UTS21440 Chap.2 The Positive Turn in Psychology and Management
The Positive Turn in Psychology and Management
Week 2 of 21440 Management Skills at University of Technology Sydney sets out the theory base of the whole subject by first explaining what it reacts against.
The lecture runs the twentieth century schools of psychology past in one pass and names four reasons the discipline leaned toward deficit, then introduces positive psychology as a rebalancing defined at three levels of analysis, subjective, individual and group.
The same argument is then made about management theory, and the chapter closes on positive organisational scholarship and the four approaches it contributes to this subject, including the examination of virtuousness that Week 3 takes up.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Seven schools of psychology, and the one that is the ancestor of this field
- 02
Four stated reasons the discipline leaned toward deficit
- 03
The 1998 reframing: from undoing the worst to building the best
- 04
Five things positive psychology studies: happiness, engagement, wellbeing, meaning, virtue
- 05
Three levels of analysis: the subjective, the individual and the group
- 06
Four negative management theories and what each was used to justify
- 07
The paradox of affluence, and the annual cost of work stress
- 08
Positive organisational scholarship, and its four approaches used in this subject
Applying the four approaches of positive organisational scholarship to a turnover problem
- +1The positive lens. Ask first who stays, and what is true of their first year that is not true of the leavers. The question is answerable from the same data and it produces something to build rather than something to stop.
- +1Positive deviance. Find the one team or manager with almost no first year turnover and treat that as the case to explain. An average is a description; an outlier is a mechanism waiting to be identified.
- +1The affirmative bias. Ask what resources the people who stayed have accumulated, in the field's own terms of relationships, confidence and knowledge of how things really work, and then ask which of those can be supplied earlier and deliberately to everyone.
- +1Virtuousness. Ask what the people who stay are good at, in the language of strengths rather than of tasks, and whether the role lets them use it. This is the move the next chapter supplies a classification for.
Key terms
- Positive psychology
- The empirical study of what makes a life go well: which personal qualities, chosen goals, living circumstances and social arrangements support happiness, engagement, meaning and virtue. The subject stresses that this field supplements ordinary psychology rather than replacing it, and that its remit covers trauma and growth as well.
- Positive organisational scholarship
- A research stance that treats a workplace as somewhere human and collective capability is built rather than merely spent, and asks which conditions, at the level of the person, the team and the whole organisation, let people flourish, with particular attention to life giving or generative dynamics.
- Humanistic theory
- The school of psychology that treats people as internally directed and motivated to fulfil their potential rather than as products of environment or genes. It attracted the criticisms of being too focused on the good and of not being scientific enough, and is named as the origin of positive psychology.
- Subjective level
- The first of three levels of analysis, covering valued subjective experience: positive emotion, wellbeing, contentment and satisfaction about the past, hope and optimism where the future is concerned, and, in the present, flow and happiness.
- Group level
- The third level of analysis, and the one most relevant to organisational study. It covers civic virtues and the institutions that move people toward better citizenship, including altruism, civility, nurturance, responsibility, tolerance, moderation and a work ethic.
- Paradox of affluence
- The observation the positive turn was built on, that measures of material wellbeing kept rising while measures of subjective wellbeing did not, alongside rising depression rates and greater disconnection from community and family.
- Presenteeism
- Time at work spent not functioning, distinguished from absence. In the cost figures the lecture cites it is the larger of the two components of the annual cost of work stress in Australia, and it is invisible to the systems that measure absence.
- Positive deviance
- Performance that far exceeds expectation, used as a research target. The second of the four approaches, it makes the best performer rather than the average the case to be explained.
- Affirmative bias
- A deliberate research stance that looks for what amplifies resources in individuals, groups and organisations. It is a choice about where to look, not a claim that problems are a matter of perspective.
The Positive Turn in Psychology and Management FAQ
Is positive psychology just telling people to be optimistic?
No, and the subject's own summary says so explicitly: it is not simply a study of happiness, and it is meant to supplement ordinary psychology rather than to replace it. Its scope includes trauma, stress and post traumatic growth, so a field that studies adversity is not recommending that adversity be reframed away. The five things it studies are happiness, engagement, wellbeing, meaning and virtue.
Why does the lecture spend so long on the history of psychology?
Because the argument for the field is historical. Running the schools past in one pass makes a pattern visible: with the exception of the humanistic school, each was built to explain and repair what goes wrong. The four reasons offered for that pattern are the disease model and the pressure to be useful, beliefs about authenticity, beliefs about positive emotions, and the greater weight given to negative impressions.
What is the difference between positive psychology and positive organisational scholarship?
Scale and object. The first is a field about human functioning, defined at three levels from the subjective to the group. The second applies that thinking to organisations, treating them as sites of capability building and asking what conditions produce flourishing.
In this subject the second supplies four working approaches: a positive lens, a focus on exceptional outcomes, an affirmative bias and the examination of virtuousness.
How should I cite the cost of work stress figures?
Cite them as the lecture does, with the source and the year attached, and use the split rather than only the total. The interesting feature is that the cost of people at work and not functioning is substantially larger than the cost of absence, which is the argument for preventive work. They establish scale rather than what any single employer would save, so do not recompute or extrapolate them.
What does the buffer idea have to do with the rest of the subject?
It is the bridge. The set reading proposes that human strengths act as buffers against negative events and calls for research on strengths and virtues. Week 3 supplies the classification of those strengths, Week 6 supplies the mechanism under stress, and Week 8 supplies the organisational duty that sits alongside them, so the buffer claim is what connects four separate weeks.
Assessment move
The trap in this chapter is that it reads easily and is then cited loosely. Fix three things precisely: the five nouns in the working definition, the three levels of analysis, and the four approaches that positive organisational scholarship contributes.
Then practise placing your own observations at the right level, because most weak journal entries stay at the subjective level where personal experience naturally sits, and the marks come from moving up to the individual or group level where a manager operates.
When you cite the history of the field, cite the set article rather than the lecture, and when you cite the cost figures, keep the qualifier the source attaches to them.
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