The Perils of Positivity

By J. Hackman. 2009

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The passion and productivity that characterizes research on positive organizational behavior (POB) is impressive. Yet POB research is accumulating so rapidly that it may exceed what the field's conceptual, methodological, and ideological foundation can bear. I discuss here six concerns prompted by the articles in this special issue. These concerns are (1) the emphasis of positive organizational scholarship on individual-level phenomena, (2) the ahistorical character of POB research and writing, (3) the construct validity of key concepts, (4) over-reliance on a particular research strategy, (5) implicit acceptance of fundamental flaws in how work and organizations are designed, and (6) the seductiveness of new research paradigms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d80b676b8b25c46796446fca0f23366d5583a506

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Citations in the corpus

Authentic Leadership and Follower Development (2011, background): “authentic leadership, psychological capital, gender, followership, positive work climate mechanism of authentic leadership’s effect and by clarifying the interrelationships among these relatively new constructs (e.g., Fineman, 2006; Hackman, 2009).”
Optimism predicting employees' creativity: The mediating role of positive affect and the positivity ratio (2012, unknown): “With this research we contributed to the literature that is exploring the relationship between positivity and negativity (Hackman, 2009): All positivity is not good, neither is all negativity bad, a more balanced view being necessary for understanding how individuals and organizations flourish.”
Effects of Positive Practices on Organizational Effectiveness (2011, background): “The term positive is accused of a potentially restrictive connotation and values bias (Fineman, 2006; George, 2004) and is criticized as implying that most organizational science is negative, that an ethnocentric bias is represented, that a narrow moral agenda is being pursued, or that nonrigorous c”
Flow experience and team performance: The role of team goal commitment and information exchange (2013, unknown): “Authors in the field of positive organizational behavior (POB), in which research on flow at work is taking place, have so far focused little attention on outcome variables such as productivity, performance, and profitability (Hackman 2009).”
Positive organizational psychology, behavior, and scholarship: A review of the emerging literature and evidence base (2010, background): “These terms appear to be used interchangeably in the literature at times (eg, Hackman, 2009 ), and at other times to have distinct meanings.”
Toward a theory of business (2015, background): “Hackman (2009) worried about a lack of construct validity for many of the movement’s key concepts.”
Thriving at work: Toward its measurement, construct validation, and theoretical refinement (2012, unknown): “Throughout the construct validation process, we were mindful of prior criticisms of the POB and POS literatures (Hackman, 2009) including the historical character of research and writing, the lack of a rigorous construct validity process, and methods free of common method variance that have…”
The human side of leadership: Inspirational leadership effects on follower characteristics and happiness at work (HAW) (2020, background): “Past research evidences a lack of knowledge as to how positive attitudes are fostered in the workplace (Hackman, 2009) though some progress has been made in this area, with Breevaart et al. (2014) finding that leadership style matters when explaining positive attitudes.”
The Interactive Effects of Psychological Capital and Organizational Identity on Employee Organizational Citizenship and Deviance Behaviors (2010, background): “However, as noted in important critiques of this line of research (e.g., Fineman, 2006; Hackman, 2009), most studies to date have examined linear relationships between predictor and criterion with limited accounting for context and especially moderating variables.”
Prozac leadership and the limits of positive thinking (2012, background): “Lewis (2010) examines the relentless optimism of Wall Street and its disastrous consequences. For example, he describes the ‘woo’ culture of high fives, motivational speakers and loud cheers at Countrywide Mortgage, where lending practices exemplified the reckless expansion of credit. After one Coun”
The Additive Value of Positive Psychological Capital in Predicting Work Attitudes and Behaviors (2010, background): “In fact, one of the major criticisms of the positivity literature is its preoccupation with individual level variables, while it is the cross-level interactions among individuals, groups and the organizational and cultural context within which they relate that shape most of the outcomes (Hackman, in”