Although competitive pressures on most organizations are stronger than ever,
some organizations are trying to realize a competitive advantage by fostering a
positive work environment. Jeff Immelt and Jim McNerney, both disciples of
Jack Welch, have tried to maintain high-performance expectations (a characteristic
of GE’s culture) while fostering a positive work environment in their
organizations (GE and Boeing). “In this time of turmoil and cynicism about
business, you need to be passionate, positive leaders,” Mr. Immelt recently told
his top managers.
A real growth area in OB research is positive organizational scholarship
(also called positive organizational behavior ), which studies how organizations
develop human strengths, foster vitality and resilience, and unlock potential.
Researchers in this area say too much of OB research and management practice
has been targeted toward identifying what’s wrong with organizations and
their employees. In response, they try to study what’s good about them. 23 Some
key independent variables in positive OB research are engagement, hope, optimism,
and resilience in the face of strain.
Positive organizational scholars have studied a concept called “reflected
best-self”—asking employees to think about when they were at their “personal
best” in order to understand how to exploit their strengths. The idea is that
we all have things at which we are unusually good, yet too often we focus
on addressing our limitations and too rarely think about how to exploit our
strengths. 24
Although positive organizational scholarship does not deny the value of the
negative (such as critical feedback), it does challenge researchers to look at OB
through a new lens and pushes organizations to exploit employees’ strengths
rather than dwell on their limitations.