Positive Organizational Scholarship and Practice: A Dynamic Duo

In spite of real pressures of deadlines and competition, concentrating on virtues and strengths helps businesses and their leaders to unleash the power of an organization’s most important asset—human capital.

[powerpress: http://gsbm-med.pepperdine.edu/gbr/audio/spring 2011/pos_avramchuk.mp3]

Happy business people “Imagine a world in which almost all organizations are typified by greed, selfishness, manipulation, secrecy, and a single-minded focus on winning … For the sake of contrast, now imagine another world in which almost all organizations are typified by appreciation, collaboration, virtuousness, vitality, and meaningfulness.”[1] Which sounds better to you? The latter is the world that the discipline of positive organizational scholarship (POS) aims to explore.[2] This discipline, only recently established in 2003, was created to balance the abundant research that concentrates on the former world. Although most practitioners hear or intuitively know that being positive is generally good for morale and business, many still want to understand how to foster and sustain an organizational climate of positivity and meaningfulness. For those interested in operating within the world of appreciation and vitality, this article presents three strategies toward fostering positivity in your business practice: concentrating on virtues and strengths; supporting the psychological upward movement, and embedding sustainable positivity. The author fuses these POS concepts with the day-to-day business management routine to offer applications that are effective no matter what type of organization you are working for.

Concentrating on Virtues and Strengths

In spite of real pressures of deadlines and competition, concentrating on virtues and strengths helps businesses and their leaders to unleash the power of an organization’s most important asset—human capital.[3] The discipline of positive psychology has already educated us about the importance of positive reinforcement and, by proxy, the importance of focusing on strengths.[4] Positive psychology practitioners have been successful in their clinical practices. However, the processes of applying these well-researched ideas to specific business practices have not been highlighted enough—particularly in applying positive psychology concepts to goal management[5] and, even more elusive yet, in merging virtues with the for-profit goals.

So, what specific steps can be envisioned to comprehensively align the focus on virtues and strengths with the routines that business practitioners encounter on a daily basis?

A. Make employees’ strengths a part of (re)designing your business operations

It may seem simple on the surface, but it may not be so easy to implement. For instance, when entrepreneurs create new ventures, they are free to envision a business model that would incorporate employees’ strengths, but they do not yet have long-term employees to know what strengths to incorporate. On the other hand, when the business operations are set in place for years at an established enterprise, shifting that setup to “accommodate” employees’ true strengths can be challenging.

One step toward a solution may surprisingly resemble the concept behind the much publicized domain of social networks. The effectiveness of tools like Facebook or LinkedIn is fundamentally based on the participants’ motivation to connect and present themselves in the best possible light. I have not witnessed anyone in these networks deliberately focus on their weaknesses. To the contrary, social networkers concentrate on exposing and developing their strong suits, and they light up when others notice and take interest in their strengths. Interestingly enough, nobody needs to closely “manage” these networked relationships. In order for the desired outcomes to materialize for all participants—including the creators of the tools—the creators’ chief task is to enable the infrastructure for the networkers to thrive!

Now, how does this relate to organizational scholarship and practice? Business practitioners would be well served to take notice of the social networkers’ experience. Jay Galbraith, one of the best known authors in the field of organizational design, warned us some time ago that the modern organization has to get rid of hierarchical mentality and has to strengthen their relational, lateral networks in order to remain viable and expand globally.[6] He stressed that the networked organizing of business was especially important in the environments with matrix-management practices. The emphasis on the human “node” in these networks was unmistakable, and I see a link between Galbraith’s proven concepts of organizational design and the benefits of individual and organizational positivity.

Take, for example, the complex matrix-management structure of Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest non-governmental healthcare systems in the world. I worked there for more than a decade, helping to enable some of the widely praised information-technology capacities with electronic medical records. The simple idea of having a patient’s complete health record at a doctor’s fingertips was not easy to implement. It required a revamping of most organizational practices, from how a nurse’s station connects to an enterprise database, to how a patient experiences his or her visit. Regardless of their professional background, practitioners in most departments had to adapt to the new order of business, and the change was sometimes uncomfortably close to people’s deeply seated assumptions of how things should work. Managers who handled these fundamental shifts by incorporating and emphasizing employees’ strengths were successful in implementing the changes faster. Moreover, these managers did not have to spend much time monitoring the employees’ work. Employees were largely self-motivated by seeing that their strengths were acknowledged and brought value to the company.

B. Show employees how their virtues support your business virtues

As a nonprofit organization, Kaiser’s Health Plan deliberately reminded the workforce of the virtues associated with the mission of healthcare: Compassion, integrity, and service orientation were some of the key points of concentration that endured throughout the massive organizational change. Reinforcing that mission helped, not only in boosting the morale during change, but also in focusing on what was important in the long run. Many employees and managers seemed to have naturally affiliated with most of these virtues and found clear links between what they cherished and what their organization professed.

Supporting the Upward Movement

Positive Organizational ScholarshipThe next practical lesson from the positive organizational scholarship is to make sure that the unleashed power of human capital is not returning to a form of dormant asset. Robert Quinn, one of the cofounders of POS, recently coauthored Lift­­­­, a book about how to maintain the positive upward movement in organizations. It refers in part to lifting the spirits of people “touched” by a business process. When organizational members and business customers are harmoniously “lifting” each other up in every interaction, the upward movement is maintained.[7]

A. Walk the talk when supporting the psychological lifting-up process

Authenticity in the desire to maintain the upward movement must shine through personal actions. Setting one’s mind on it is very important, and so is following up with concrete steps. At Kaiser, some of the vivid examples of mutual “lifting up” came from the customer-facing practitioners. They cheered each other up and made every minute count, understanding that anything less would take the precious resources and energy away from the patients. In turn, some of the patients complimented staff members and told them how appreciated their positive energy was. Akin to a snowballing process, the mutuality of heartfelt positive reinforcement contributed to a win-win for all.

B. Create opportunities to uplift others

When was the last time you asked how someone was and were truly ready to discuss the answer and deeply focus on the positive? If you are a manager, what would you think about first when you heard your employees laughing? Would you genuinely inquire about their happiness and perhaps share in their joyous moment, or would you approach them with a confused expression and ideas on how to make the laughing stop? Thinking through these questions helps to assess how we deal with and foster positivity in the workplace and how we develop high-quality, energizing relationships.[8] Acting on the opportunities to uplift others usually benefits all stakeholders involved.

In Kaiser’s case, a happy customer is a healthier customer, and a happy employee is a healthier and more productive one. Both contribute to the decreased costs due to less spending on managing patient conditions and employee performance. Whether in managerial roles or not, business practitioners can contribute to the upward movement by seeking out opportunities to “make someone’s day.” The art of positivity should not be considered a prerogative of a few, but rather an innate capacity of all. Practicing it makes business interactions better on personal levels and contributes to financial rewards for the organization.

Embedding Sustainable Positivity

What comes next is the important step of ensuring sustainability of the newly developed trends for positive change and upward movement within the organization. Today’s business world is, of course, multifaceted and complex, and sustaining positivity may be difficult at times. There are also some scholarly arguments about counterpoints to positivity in management science that focus on objective descriptions of organizational phenomena and caution against unexamined claims around benefits of psychological positivity.[9] As with any new discipline, POS has to develop and continue testing its concepts. However, given the uplifting motivation of positive organizational scholarship and its favorable implications in practice, embedding sustainable levels of positivity is a worthy goal to pursue.

A. Encourage positivity within your reward systems

Positive traits are appealing to humans, so why not relax the internal job requirements and policies that stand in the way of letting these traits flourish? The example of Southwest Airlines comes to mind, with their happy employees and a palpable focus on love in the air. For a strictly regulated business like theirs, it is remarkable how the company designed ways to transcend “business as usual” and capitalize on the genuine smiles and care they appear to have engendered among their staff. Southwest seems to have found the win-win recipe for success by concentrating on sustained positive practices. Rewarding employees’ ingenuity in being positive—within the parameters of rigorous industrial regulatory environment—has contributed to paying off for Southwest Airlines in expanded markets and a devoted workforce. This obviously did not happen overnight. The encouragement and rewards for positivity must be sustained over time.

B. Communicate your unyielding focus on the positive

There is little dispute that communication is a vital function for organizational practitioners in leadership roles. It is an especially important function for initiating and sustaining change, including cultural and behavioral change in business operations. Kim Cameron—another cofounder of POS—authored a book on positive leadership where he describes strategies for extraordinary performance and “positive deviance.”[10] One of the lessons from his work is that successful leaders inspire people to do their best from the position of unyielding positivity. Continuously highlighting such a position and communicating such a focus helps in making some lasting changes for the better. Sam Farry wrote in his review of Cameron’s book that “one must attend consciously, practice intentionally, and learn”[11] in order to achieve the effect of positively deviant leadership behaviors. I would add that one must communicate his or her sustained focus on positivity in order to foster such behaviors in others.

Conclusion

The discipline of positive organizational scholarship provides valuable lessons for business practitioners who may bolster organizational vitality through a concentration on strengths instead of focusing on deficiencies. This scholarship does not advocate for abandoning any traditional focus that works, but instead augmenting the existing knowledge toolset with a new lens. It may help you and your workforce to see a way out of the “surviving in the jungle” or “I am as good as my last quarter’s numbers” mentality of operations. For some, it may help to create conditions under which work becomes more than a pursuit of economic goals and resembles a personal calling.[12] For others, it may lead to practical steps toward positivity and meaningfulness that include the points elaborated above:

1. Concentrate on Virtues and Strengths

  • Make employees’ strengths a part of (re)designing your business operations
  • Show employees how their virtues support your business virtues

2. Support the Upward Movement

  • Walk the talk when supporting the psychological lifting-up process
  • Create opportunities to uplift others

3. Embed Sustainable Positivity

  • Encourage positivity within your reward systems
  • Communicate your unyielding focus on the positive

None of these points or steps is trivial to embrace or implement, as any sustainable practice requires some serious effort.[13] They refer to complex dynamics of human interaction,[14] and each of them will take a unique form within a particular business environment. In aggregate, however, they may help to demystify the “ivory tower” body of knowledge and give practitioners more tangible ammunition for developing lasting businesses in which humans thrive. In turn, as organizational scholars desire to study the areas of thriving practice, such practice contributes to the development of energizing research,[15] and this generative cycle benefits both sides in the end.


[1] Cameron, Kim S., Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn. “Foundations of Positive Organizational Scholarship,” Cameron, Kim S., Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn, eds. Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of A New Discipline. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.

[2] Cameron, Kim S., Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn, eds. Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of A New Discipline. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.

[3] See the following book as an illustration of the point: James, Erika Hayes, and Lynn Perry Wooten. Leading under Pressure: from Surviving to Thriving Before, During, and after a Crisis. New York: Routledge, 2010.

[4] See the following work for one of the examples: Fredrickson, Barbara L., and Christine A. Branigan. “Positive Emotions Broaden the Scope of Attention and Thought-action Repertoires.” Cognition & Emotion 19, no. 3 (2005): 313-32. doi:10.1080/02699930441000238.

[5] See the following for one notable exception: Kerns, Charles D. “The Positive Psychology Approach to Goal Management.” Graziadio Business Review 8, no. 3 (2005). http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/the-positive-psychology-approach-to-goal-management/).

[6] Galbraith, Jay R. Designing the Global Corporation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.

[7] Quinn, Ryan W., and Robert E. Quinn. Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009.

[8] also see Dutton, Jane E. Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-quality Connections at Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.

[9] Fineman, S. “On Being Positive: Concerns and Counterpoints.” Academy of Management Review 31, no. 2 (2006): 270-91.

[10] Cameron, Kim S. Positive Leadership Strategies for Extraordinary Performance. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2008.

[11] Farry, Sam. “A Book Corner Review of Positive Leadership by Kim S. Cameron.” Graziadio Business Review 12, no. 1 (2009). http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/positive-leadership-by-kim-s-cameron/.

[12] Bunderson, J. S., and J. A. Thompson. “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work.” Administrative Science Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2009): 32-57. doi:10.2189/asqu.2009.54.1.32.

[13] James. Quinn. Dutton.

[14] Dutton, Jane E., and Belle Rose Ragins. Exploring Positive Relationships at Work: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

[15] see the following for an example of how researchers thrive in their practice from deeply exploring interesting business phenomena: Carlsen, A., and J. E. Dutton, eds. Research Alive Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research. Copenhagen Business School Pr, 2011.

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Enjoy!: 101 Ways to Add Fun to Your Work Every Day by Gini Graham Scott

Enjoy!: 101 Ways to Add Fun to Your Work Every Day

By Gini Graham Scott
AMACOM, 2008

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5 stars: Stop what you're doing and read this book!This delightful book, Enjoy!: 101 Ways to Add Fun to Your Work Every Day, is based on the premise that having fun relieves stress. “People work too hard, particularly in the United States . . . and have a higher level of work related stress,” writes the author, who has written over 50 books, two of which are reviewed in this issue of the Graziadio Business Report.[1]

Enjoy! is divided into five parts. Part One consists of three chapters that review happiness, provide tools to make you happier (Scott is big on making lists), and offer tips on attitudes and relationships many of these tips may sound familiar while others are thought provoking. Part Two, “Breaking Down the Barriers to Enjoyment,” includes chapters on how to “Silence Your Inner Critical Voice” and “Rediscover Your Inner Child.” Such suggestions are contrary to what many of us have tried to do in cultivating our business personas most of us suppress our childlike qualities in an effort to become socialized and appear “professional.”

Part Three goes into 101 ways to add fun at work. Several ideas would not work in all office environments (e.g., bring your pet to work, email jokes, and record a humorous voicemail message), but all 101 ways could find a home in the right office environment. Some of the ideas are extremely useful (e.g., start meetings with a fun opener, institute diversity day, and throw recognition parties); while some are downright novel (e.g., bingo awards, change-the-names-and-titles games, and creative ideas for logos).

Part Four includes a long chapter (adapted from one of Scott’s other books) on what to do when traveling. Some of her suggestions sound like games I have played with my kids to keep them entertained on long trips, and others are good tips that many of us do naturally. Part Five concludes the book with a short summary chapter.

I was initially worried that Scott’s first two chapters were simply derivative material as all 24 of her references for these chapters were from the same source; however, I found the content to be original and useful in the context of this book. Enjoy! is 256 pages and the ideas certainly sound like they would be fun at work, and many could be used in off-site team-building scenarios. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in creating a more open and cohesive working environment.

[1] Click here to read a review of another of Scott’s books (co-authored with Terrence Gargiulo), In the Land of Difficult People: 24 Timeless Tales Reveal How to Tame Beasts at Work

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Putting Performance and Happiness Together in the Workplace

Performance and happiness go hand in hand in making an organization successful.[1] With both an appropriate performance management system and a positive approach to influencing people that increases happiness, an organization’s key results can more likely be achieved and sustained.

Which of the following types of persons would you prefer to have in greater numbers in your organization?







Photo: Lise Gagne







Which of the following types of persons would you prefer to have in greater numbers in your organization?

A. Happy Low Performers

B. Unhappy Low Performers

C. Unhappy High Performers

D. Happy High Performers

E. All of the above.

The obvious preference would be “D.” Intuition aside, mounting evidence suggests that happy high performing workforces correlate with greater employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, productivity, and profits.[2] The majority of workplaces, however, are filled with “E”: all of the above.

The intersection between the dimensions of performance and happiness will dictate whether an organization is able to sustain its success. This article highlights the importance of both performance and happiness to the long-term success of a business, describes the key dimensions of happiness in the workplace, and offers a self-assessment tool which individuals may use in thinking about their own personal performance and happiness at work. A call is made to practitioners and applied researchers to design, develop, and test happiness-enhancing interventions to assist practitioners in their efforts to boost happiness in the workplace.

The Performance – Happiness Matrix

In the context of performance management, “performance” refers to actions that drive the achievement of key results. A “high performer” is an individual (or work group) that performs the actions necessary to drive key results. “Happiness” is the experience of frequent, mildly pleasant emotions, the relative absence of unpleasant feelings, and a general feeling of satisfaction with one’s life.”[3] People who are happy in the work setting are generally having more positive experiences than negative ones in connection with the work place and their job.

An interesting and useful way of viewing people and groups across the two dimensions of performance and happiness is depicted in Figure 1. Happy and sad faces, with arrows symbolizing high and low performance, represent the four permutations in this analysis. The author often uses this matrix with executives to discuss their own situation as well as that of the people in their organizations. References in this article to the various quadrants are used for thought and discussion purposes only. For more specific analysis of areas of relative strength and weakness for a particular individual or group within an organization, see the Performance-Happiness Self-Assessment Survey here.

Performance-Happiness Matrix

1. Quadrant #1: Happy Low Performer. These employees remain happy in spite of poor performance. They may be especially optimistic, perhaps mismatched for their current position, or need training. Tom, for example, a new and inexperienced pharmaceutical sales person, was positive about his future and hopeful that his current poor performance would improve with sales skill training. He was optimistic and hopeful about succeeding in this position, even though his current performance was poor; as his performance improves, he would move toward Q4 behavior.

2. Quadrant #2: Unhappy Low Performer. Many factors can contribute to this condition, including a lack of performance management systems, poor selection practices, and little or no meaningful employee recognition. For example, Mary was frustrated and unhappy in the workplace most of the time. Her job required her to be detail-oriented, structured and willing to work alone for long periods of time. The problem was that Mary was not good with details, and she was creative and extroverted. She was an underperformer in her current job with little chance of succeeding because her work preferences did not match those required by her job.

Negative low performers can keep organizations from reaching their full potential. Their own lack of success drags down overall performance. Perhaps more significantly, unhappy low performers can infect others with negative attitudes and become negative role models, exacerbating the impact of their unhappiness, and allowing counterproductive behaviors to creep into the workplace.

3. Quadrant #3: Unhappy High Performer. Various reasons may underlie why an employee who is performing well may nonetheless be unhappy in the workplace. For instance, employees may be unhappy because their work is not challenging, or they are repeatedly asked to do the same assignments because they are good at a particular activity. Without challenging work, it is difficult for an employee to become involved, engaged, or positive about his or her work, making it difficult to sustain high performance over time. This may result in the most talented and marketable people, who are unhappy, leaving an organization.

For instance: Having been given the same assignments numerous times, Peter was unhappy and frustrated. While he continued to be a high performer in his current position, Peter believed that no one cared about his development and was contemplating looking for another position.

4. Quadrant #4: Happy High Performer. Happy high performance presents the best prospect for long-term organizational success. A high performer who is happy about his/her work will be much more likely to sustain high performance over time and deliver key results.

A Closer Look at Quadrant #4, the Happy High Performer

People who occupy Quadrant #4 share some key characteristics. These individuals:

  1. Have a clear direction.
  2. Find that direction motivating.
  3. Focus on what is important and what they can influence.
  4. Are linked to the resources necessary to execute key actions.
  5. Talk and act in ways that promote performance and happiness.
  6. Are significantly engaged in their work.
  7. Find meaning and purpose in their work.
  8. Have more positive experiences than negative experiences at work.
  9. Are grateful about the past and do not carry grudges.
  10. Are optimistic looking into the future.
  11. Achieve agreed upon results.
  12. Are happy about their workplace.

Managerial leaders are encouraged to use the “Performance – Happiness Self-Assessment Survey” to rate themselves on these characteristics. This assessment tool is an informal survey that serves as a springboard for a conversation about areas of relative strength and areas where improvement may be indicated, with the goal of personal growth toward Q4.

Paths to Performance and Happiness

Job satisfaction researchers have had a long standing debate as to whether employees are happy first and performers second, or performers first and happy second.[4] However, both happiness and job performance need to be addressed.

Various paths exist to maximize performance and happiness. It may be relatively easier to move people from Q1 or Q3, rather than from Q2, toward the high performing happy Q4. For instance, a change in recognition and reward strategies may be sufficient to move people in Q3 to Q4. In most situations, however, the “fix” to enhance people’s happiness in their work environment will be challenging. Tools exist for increasing performance, but positivity enhancing interventions that drive happiness still need to be developed for use within organizational settings.

1. Increasing Performance. A managerial leader can maximize performance by taking action in the following four areas:

  1. Designing, developing, and delivering a clear and motivating direction
  2. Creating operational focus
  3. Effectively and efficiently linking or coordinating resources
  4. Ensuring that people practice effective influence skills

When managerial leaders effectively execute the action roles of director, focuser, linker and influencer,[5] performance is advanced. In order to be a high performer, an employee must have a clear and motivating direction, know what to focus on, know how to access and link with resources to maximize his or her performance, and be surrounded by people who practice effective influence or people skills, including individuals who model and promote happiness.

2. Increasing Happiness. In looking at happiness in the workplace, we find that a person’s orientation in reflecting on the past, focusing on the present, and looking into the future, is determinative of whether he or she is happy.[6]

  • When reflecting on the past, the way to happiness is to be grateful and “count your blessings.” Happy people do not carry grudges; they find effective ways to forgive others.
  • In looking at one’s present situation, individuals derive happiness from being significantly engaged in their work, finding meaning/purpose in what they do, and/or regularly having more happy/positive experiences than negative ones.
  • Individuals who are challenged while using their skills and strengths will be engaged in their work. When an optimal balance occurs between challenge and skill, a person becomes fully engaged in the activity at hand. Such individuals are “in flow” with their work.[7]
  • Employees experience meaning in their work when they recognize that their work has an impact on others. Meaning is often brought into greater focus when employees understand what needs they are satisfying for the end users of their organization’s products and services. For example, when production workers in a manufacturing plant recognize that their company’s products contribute to environmental safety in communities around the globe, they can see the greater good, or meaning, in their work beyond the relative simplicity of completing their own daily tasks.
  • Finally, happiness comes from work experiences that yield positive emotions, positive thoughts, and/or positive images in people. Positive emotions in particular have the capacity to “build and broaden” people’s positive response repertoire.[8] People who approach tasks with positivity have been found to be more productive, creative and resilient.[9]
  • When looking into the future, happy performers are optimistic and hopeful. They utilize positive goals, self-talk and other strategies to help them remain resilient as they move forward.

Perhaps the initial way for a managerial leader to think about how to influence the happiness level of his or her employees is in relation to the employee’s present situation. For example, engagement with one’s work can likely be enhanced by having an individual assess her “strengths” and utilize those strengths in her work. This may include coaching to help the individual use her strengths in innovative ways. An employee’s level of engagement at work, and subsequent happiness, is likely boosted when he or she has the opportunity to do what he or she does best at work – utilizing one’s strengths is a positive experience. (This could likely help Mary, the Q2 Unhappy Low Performer, move toward Q4.)

A Call to Action

Organizational leaders should strive to increase the number of Happy High Performers in their ranks. Start by assessing yourself in relation to the qualities of a high-performing happy person. With this assessment you can develop practical action plans that help you move toward higher performance and happiness in the work environment.

To increase the number of happy high performers in the workplace, organizational leaders need access to proven happiness-enhancing interventions. Unfortunately, there has been little work done in organizational settings to address this need. As a foundation, there is a growing body of applied research which seeks to validate happiness enhancing interventions in self-help and mental health settings.[10] Practitioners and applied researchers working in organizations need to focus more attention on developing practical happiness-enhancing interventions to assist managerial leaders to help their people become more engaged in their work, experience meaning in their work, and experience positive emotions, thoughts, and images in relation to the work and work environment. With tools to help people in organizations enhance their happiness combined with effective performance management systems, happy high performers will likely grow in numbers within organizations.

Use this article as a springboard to look at yourself and your current organization from a performance-happiness perspective. You are encouraged to use the Performance – Happiness Self-Assessment Survey that is provided to help you target potential areas for personal change and fine tuning. Strive to become a happy high-performing role model for others as you move towards building and sustaining a high performing happy workplace.

[1] C.D. Fisher. “Why Do Lay People Believe That Satisfaction and Performance are Correlated? Possible Sources of a Commonsense Theory,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24, no. 6, (2003): 753-77.

[2] J.K. Harter, F.L. Schmidt, T.L. Hayes. “Business-Unit Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction, Employee Engagement, and Business Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, no. 2, (2002/04): 268-79. S. Lyubomirsky, L. King, E. Diener. “The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead To Success?” Psychological Bulletin, 131, no. 6, (2005): 803-55. D. Sirota, L.A. Mischkind, M.I. Meltzer. The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit By Giving Workers What They Want, (New Jersey: Wharton School Publishing, 2005).

[3] R. Biswas-Diener, B. Dean. Positive Psychology Coaching, (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2007): 41.

[4] T.A. Wright. “The Emergence Of Job Satisfaction In Organizational Behavior: A Historical Overview of the Dawn of Job Attitude Research,” Journal of Management History, 12, no. 3, (2006): 262-77. G.P. Latham, C.C. Pinder. “Work Motivation Theory and Research at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” Annual Review of Psychology, 56, (2005): 485, 516.

[5] C.D. Kerns. Value-Centered Ethics, (Massachusetts: HRD Press, 2005). See Chapters 5-8 for a detailed review of the four action roles of Influencer, Director, Focuser and Linker.

[6] C. Peterson, N. Park, M.E.P. Seligman. “Orientations to Happiness and Life Satisfaction: The Full Life Versus the Empty Life,” Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, no. 1, (2005): 25-41.

[7] M. Csikszentmihalyi. Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning, (New York: Viking, 2003).

[8] B.L. Fredrickson. “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-And -Build Theory of Positive Emotions,” American Psychologist, 56, no. 3. (2001): 218-26.

[9] B.L. Fredrickson, C. Branigan. “Positive Emotions Broaden the Scope of Attention and Thought -Action Repertoires,” Cognition and Emotion, 19, no. 3, (2005/4): 313-32.

[10] M.E.P. Seligman, N. Park, C. Peterson. “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions,” American Psychologist, 60, (2005): 410-21. See psychological interventions designed and empirically tested to increase individual happiness. S. Lyubomirsky. The How Of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007). See Chapters 4-9 for empirically supported happiness enhancing interventions targeted for individuals interested in using a self-help approach to becoming happier. Areas covered include managing stress, hardship, and trauma.

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