- Oxford Library of Psychology
- [UNTITLED]
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword: The Abundant Organization
- Preface
- Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and Work
- Finding the Positive in the World of Work
- The Changing World of Work
- Generation Me and the Changing World of Work
- What is Authentic Leadership Development?
- Enablers of a Positive Strategy: Positively Deviant Leadership
- Change and Its Leadership: The Role of Positive Emotions
- Working Positively Toward Transformative Cooperation
- Strengths: Your Leading Edge
- Toward a Positive Psychology for Leaders
- Employee Engagement and the Psychology of Joining, Staying in, and Leaving Organizations
- Work as Meaning: Individual and Organizational Benefits of Engaging in Meaningful Work
- More than Meets the Eye: The Role of Employee Well-Being in Organizational Research
- Positive Engagement: From Employee Engagement to Workplace Happiness
- Using Coaching and Positive Psychology to Promote a Flourishing Workforce: A Model of Goal-Striving and Mental Health
- Mindfulness at Work: Paying Attention to Enhance Well-Being and Performance
- Work-Life Balance: The Roles of Work-Family Conflict and Work-Family Facilitation
- Strengths Development in the Workplace
- Strengths of Character and Work
- Dream Teams: A Positive Psychology of Team Working
- Positive Organizational Scholarship Leaps into the World of Work
- Look Before You Leap or Dive Right In? The Use of Moral Courage in Response to Workplace Bullying
- An Integrated Model of Psychological Capital in the Workplace
- Building the Positive Workplace: A Preliminary Report from the Field
- Good for What? The Young Worker in a Global Age
- What's Wrong with Being Positive?
- Building Positive Organizations
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter critiques the underlying premises and potential effects of applying positive psychology (PP) in the workplace. It locates PP as a development of wider cultural (North American) trends toward greater emotionality, a need for fun and excitement in all spheres of life, and the “right” to happiness and conceptualization of selfhood as a project to be worked on through therapy and associated transpersonal activities. Denial of the cathartic value of so-called “negative” states and their role in the development of a healthy adult psyche are posited as challenges to the prima facie desirability of PP, as are the asymmetrical outcomes of encouraging positivity in employees. Organizations stand to gain considerably more than individuals from the PP movement and as such, the chapter suggests that PP represents a further appropriation/valorization of human qualities that should, perhaps, remain out of reach of the capitalist labor process. Furthermore, PP's claim to be moving psychology away from “deficit models” of behavior is questioned by drawing attention to the “discourses of improvement” that it is couched within.
Keywords: emotion, emotional labor, positive psychology, spirituality, therapy culture, wellness
Samantha Warren, The School of Management, University of Surrey
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- Oxford Library of Psychology
- [UNTITLED]
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword: The Abundant Organization
- Preface
- Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and Work
- Finding the Positive in the World of Work
- The Changing World of Work
- Generation Me and the Changing World of Work
- What is Authentic Leadership Development?
- Enablers of a Positive Strategy: Positively Deviant Leadership
- Change and Its Leadership: The Role of Positive Emotions
- Working Positively Toward Transformative Cooperation
- Strengths: Your Leading Edge
- Toward a Positive Psychology for Leaders
- Employee Engagement and the Psychology of Joining, Staying in, and Leaving Organizations
- Work as Meaning: Individual and Organizational Benefits of Engaging in Meaningful Work
- More than Meets the Eye: The Role of Employee Well-Being in Organizational Research
- Positive Engagement: From Employee Engagement to Workplace Happiness
- Using Coaching and Positive Psychology to Promote a Flourishing Workforce: A Model of Goal-Striving and Mental Health
- Mindfulness at Work: Paying Attention to Enhance Well-Being and Performance
- Work-Life Balance: The Roles of Work-Family Conflict and Work-Family Facilitation
- Strengths Development in the Workplace
- Strengths of Character and Work
- Dream Teams: A Positive Psychology of Team Working
- Positive Organizational Scholarship Leaps into the World of Work
- Look Before You Leap or Dive Right In? The Use of Moral Courage in Response to Workplace Bullying
- An Integrated Model of Psychological Capital in the Workplace
- Building the Positive Workplace: A Preliminary Report from the Field
- Good for What? The Young Worker in a Global Age
- What's Wrong with Being Positive?
- Building Positive Organizations
- Index
