The added value of the positive: A literature review of positive psychology interventions in organizations

Meyers, Maria Christina; Woerkom, Marianne van; Bakker, Arnold B.

doi:10.1080/1359432x.2012.694689

Cited by 258 publications

(236 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Organizational processes seem too complex to be captured in (only) strict "traditional" job redesign approaches (Briner & Reynolds, 1999;Erdogan & Bauer, 2005), and positive, proactive interventions (that work) are scarce but needed in all work domains (Biron, Karanika-Murray, & Copper, 2012;Meyers et al, 2013). Job redesign theories have been developing since the 1950s with the "motivation-hygiene theory" (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959), which began increasing our understanding of job satisfaction, superior performance, and the roles of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic hygiene factors (e.g., pleasant working conditions).…”

Section: Towards Individual Job Redesign Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, we extend research on interventions in organizations as previous research has offered only scarce evidence for the effectiveness of various interventions, mainly with regards to job redesign (Briner & Reynolds, 1999;Holman & Axtell, 2016), and positive organizational behavior (Meyers, van Woerkom, & Bakker, 2013). The impact of job crafting interventions is largely unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Individual job redesign: Job crafting interventions in healthcare

Gordon

Demerouti

Blanc

et al. 2018

Journal of Vocational Behavior

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218

229

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Section: Towards Individual Job Redesign Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual job redesign: Job crafting interventions in healthcare

Gordon

Demerouti

Blanc

et al. 2018

Journal of Vocational Behavior

Self Cite

218

229

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“…Prior research has shown that strengths interventions are an effective tool to increase the overall well-being of children, adolescents, and university students (for a review, see: Quinlan et al 2012), but only little is known about the effects of strengths interventions on adults and, in particular, working people (Meyers et al 2013). In line with seminal wellbeing researchers, we conceptualize well-being as a multi-dimensional construct covering context-free or general (e.g., life satisfaction) and context-or domain-specific forms of well-being (e.g., work-related strain; Warr 1999;Diener et al 1999), and consider both in this paper.…”

Section: Individual Strengths and Strengths Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of the existing studies on strengths interventions used samples of children, adolescents, or students instead of adults (Quinlan et al 2012), and target the use of strengths in daily life, but not particularly in the work context (Meyers et al 2013). Moreover, the existing studies have mainly focused on indicators of general but not work-related well-being as outcome variables, and have not yet explored the mechanisms through which strengths interventions influence well-being, leaving us with limited knowledge of how or why they work (Quinlan et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of a Strengths Intervention on General and Work-Related Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Positive Affect

2016

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In this article, we explore the use of strengths interventions, defined as activities and processes that target the identification, development, and use of individual strengths, as an organizational tool to increase employee well-being. Engaging with one's strengths is assumed to be a pleasant activity that elicits positive emotions like joy, pride, and gratitude, which, in turn, contribute to feelings of overall well-being and satisfaction. Building on this assumption, we hypothesized that participating in a strengths intervention leads to increases in general (i.e., psychological capital and satisfaction with life), and work-related well-being (i.e., increased work engagement and decreased burnout), and that positive affect mediates these effects. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a field experiment with a sample of N = 116 Dutch working people who were assigned to either an experimental group (participating in a strengths intervention) or a waitlist control group. All participants filled in a pre-intervention, postintervention, and 1 month follow-up questionnaire. Results indicate that participating in a strengths intervention creates short-term increases in employee positive affect and short-and long-term increases in psychological capital. We did not find evidence for a positive, direct effect of the strengths intervention on satisfaction with life, work engagement, and burnout respectively, but we did find support for indirect effects via the mediator positive affect.

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“…From the eighties onwards, both vocational psychologists and positive psychologists have been developing more open-ended methods that support individuals in eliciting the unique and continually evolving meanings they ascribe to talent by reflecting on meaningful life and work experiences and how talent plays a role in them. To this end, moments of successful talent deployment, as experienced over the course of life, can be probed using certain interview techniques-for instance, the biographical interview technique (Kelchtermans, 1993)-or evoked by providing individuals with specific reflection tasks as is the case in the Intelligent Career Card Sort exercise (Amundson, Parker & Arthur, 2002;Parker, 2002), exercises on 'possible selves' (Markus & Nurius, 1986, Whitty, 2002 and so-called 'reflected best self's-exercises (Meyers, van Woerkom & Bakker, 2012;Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy & Quinn, 2005). Depending on the specific questions asked or tasks given, these exercises can be applied to detect both motivations and interests.…”

Section: Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multidisciplinary review into the definition, operationalization, and measurement of talent

Nijs

Gallardo-Gallardo

Dries

et al. 2014

Journal of World Business

197

191

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Organizations report great difficulty in measuring talent accurately, reflecting the lack of theoretical foundations for talent-identification in the HRM literature. This multidisciplinary review aims to contribute to the establishment of a stronger theoretical basis for talent-management by presenting a conceptual framework of talent in which the definition, operationalization and measurement of talent and its relation to excellent performance is clarified. We systematically introduce 11propositions into the framework, building on fragmented insights from the literature-from the fields of HRM, gifted education, positive psychology, and vocational psychology respectively-that will guide readers in understanding and applying the proposed framework. Starting from the HRM perspective on talent, we systematically incorporate insights from the divergent literature streams, which counteract some of the limitations inherent to the HRM literature and therefore can help establish better conceptual foundations for talent-management. The relationship between talent and excellent performance functions as a general framework within which issues of predictive and construct validity are addressed, across 11 research propositions. With the future research directions, we shed light on how talent-management scholars might further capitalize on the cross-fertilization between insights from different disciplines so as to gradually establish the theoretical foundations needed to transform talent-management into a legitimate field of academic study. By discussing managerial implications in the concluding part, we provide practical guidelines for designing talent-identification practices grounded in sound theory. Search StrategyTo achieve a comprehensive multidisciplinary review of the literature on talentwhich could account for the evolutions within the field-we used 1993 as the starting point of our literature search, thus covering insights developed over the last twenty years. We took four different steps to establish the final body of peer-reviewed, academic articles considered in this review.Step 1: Clarifying the Talent ConstructIn order to find those articles that would be most informative for achieving conceptual clarity about talent, we first developed a general working definition of TALENT: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY REVIEW 3 talent based on the meaning contemporary English dictionaries ascribe to the term (Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries & González-Cruz, 2013). In the English language, talent is commonly understood as corresponding to an above-average ability that makes the individuals who possess, detect, develop, and deploy it, perform excellently in a given performance domain (Gagné, 2004;Tansley, 2011).Step 2: Selecting Search Terms We started our search by tracking articles that had 'talent' in their titles. As we were interested in talent and talent-identification in the context of the business world, specifically, we selected Business Source Premier as the database of departure. The use of talent as a search term resulted ...

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The added value of the positive: A literature review of positive psychology interventions in organizations

Cited by 258 publications

References 46 publications

Individual job redesign: Job crafting interventions in healthcare

Individual job redesign: Job crafting interventions in healthcare

Effects of a Strengths Intervention on General and Work-Related Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Positive Affect

A multidisciplinary review into the definition, operationalization, and measurement of talent

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