtuousness, thriving, psychological capital and job performance. The paper relied on computerised keyword searches in the main business source databases of Emerald, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost and SpringerLink.

Findings
This paper leads to a conceptual framework proposing direct relationships between authentic leadership, psychological capital, organisational virtuousness and job performance. Further, authentic leadership is proposed to potentially nurture organisational virtuousness, psychological capital, employee thriving and job performance, given the theoretical linkages between these conceptually relevant variables related to positivity. Additionally, organisational virtuousness and psychological capital are projected to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and employee thriving. Finally, organisational virtuousness, psychological capital and employee thriving are designated as mediators of the relationship between authentic leadership and job performance.

Research limitations/implications
This paper proposes a conceptual framework focusing on one form of positive leader behaviour and also assumes specific causal pathways using a positivistic research approach to understanding the leadership–performance relationship. The paper did not examine all possible antecedents of positivity at the workplace.

Practical implications
The proposed conceptual framework should form the basis of many organisational interventions, especially in relation to boosting authentic leadership, organisational virtuousness, psychological capital, employee thriving and job performance. By suggesting the association between authentic leadership, psychological capital and organisational virtuousness, this paper highlights potential benefits from effective leaders’ commitment to enhancing psychological capital and organisational virtuousness and engendering thriving behaviour and job performance.

Originality/value
This novel paper has the potential to stimulate the empirical studies on workplace positivity through the association of authentic leadership, psychological capital, organisational virtuousness and thriving.

The Courage To Teach With Compassion: Enriching Classroom Designs and Practices To Foster Responsiveness to Suffering

Recognizing the prevalence of suffering among management teachers and students, we raise the importance of compassion as central to the practice of management teaching. To aid in understanding how suffering and compassion arise in management teaching, we call upon a theoretical view of their rhizomatic structure, which conveys the widespread, complex, and largely unspoken spreading of suffering and corresponding need for compassion in the work of management teaching. To meet this suffering with compassion, we propose two clusters of practices central to teaching that lend themselves to helping management teachers see possibilities for more skillfully intertwining suffering and compassion. The first focuses on how management teachers can design the context for teaching in ways that make compassion more likely, focusing specifically on roles and networks. The second draws upon Honneth’s recognitional infrastructure to focus on how teachers can approach the relational practice of teaching with emphasis on enriching human recognition of suffering. We conclude with a caution about overly simplistic approaches and overly individualized views of compassion in the work of management teaching. We call for systemic approaches to action that will enrich our imaginations as we approach management teaching and its role in our collective responsiveness to suffering.

Care and Compassion Through an Organizational Lens: Opening Up New Possibilities

In this article we introduce AMR's Special Topic Forum on Understanding and Creating Caring and Compassionate Organizations. We outline why the time is right for such a forum, uncover scholarly and philosophical roots of a focus on compassion and care, and provide a brief introduction to the diverse and rich set of articles contained in this forum. We describe the innovative theorizing uncovered by the special issue articles and summarize the rich set of possibilities they suggest for the practice of organizing.

Compassionate Care in Behavior Analytic Treatment: Can Outcomes be Enhanced by Attending to Relationships with Caregivers?

The practice of behavior analysis has become a booming industry with growth to over 30,000 Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) who primarily work with children with autism and their families. Most of these BCBAs are relatively novice and have likely been trained in graduate programs that focus primarily on conceptual and technical skills. Successfully working with families of children with autism, however, requires critical interpersonal skills, as well as technical skills. As practitioners strive to respond efficiently and compassionately to distressed families of children with autism, technical skills must be balanced with fluency in relationship-building skills that strengthen the commitment to treatment. The current article provides an outline of important therapeutic relationship skills that should inform the repertoire of any practicing behavior analyst, strategies to cultivate and enhance those skills, and discussion of the potential effects of relationship variables on treatment outcomes.

Compassion at Work

Compassion is an interpersonal process involving the noticing, feeling, sensemaking, and acting that alleviates the suffering of another person. This process has recently received substantial attention by organizational researchers and practitioners alike. This article reviews what researchers currently know about compassion as it unfolds in dyadic interactions in work organizations. We begin by reviewing what we know about the benefits of compassion for the person who is suffering, for the provider of compassion, and for third parties who witness or hear about compassion at work. The heart of the article focuses on what research tells us about embedding compassion in the personal, relational, and organizational contexts in which compassion takes place. We conclude by discussing implications for practice and for the future research agenda regarding this vital interpersonal process.