Being Positive and Behaving Positively

Abstract

Positive psychology (PP) proposes that a positive approach be taken towards studying people (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), organizations (Cameron, Dutton, Quinn, 2003) and their combinations (Luthans, 2005). Often an implicit assumption of a relationship between positive characteristics and positive outcomes is made (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007; Luthans & Youssef, 2007; Youssef & Luthans, 2007). However, the exact nature of relationship between positive characteristics and attitudes and behaviors of organizational importance is yet to be established. This study tries to bridge this gap. From organizational viewpoint, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) represent a set of behaviors that have positive outcome for both the person engaging in them and the organization (Vandyne, Cummings, & McLean Parks, 1995). Similarly job satisfaction has been found to have a positive influence on the individual’s performance and is one of the most studied attitudes in organizational context (Judge & Bono, 2001). Despite a lot of research on both antecedents and consequences of OCB and job satisfaction, there is no clarity about their relationships with positive dispositional characteristics (e.g., Luthans et al., 2007). It is proposed here that test of organizationally relevant positive characteristics suggested by Luthans (2005) in relation to OCB and job satisfaction would highlight the utility of studying such constructs and build scientific credence of the claims of positive constructs.