Positive Organizational Behavior (POB)

In 1999 professor Fred Luthans used POB for the first time. He defined it 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. He stated that
organization must focus on employee's capabilities and responsibilities. He
stated following personality traits factors of employees are considered as POB:

1. Optimism
Optimism is a tendency to expect good things in the future. From the literature
here reviewed, it is apparent that optimism is a mental attitude that heavily
influences physical and mental health, as well as coping with everyday social and
working life.

Having optimism in the workplace can benefit organizations in several ways.

First, optimistic individuals are more likely to be proactive and take initiative in their
work. They are more likely to identify opportunities for improvement and take action
to implement changes that can benefit the organization.

Dimensions of optimism
1. Optimism as human nature

Humans are beautifully innately optimistic and positive about the future. We're
wired to look forward and believe that tomorrow will be better. And we believe it
now more than ever. Early psychologists and philosophers considered optimism
as a negative aspect and they claimed optimism as an illusion. Only in 1960’s to
1970’s did psychologists realize that many people had a positive bias to
themselves than the actual reality. This positive bias was further considered by
neuropsychologists, evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists as a basic
part of human nature.

2. Optimism as individual difference

Modern psychology treats optimism as an individual difference as people have

varying degrees of optimism. Treating optimism as an individual difference
focuses on cognitively determined expectations and casual attributions. Seligman
has identified causal attributions that optimists and pessimists tend to use to
interpret bad events. He proposed that pessimists make internal, stable and
global attributions (internal -their own faults, stable - will last long time, global -will
undermine everything they do) while optimists make external, unstable and
specific attributions (external – not their fault, unstable – temporary setback and
specific- problem only in this situation).

3. Unresolved optimism issues

a. Little versus big optimism

Optimism may vary in level and degree in individuals.

b. Optimism versus Pessimism

Though optimism and pessimism are considered to be mutually exclusive, they

may not be.

c. Learning and sustaining optimism

Although Optimism is sometimes considered as a stable personality trait,

research shows that optimism can be learned and applied.

Optimism in the work place

Optimism is both motivated and motivating, has the desirable characteristics of
achievement, health and perseverance, makes external, unstable and specific
attributions of personal bad events and is linked with positive outcomes such as
occupational success, so optimism is a very positive force in workplace. Though
optimism has been proven as a positive power at workplace, only realistic
optimism leads to effective leadership. It should not be misinterpreted with false
optimism.

Some jobs and careers where optimism is valuable are:

 Advertising,
 Social services,
 Health,
 Customer service,
 Product design,
 Public relations and sales.
 There are also jobs in which are not suited for highly optimistic people and a
level of mild pessimism would be beneficial. Some of such jobs can be:

 Accounting
 Financial control,
 Technical jobs related to safety etc.

2. Hope
Hope is the process of setting goals and following through on them. It is based
on the idea of reaching a goal that helps people better cope with difficult or
stressful times and adapt better to serious illness. People with hope don't just
wish for something good to happen – they have a concrete plan to make it
happen.

Hope has three components:

 Willpower – The ability to set goals

 Way-power – Finding ways to meet those goals
 Follow-through – The flexibility and know-how to see the goals through

3. Subjective well being/ Happiness

Subjective well-being (SWB) refers to how people experience and evaluate their
lives and specific domains and activities in their lives.

SWB refers to an individual's personal assessment and perception of their overall

life satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment. It is a subjective measure that takes
into accounts one's own thoughts and feelings about their well-being rather than
relying on external, objective indicators.

It is high in any person when they are:

 Highly satisfied with life

 High positive feelings
 Low negative behavior
It is necessary in any organization that the employees are happy always. So it
must focus on people more happy and well being from recruitment process.
Happiness has following impact in organizations employees:

 Makes employee happy

 Increases job satisfaction
 Maintains good health
 Ready to organizational goal achievement
 Reduces anger and pessimism

Characteristics

1. Positive impact on employees' health.

2. Control over stress and pessimism

3. Good human relation among all

4. Satisfaction in life

5. Two way process; both parties exchanges happiness

6. Continuous process

7. People emphasizes on high level happiness

8. Positive impact on personal health, age, relation and work productivity

4. Resiliency
Organizational Resilience is the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare
for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to
survive and prosper. Resiliency is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce
back from difficult life events. Being resilient does not mean you never
experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering. It involves the ability to
work through emotional pain and suffering.

a. Traditional concept
This concept states that resiliency is an unusual capacity that few special
persons hold.
b. Modern concept
This concept states that resiliency capacity is learnt human traits that can be
develop in anyone. Some resiliency capacity factors are:

 Adjustment capacity
 Adoptability capacity
 Flexibility capacity
 Changeability capacity
 Ambiguity and uncertainty capacity

Methods to develop resiliency

1. Increase the investment

Organization must investment on learning, training, orientation, development

programs and workshop for employees.

2. Risk management

To manage risk of employees conduct both mental and physical health camps.

3. Adoption process

Enhance employees' positive feelings adopting behavior through various ways

and ideas.

Importance of resiliency

a. Helps in bouncing back to normal life from tragedy and accident.

b. Return from tragedy and trauma

c. Helps to bring life in right track and feel happiness

d. Save from anxiety, frustration and depression

5. Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to
understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress,
communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse
conflict. It can best be described as the ability to monitor one's own and other
people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them
appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.

The capacity of emotional intelligent person can be:

 To identify, understand and manage one's emotions and feelings

 To identify, understand and manage others' emotions and feelings
According to Peter Salovay, emotional intelligence is the combination of:

a. Individual feelings and

b. Work related knowledge

Intelligently controlling and managing emotions (self and others) is emotional

intelligence. Solvay further added some task in emotional intelligence. They are:

a. Balancing own feelings

b. Sympathy toward others feelings

c. Controlling feelings to a successful life

Emotion
Emotions are conscious mental reactions (such as anger or fear) subjectively
experienced as strong feelings usually directed toward a specific object and
typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.
Emotion can be divided in two parts. They are:

a. Positive emotions

They are affection, love, attachments, positive feelings, happiness, surprise,

trust.

b. Negative emotions

They are hate, frustration, depression, fear, negative feelings, tension, anger,
guilty, ashamed.
Role of emotion in organization
1. Productivity

Positive emotion increases dedication, commitment, and hard work in employees

thus increasing their productivity.

2. Quality of work life

“Quality of work life” is a generic phrase that covers a person's feelings about
every dimension of work including economic rewards and benefits, security,
working conditions, organizational and interpersonal relationships, and its
intrinsic meaning in a person's life.

3. Positive organizational behavior

(POB) is 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"

4. Cooperation

Cooperation demonstrates the ability to work effectively and respectfully with

diverse people or teams, make compromises, build consensus in decision-
making, assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the
opinions and contributions of individual team members, from a position of firm
self-identity.

5. Job satisfaction

Positive emotion plays vital role in enhancing job satisfaction in work place.

6. Aggressive behavior

Negative emotion in workplace may result in unexpected behavior by employees

like stress, loneliness, anger, jealousy, fear etc.

Meaning of intelligence
Intelligence can be defined as the ability to solve complex problems or make
decisions with outcomes benefiting the person, and has evolved in life forms to
adapt to diverse environments for their survival and reproduction. Intelligent
employees have following high abilities:

 Understanding ability
 Convincing ability
 Self-awareness
 Learning ability
 Emotional knowledge
 Creativity
 Problem solving capability
 Cleverness
 Reasoning ability

The role of intelligence at workplace

1. Problem solving

Intelligence of employee can solve any problem that arises while performing jobs.

2. Efficient performance

Only intelligent employee performs effectively and efficiently the job assigned to them.

3. Job satisfaction

Intelligent employee can easily perform and achieve their goals leading them to high job
satisfaction.

4. Face competition

Intelligent management and employee both can face harsh and competitive situation
arising in competition market.

5. Relationship with stakeholder

They can build and maintain better relationship with each and every stakeholder of an
organization.

6. Effective management

The role of intelligent management is essential in each and every activities of an

organization.
Emotional intelligence in the workplace
Maintaining and managing emotional relation within co workers, management in
an organization refers as EI in the workplace. It affects not only the career but
also the workplace. Emotionally intelligent work improves the performance of
people by encouraging positive relationships, good group performance, and
social conditions. Employee with high EI have following factors more than
compared to other employees:

 Motivation
 Productive
 Committed
 Happy
 Self confident

Goleman have suggested following factors to discuss the EI in workplace:

1. Self awareness

It is the ability to tune in to your own feelings, thoughts, and actions. When
people are self-aware, they understand their strengths and challenges and know
what helps them thrive. They also understand that how they see themselves may
be different from how others see them.

2. Self management

It is defined as the ability to manage one's own work and time. It includes the
skills of self-organization, self-direction, self-motivation, and self-monitoring. It is
not just about being able to do things as an individual, but also about having the
ability to collaborate with others effectively.

3. Self motivation

It is the ability to do what needs to be done without influence from other people or
situations. Self-motivation is encouraging yourself to continue making progress
toward a goal even when it feels challenging.

4. Empathy

The concept of empathy is connected to attention: You can't feel what another
person is feeling if you aren't paying attention to them. He describes three kinds of
empathy: emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathic concern.
5. Social skill

Social skills are more than just being friendly. Goleman describes them as
“friendliness with a purpose”, meaning everyone is treated politely and with respect,
yet healthy relationships are then also used for personal and organizational benefit.

Meaning of self efficiency

Albert Bandura defined self-efficacy as "the belief in one's capabilities to organize
and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations."1
Put simply, it is a person's belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation.
It refers to an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors
necessary to produce specific performance attainments. It reflects confidence in
the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social
environment.

Self efficiency process

According to psychologist Albert Bandura self efficacy is a whole process that
has following process:

1. Affective process

These processes contain people's motivational activities to control and response

emotional relationship.

2. Cognitive process

These processes contain people's ability to gain knowledge and information,

organizing and utilizing activities.

3. Motivation process

Under this some motivational activities are done to inspire employees to get job
done accordingly.

4. Self regulation

It is the ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses, and to think before you
react.
Impact of self-efficiency
People with strong self efficiency have following impacts:

 View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered

 Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate
 Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interest and activities
 Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments

People with weak sense of self efficiency have the following impacts:

 Avoid challenging tasks

 Believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond capabilities
 Focus on personal feelings and negative outcomes
 Quickly lose confidence in personal abilities

Source of self efficiency

a. Mastery experience

It provides direct evidence that one has been capable of performing a certain
task.

b. Observation

It provide indirect leaning; if those others are successful, the belief is that the task
is manageable.

c. Persuasion

Persuasion refers to social influence by near and dear ones such as families,
friends, peers etc.

d. Emotional state

It is the analysis of one's psychological or emotional state.

Implications for self-efficiency in the workplace

a. Selection/ Promotion decision

While selecting and even promoting one must keep an eye on self efficiency side
of an employee.
b. Training and Development program

Self efficacy employees can be better and perform even better if given chance for
training and development programs.

c. Goal setting

Organizational and even individual goal must be set aacording to efficiency

capacity of employees.

d. Employee retention

While retaining employees those with high efficiency are preferable compared to
those with low efficiency.