2.5 Conceptual framework
2.5.1 Positive psychology
Positive psychology focus on three main areas namely: positive experiences that include pleasure, happiness, joy and fulfilment; positive individual traits that include
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character, talents and interests; as well as positive institutions such as schools, families, communities and society and business. Engagement and meaning in work can be achieved when recrafting a job to position your strengths and qualities everyday not only marks work more enjoyable, but also transforms a repetitive job or a stalled career into a calling (Seligman, 2002).
Two connected movements that apply positivity and strengths based management to the workplace have been fostered by positive psychology. These movements include Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS) which accentuates positive organisational characteristics that can augment organisational survival and effectiveness (Lopes, 2013). The second movement, which is Positive Organisational Behaviour (POB), put emphasis on positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed and managed for performance enrichment in the workplace (Luthans, 2004).
Positive psychology has gained popularity in the discipline of psychology (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008). Cameron, Dutton and Quinn (2003), identified four procreant insights on POS. First, institutional virtuousness provides benefits to individuals, organisations, and societies. Thus, pointing to the existence of a connection between virtuousness and organisational functioning. Second, positive attributes such as strengths of individuals, past successes and organisations assist as more effective targets of change and advancement than problem, weaknesses, and infantile qualities (Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003). Third, positive energy, positive emotions and positive human connections are self-reinforcing in nature and lead to reciprocally fortifying upward spirals of meaningful experience and performance (Cameron, 2003).
Fourth, organisations can facilitate or immobilise positive dynamics, principally through a sense of consequences. All these insights to POS, contribute to employees’
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as well as managers’ perceptions towards the achievement of organisational effectiveness.
2.5.1.1 Positive organisational scholarship
POS focuses mainly on positive outcomes, processes and attributes of organisations and their members (Cameroon, 2006). In POS, more emphasis is on goodness and positive human potential, hence the use of words such as thriving, excellence, flourishing, abundance, resilience and virtuousness. Compared to traditional organisational studies, POS search for an understanding of what signifies and methodologies the best of human condition.
Although POS does not throwaway the investigation of dysfunctions, or underlying forces that disable or produce harm, it tends to accentuate the scrutiny of factors that enable positive consequences for groups, individuals and organisations (Bagozzi, 2008). Drawing from a range of organisational theories, POS seeks to understand as well as forecast the causes, occurrence as well as consequences of positivity. Thus, allowing visibility of positive states, positive relationships and processes which are not shown within organisational studies. For instance, “through examining how organisational practices allows individuals to expertise meaningful work through fostering individual callings, in contrast to a more typical focus on employee productivity or morale” (Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003), a new or different mechanism “through which positive organisational dynamics and positive organisational processes produce extraordinarily positive or unexpected outcomes”
(Bagozzi, 2008, p. 260).
One advantage of POS is its ability to engender value creation through universal continuous improvement in human condition and the capacity to do is dormant in most systems (Caza, 2006). Thus, “by unlocking capacities for elements such as meaning
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creation, relationship transformation, positive emotion cultivation and high quality relationships, organisations can produce sustained sources of collective capability that help organisations thrive” (Dannhauser, 2007, p. 75). Through POS, a conceptual foundation for appreciating how and why organisational strategies have their impact on human behaviour when at work as well as why some strategies and dynamic competences may be multiplicative than others, will be established.
Since all the constructs in the current study fall within positive psychology, they are a pointer to positive outcomes, processes and attributes of organisations. The researcher therefore seeks to establish the value and contributions brought by positive organisational dynamics and positive organisational processes, ‘if they exist’
employees within the mining sector, given the prevailing socio-political environment prevailing in Zimbabwe. In exploring this, below is a discussion of Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS).
2.5.1.2 Positive organisational behaviour
POB has been defined as “the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed and effectively managed for performance improvement in today’s workplace” (Luthans, 2002, p. 671). By associating POB with performance improvement, deviates from viewing it as the simple personal development notion (Luthans, 2002).
POB is linked with states, subjecting it to change, learning, development and management in the workplace (Vaughan, 2008). This then implies that POB states can be enhanced through training or can be self-developed. In one study, hope, optimism, emotional intelligence, subjective well-being and confidence were definitional criteria for POB (Mansfield, 2007). From the study, self-efficacy or confidence was found not only open to development but also enhances choice of taking a task and its challenges,
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greater effort and motivation as well as persistence in the presence of obstacles and failure (Luthans, 2002).
Other studies reported a stronger relationship between efficacy and work related performance compared to other Organisational Behaviour (OB) concepts such as goal setting (Locke & Latham, 1990). Interestingly, studies have indicated that efficacy can be trained and this can be over mastery practices vicarious learning or modelling or performance attainments, positively oriented persuasion or feedback on progress as well as physiological and psychological arousal (Bandura, 1977).
Although thoroughly researched, hope has been found not having a strong positive relationship with work related performance (Luthans, 2007). From the theoretical frameworks of hope and efficacy, the hope theory views agency and the pathways as equally important. Further to this, studies have also revealed that hope has discriminant strength amongst positive psychological constructs (Welsh, 2009). However, indications have been made for further research on the aspect.
With its roots in clinical work, resiliency has been recognised in the positive psychology movement although not included in POB. Resiliency has been defined as
“the capacity of individuals to cope successfully in the face of significant change, adversity or risk” (Cicchetti, 2010, p. 148). It has been pointed that resiliency goes beyond simple adaptation but also involves resources established in basic human adaptational systems such as caring support, self-regulation and motivation to be operative in the environment (Masten, 2001). According to Luthans (2002), resiliency is the positive psychological ability to rebound, to spring back from adversity, uncertainty, failure, conflict, or even constructive change, advancement and increased responsibility.
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Since it is the thrust of the current study to examine the extent of application of positively oriented human resource strength as well as psychological capacities, below is a discussion on work engagement and psychological empowerment.