Positive organizational behavior: Developing and managing psychological strengths

TLDR

Positive feelings have long been acknowledged in organizational behavior, yet scholars and practitioners often focus on deficits rather than strengths, prompting the emergence of positive organizational behavior rooted in positive psychology. This article introduces a positive organizational behavior framework that establishes explicit inclusion criteria for strength‑based concepts. The framework requires that each concept be uniquely relevant to OB, measurable, adaptable to leadership and HR development, and performance‑enhancing, and identifies confidence, hope, optimism, subjective well‑being, and emotional intelligence (CHOSE) as core constructs. The study highlights how applying these CHOSE constructs can improve workplace outcomes such as performance, engagement, and well‑being.

Abstract

Executive Overview This article proposes a positive approach to organizational behavior (OB). Although the importance of positive feelings has been recognized through the years in the academic OB and popular literature, both management scholars and practitioners have arguably too often taken a negative perspective—trying to fix what is wrong with managers and employees and concentrating on weaknesses. Positive organizational behavior (POB) follows the lead of recently emerging positive psychology, which is driven by theory and research focusing on people's strengths and psychological capabilities. Instead of just retreading and putting a positive spin on traditional OB concepts, this unveiling of POB sets forth specific criteria for inclusion. Not only does positivity have to be associated with the concept, but it must also be relatively unique to the OB field, have valid measures, be adaptable to leader/management and human resource training and development, and, most important, capable of contributing to performance improvement in today's workplace. The criteria-meeting concepts of confidence/self-efficacy, hope, optimism, subjective well-being/happiness, and emotional intelligence (or the acronym CHOSE) are identified and analyzed as most representative of the proposed POB approach. The implications of these POB concepts for the workplace are given particular attention.