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The Role of Psychological Well-Being
in Job Performance:
A Fresh Look at an
Age-Old Quest
THOMAS A. WRIGHT RUSSELL CROPANZANO
The thirst after happiness is never extin-
guished in the heart of man.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Les Confessions [1781–1788], IX)
Like social philosophers such as Rous-
seau, both business executives and orga-
nizational researchers have long been
fascinated with the happy/productive
worker thesis. There is a very strong prac-
tical basis for this interest. Most readers are
familiar with the famous Hawthorne experi-
ments undertaken during the 1920s and
1930s at the Western Electric Company in
Cicero, Illinois. Initially undertaken to exam-
ine the role of such physical job factors as
level of illumination on productivity, the
studies evolved into much more, eventually
securing a prominent spot in the folklore of
modern management thought. In particular
was the belief widely held by a number of
Hawthorne researchers, including Elton
Mayo and G.A. Pennock, suggesting that
happiness (broadly defined) should produce
better job performance. In addition, happi-
ness provides a number of positive benefits
for not only the happy individuals them-
selves, but also for those with whom they
come in contact. Seen in this light, happiness
is almost a responsibility to ourselves, to be
sure, but also to our coworkers, who often
rely on us to be steadfast and supportive in
difficult times.
Prior research efforts to test the thesis
have, unfortunately, often not matched this
strong practical appeal. Simply stated, the
results to date have been rather disappoint-
ing and, similar to the conclusions reached
by Staw and his colleagues in the mid-1980s,
still remain a source of much controversy
and confusion. Extending the seminal work
of Staw, we suggest that the primary reason
for these disappointing findings lies in how
happiness has been operationalized. Tradi-
tionally, happiness has been considered as
employee job satisfaction, with literally
thousands of job satisfaction studies already
published and hundreds more published
every year. In the pages that follow, we
will explore our ideas in greater detail. As
we shall see, our central theme is that it is
both reasonable and highly practical for
both business executives and management
scholars to understand that happiness is a
valuable tool for maximizing both personal
betterment and employee job performance.
But first, as proof positive of this trend
toward the positive, consider the uplifting
results from a study on the handwritten
autobiographies of 180 Catholic nuns. The
Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 338–351, 2004 ISSN 0090-2616/$ – see frontmatter
ß2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2004.09.002
www.organizational-dynamics.com
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank James Campbell Quick, Barry M. Staw and
Kay D. Wright for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
338
autobiographies, composed before the nuns
took their final vows at a mean age of 22
years, were coded for both positive and emo-
tional content. An example of positive emo-
tional content is taken from one nun’s
autobiography: ‘‘... The past year which I
have spent as a candidate studying at Notre
Dame College has been a very happy one.
Now I look forward with eager joy to receiving
the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of
union with Love Divine.’’ Providing solid
testimony to the value of ‘‘thinking posi-
tively,’’ positive emotional content was
strongly associated with longevity six decades
later. Happier, more productive nuns lived
significantly longer (and healthier). Nuns in
the highest quartile of reported positive emo-
tion sentences taken from their autobiogra-
phies lived healthier and an average of 6.9
years longer, compared with those in the low-
est quartile. The moral of the story: Being
happy and positive in one’s outlook on work
and life has a number of tangible benefits,
including living longer and healthier. As
much as this may make intuitive sense to
many of us, an emphasis on the positive has
been a surprisingly neglected topic in organi-
zational research.
ACCENTUATE THE NEGATIVE!
Historically, the organizational sciences have
been preoccupied with negative aspects of
work and life. This focus on the negative
can be traced back over 100 years to the very
beginnings of applied research in the latter
part of the 19th/early part of the 20th centu-
ries. The prevailing belief of early organiza-
tional research was that the most profitable
business techniques were those that focused
on the negative, as opposed to positive,
aspects of human motivation. As a case in
point, the following example, taken from a
series of studies conducted in the 1920s and
published in the Journal of Applied Psychology,
clearly emphasizes this early,applied focus on
the negative. In particular, and strongly influ-
encing this accentuation on the negative, the
first systematic applications of applied psy-
chology to business problems involved how
to generate increased sales dollars through
‘‘better’’ advertising. Essentially, increased
sales were thought to result from advertise-
ments all too often designed to frighten and
scare potential customers into buying the pro-
duct!
The research involved an ad test cam-
paign for a proprietary medicine. Five adver-
tisements were created and circulated in 15
eastern American cities of roughly equal size.
The advertising appeals ranged from a
highly positive one promoting the attain-
ment of good health and its preservation,
to a strongly negative one warning against
the dire and costly consequences of ill health.
The results speak volumes: Positive appeals
to good health met with so little success (sales
actually went down 10%) that they were, for
the most part, discarded. Alternatively, nega-
tive appeals to the potential consequences of
ill health from not purchasing the medicine
met with tremendous success, with sales
increasing 171%! Drawing on recent, fasci-
nating work on human emotions, we provide
a brief explanation for why this widespread
focus on the negative, to the apparent neglect
of the positive.
A key assertion made by many tradi-
tional models of emotion is that human emo-
tions are associated with specific action
tendencies. A leading positive psychologist,
Barbara Fredrickson, defines a specific action
tendency as ‘‘the outcome of a psychological
process that narrows a person’s momentary
thought–action repertoire by calling to mind
an urge to act in a particular way.’’ In other
words, a specific action tendency is what
helps to get our attention. For example, anger
leads to attacking behavior and fear leads to
escape behavior. In a distinction that will
become more relevant as our discussion
unfolds, a number of prominent researchers
on human emotions suggest that specific
action tendencies better describe both the
form and function of negative, as opposed
to positive emotions.
To further illustrate this critical distinc-
tion, consider the primary role of negative
emotion in our most basic decision to ‘‘fight
339
or flee’’ in a given situation. In the fight or
flight (flee) scenario, the negative emotion of
fear is best viewed as an evolved adaptation
that was highly instrumental in assisting our
prehistoric ancestors’to survive various life-
threatening situations. For instance, one of
the authors currently lives at the base of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Nevada/
California border. The mountain area is
highly populated with such wild animals
as mountain lions and bears. If, on one of
his hikes in the mountains, the author hap-
pened upon a huge, ferocious bear, his initial
response would most likely be to become
frightened and then attempt to escape from
this dangerous situation. In other words, the
negative emotion of fear initiates the specific
action tendency to flee from the fear-evoking
stimulus of the man-eating bear. As our
thoughts about various actions narrow to,
and then focus on, these specific urges, the
body’s role becomes one of mobilizing opti-
mal physiological resources to meet the life-
threatening challenge. Our prehistoric survi-
val instincts take over. This constricted or
narrowed thought–action sequence can be
highly adaptive in nature and helps foster
quick, decisive and potentially life-saving
action.
While potentially adaptive in nature, the
focus on negative, to the neglect of positive
emotions, can be [and has been] very proble-
matic if overindulged in the business envir-
onment. An excellent example of this
negative focus is the typical yearly perfor-
mance evaluation procedure. Why so? The
answer rests on the apparent need of many
evaluators to primarily focus on various
negative aspects of employee behavior. Your
employee neglected to do this, or, your
employee failed to do that. This overempha-
sis on the negative by many evaluators has
repeatedly been shown to have a detrimental
effect on subsequent employee goal achieve-
ment. Is it any wonder that managers and
employees alike widely report that the most
stressful job-related task is to give/get per-
formance evaluations?
How ‘‘successful’’ or widespread has this
buy-in to the negative been in social science
research? Well, a recent computer search of
contemporary literature in psychology found
approximately 375,000 articles on ‘‘negative’’
(i.e., mental illness, depression, burnout, anxi-
ety, fear and anger) and only about 1,000
articles on various positive concepts and cap-
abilities of people. This constitutes a nega-
tive/positive ratio of approximately 375/1.
Once again, consider our advertising
example. The primary purpose of the nega-
tive warnings against the dire and costly
effects of ill health was to narrow the poten-
tial product buyer’s thought–action response
repertoire to focus on the detrimental con-
sequences of not purchasing the product. The
negative message was one intentionally
framed to be perceived by the potential cus-
tomer as distressing, fearful or anxiety indu-
cing. The intended message was that a failure
to take this medicine would result in grave
consequences. Similar to the bear scenario, in
our advertising example, the effect is
immediate and significant. Over the years,
these and many similar results, covering a
wide gamut of organizational topics, got the
full attention of a business audience highly
interested in maximizing short-term rev-
enue.
This prevailing emphasis on the negative
is especially ironic when one considers the
increasing prominence of the Positive Psy-
chology and Positive Organizational Beha-
vior/Scholarship movements. We say ironic
because Abraham Maslow first introduced
the term ‘‘positive psychology’’ to us 50 years
ago in his ground-breaking book, Motivation
and Personality. In his last chapter titled
‘‘Toward a Positive Psychology,’’ Maslow laid
out a research agenda proposing investigation
of such ‘‘new’’ and ‘‘central’’ concepts as
growth, self-sacrifice, love, optimism, sponta-
neity, courage, acceptance, contentment,
humility, kindness, and actualization of
potential. Do these concepts sound familiar
today? Given Maslow’s earlier work, they
should! However, Maslow was unsuccessful
in bucking the prevailing viewpoint and,
unfortunately, as a result, organizational
research continues to focus on the negative.
Adopting a ‘‘repair shop’’ perspective, and
340 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
extending our advertising example, applied
research has tended to unduly concentrate on
identification of the pecuniary costs to the
organization of distressed, dissatisfied, and
unhappy employees. In addition, the cause
of this employee dissatisfaction and unhappi-
ness is typically seen from this negative-based
or ‘repair shop’perspective as being deeply
embedded in the emotional maladjustment of
the employee, as opposed to aspects of the job
itself. As a result, the ‘‘cure’’ for this malady
usually involves some type of prevention-
based employee therapy. Among others, the
authors have previously referred to this
approach as the disease model and suggest
that while important, the disease approach is
incomplete in scope. However, as we now
demonstrate, the potential benefits of a posi-
tive, what we call a health approach, can also
be very evident, especially over time, when
considering the role of employee psychologi-
cal well-being (PWB) in the happy/produc-
tive worker thesis.
BACK TO THE FUTURE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-
BEING AND HAPPINESS
‘‘Happiness’’ is a lay construct, replete with
personal meaning for each of us. In order to
study the idea scientifically, we need a more
precise definition that lends itself to systema-
tic measurement. In this regard, scholars
have tended to treat ‘‘happiness’’ as PWB,
also referred to as emotional well-being or
subjective well-being.
PWB is usually thought of in terms of the
overall effectiveness of an employee’s psy-
chological functioning. Definitions of happi-
ness/PWB have at least three characteristics.
First, happiness is a subjective experience.
People are happy to the extent that they
believe themselves to be happy. Second, hap-
piness includes both the relative presence of
positive emotion and the relative absence of
negative emotions. Third, happiness is a glo-
bal judgment. It refers to one’s life as a whole.
PWB is not tied to any particular situation.
Additionally, PWB has been shown to exhibit
consistency over time. How one feels today
influences how one feels tomorrow, next
week, next month, next year, even years in
the future. Fortunately, this does not mean
that PWB is immutable to change. PWB has
been shown to be strongly influenced by any
number of environmental events and is con-
sidered to be responsive to therapeutic inter-
ventions. In sum, it is generally accepted that
happiness refers to a subjective and global
judgment that one is experiencing a good
deal of positive emotion and relatively little
negative emotion. As we shall see, recent
research has consistently demonstrated that
high levels of PWB can boost performance on
the job, while simultaneously increasing each
individual’s capacity to appreciate new
opportunities and experiences.
JOB PERFORMANCE: THE
ORGANIZATIONAL
CONSEQUENCES OF
HAPPINESS
In support of the happy/productive worker
thesis, a growing body of empirical research
has found significant links between various
measures of employee PWB and measures of
job-related performance. In one study invol-
ving M.B.A. students, participants high on
well-being were shown to be superior deci-
sion makers, demonstrated better interperso-
nal behaviors, and received higher overall
performance ratings. These results are
important for two reasons. First, the study
design used objective, quantifiable indices of
performance (e.g., an ‘‘in-basket’’ measure).
This argues against the possibility that cor-
relations between well-being and job perfor-
mance are simply misperceptions. Second,
the experimental design of this research sug-
gests a causal relation: that performance
increases when PWB is high. In another
study, employees high in well-being had
superior performance evaluations and
higher pay 18 months later. Considered
together, these PWB studies clearly demon-
strate that PWB is predictive of both a sub-
jective measure of performance, supervisory
341
performance evaluations, and a more objec-
tive indicator of performance, actual pay. In
addition, the consistency of PWB over time is
especially relevant for practitioners con-
cerned with issues involving employee selec-
tion, training and development, and
placement. Using a sample of experienced
management personnel, our next example
clearly demonstrates the magnitude of this
stability.
Incorporating multiple measures of both
PWB and performance, one of the present
authors recently found that PWB signifi-
cantly predicted not only contemporaneous
employee performance, but also subsequent
supervisory performance ratings several
years in the future. In addition, PWB pre-
dicted subsequent employee performance
even after controlling for their prior perfor-
mance. In a series of studies involving well-
paid management personnel from a variety
of different organizations and occupations,
the current authors have found that PWB
remained significantly related to perfor-
mance even after controlling for employee
age, gender, ethnicity, job tenure, and educa-
tional attainment level.
These findings are important for at least
three reasons. First, the use of longitudinal
research designs supports the possibility that
PWB is not only correlated with performance,
but could also be a cause of job performance.
Incorporating multiple measures of both per-
formance and PWB, these research designs
provide a measure of rigor not typically found
in research conducted in actual organizational
settings. Second, the fact that both subjective
and objective quantifiable indices of perfor-
mance have consistently been found to be
related to PWB strongly argues against the
possibility that the significant findings are the
result of supervisory misperceptions, a con-
sequence of what is typically referred to as the
‘halo’error.
Halo error is a potentially serious pro-
blem in performance evaluation. Halo error
is defined as the tendency to evaluate an
employee’s overall job performance primar-
ily based upon how well they perform, or are
perceived to perform, on one salient perfor-
mance dimension. In the present case, this
salient performance dimension might be the
employee’s level of PWB and the possibility
of halo error can be explained in the follow-
ing manner. Employees who are more psy-
chologically well may be seen by their
supervisors as more likeable and fun to be
around. Because people in general, and
supervisors in particular, tend to be more
tolerant of those they like, they may provide
more positive performance evaluations for
those subordinates considered to be more
psychologically well. As a result, rather than
being directly related to changes in perfor-
mance, PWB could serve as a systematic
source of halo in performance evaluations.
If true, halo error could bias our ability to
interpret these findings of a relationship
between PWB and job performance.
Though one cannot totally rule out the
halo alternative, drawing on previous
research in the area, we offer three basic argu-
ments minimizing the possibility of halo error.
First, a number of the studies reported here
have used longitudinal designs, affording the
opportunity to measure the influence of PWB
on incremental changes in job performance
evaluations over time. A major strength of
having multiple measures of performance
over time is the ability to capture any halo
contained in the prior measure(s) of job per-
formance. Second, PWB has been related to
job performance in a number of studies which
have also examined a numberof possiblethird
variable explanations, including job satisfac-
tion, positive employee affect, negative
employee affect and employee burnout. If
halo bias was accounting for the obtained
relationship between PWB and job perfor-
mance, then we can also expect significant
relations between these other measures of
employee affect/emotion and job perfor-
mance. The results have consistently demon-
strated that this is not the case. In fact, the
available data point to a common conclusion:
When employee happiness is operationalized
as PWB, it is positively related to various
measures of employee job performance.
Third, this line of research is important
because significant correlations between
342 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
PWB and job performance have typically
been found in the .30–.50 range. Not only
are these findings statistically significant, they
are practically relevant. As a case in point,
taking a correlation of .30 between PWB and
job performance indicates that roughly 10%
of the variance in job performance is asso-
ciated with differences in PWB, while taking
a correlation of .50 points to a substantial 25%
of the variance in job performance being
associated with differences in PWB.
The available data consistently point to
a common, highly practical conclusion.
Whether measured with subjective ratings
or objective indices, whether examined in
quasi-experimental, cross-sectional or long-
itudinal designs, even after controlling for
the effects of a number of possible confound-
ing variables, when happiness is measured
as PWB, it is consistently and positively
related to various measures of job perfor-
mance. In the following sections, using cur-
rent research and theory emanating from the
Positive Psychology/Positive Organizational
Behavior movements, we propose an expan-
ded role of PWB for those interested in
enhancing worker performance.
BROADEN-AND-BUILD: THE
HUMAN CONSEQUENCES OF
HAPPINESS
All things being equal, not many individuals
would prefer to be unhappy when they could
be happy. At least since the time of the
famous utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Ben-
tham (circa 1748–1832), many would agree
that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is
fundamental to human motivation. Certainly
many organizational reward systems are pre-
dicated on this assumption. Consistent with
this hedonistic approach, positive emotions
can be seen as providing the distinct value-
added of making us feel good. In fact, the
balance between positive and negative emo-
tions contributes to how we view our life.
Of noteworthy relevance is Barbara Fre-
drickson’s broaden-and-build model of posi-
tive emotions. According to the broaden-and-
build model, a number of positive emotions,
including the experience of employee PWB,
all share the capacity to ‘‘broaden’’ an indivi-
dual’s momentary thought–action repertories
through expanding the selection of potential
thoughts and actions that come to mind. For
example, the positive emotion, interest, fos-
ters the desire to explore, assimilate new
experiences, encounter new information,
and grow. Likewise, the positive emotion,
joy, creates the urge to play, to think outside
the box and be creative. Positive emotions
have the beneficial effect of potentially widen-
ing one’s available arsenal of thoughts and
actions by ‘‘enlarging’’ the available cognitive
context. Properly implemented in the work-
place environment, the manifestation of such
positive employee emotions as joy and inter-
est fosters employee perceptions of enhanced
meaning from their work. As a result, those
employees who see positive meaning in their
work often come to view it as a Calling, not
just as a Job or Career. Those with a Calling
orientation work not only for the positive
financial rewards (Job orientation) or personal
achievement (Career orientation), but also for
the personal fulfillment that doing one’sjob
can bring. One practical consequence is that
those who view their work as a Calling may
well be more productive.
Executive Illustration
‘‘Today’s workers are not committed any-
more’’ is a lament we hear expressed by an
ever-increasing number of corporate execu-
tives. If accurate, and using the Job, Career
and Calling categories as our framework,
more and more of today’s employees view
their work as merely a Job. When work is
considered as a Job, the employee focuses on
the material benefits derived from working.
Work is simply the necessary means to a
financial end. The fulfillment of personal
happiness and contentment are sought dur-
ing one’s time off the job. On the other hand,
those with a Career orientation work for the
rewards that accompany their advancement,
either organizational or professional in nat-
ure. Employees with a Career orientation are
343
driven by the strong desire to obtain power
and prestige through the increased pay and
promotional opportunities that Career
advancement brings. Alternatively, employ-
ees with a Calling orientation do not work
primarily for either financial or promotional
advancement opportunities. Instead, they
work for the fulfillment that doing their work
affords. Doing their work well is considered
an end in and of itself. Considered together,
employees with a Calling orientation report a
much more rewarding relation with the work
itself, spend more time on work-related activ-
ities, and appear to gain more enjoyment,
fulfillment and satisfaction from it. Those
who are optimistic and conscientious appear
to be more likely to report themselves as
having a Calling orientation. Interestingly,
and highly relevant when one considers pos-
sible intervention strategies, recent research
indicates that many employees have the abil-
ity to accurately differentiate their work orien-
tation among the Job, Career, and Calling
categories.
Fascinating research has further con-
firmed that the enlarging effect of positive
emotion has a physiological base and is
linked to increases in brain dopamine levels.
In addition, while negative emotions have
been shown to adversely increase both heart
rate and blood pressure, positive emotions
can suppress or ‘‘undo’’ these lingering
maladaptive effects! More specifically, com-
pared to such negative emotions as anger
and sadness, positive emotions have been
shown to produce more rapid returns to
the individual’s normal cardiovascular base-
line levels. In other words, following the
initial, evolutionary surge in heart and blood
pressure rates which typically accompany
our response to stressful situations, positive
emotions help speed the body’s recovery to
its normal, pre-stress levels.
Based on Fredrickson’s work, we also
propose that these positive emotions assist
in ‘‘building’’ the individual’s enduring per-
sonal resources, ranging from physical, psy-
chological, intellectual and social in nature.
This capacity to experience the positive seems
to be crucial to one’s capacity to thrive, men-
tally flourish and psychologically grow. This
sense of flourishing appears to make psycho-
logically well or happy people more proac-
tive, resilient to adverse situations, and less
prone to stress symptoms. As a result, a con-
tinued focus on these positive feelings
expands (broadens) and builds on these posi-
tive urges, creating a potentially moderating
‘‘upward spiral’’ effect, which can further
enhance employee character development.
This capacity to experience positive feelings
is considered to be a fundamental human
strength.
Good Morning America Case
Positive emotions help people to not only
survive, but also to thrive when confronted
with adverse situations. This capacity to
overcome potential adversity was vividly
demonstrated on a segment of the Good
Morning America program. C.R. Snyder, one
of the founding fathers of positive psychol-
ogy and a psychology professor at the Uni-
versity of Kansas, gave a test of positive
emotion to the Good Morning America regular
cast. Not surprisingly for many regular view-
ers of the popular show, host Charles Gibson
outscored everyone else by a wide margin.
Then, testing the hypothesis that positive or
happy people have developed the necessary
psychological and physical resources for
coping with adversity, Snyder had the mem-
bers of the crew hold their hand in a bucket of
ice before the live cameras and studio audi-
ence. Consistent with Snyder’s prediction,
everyone in the cast removed their hand
before 90 seconds had elapsed, everyone that
is, except Charles Gibson! In fact, Gibson still
had his hand in the ice bucket [while con-
tinuing to smile, not grimace] right up until
the commercial break, well beyond the time
endured by the rest of the program crew.
Gibson’s resilience to the pain and ability to
cope with adversity was clearly attributable
to his positive, optimistic personality.
Consider the positive emotion, interest.
Interest has both individual and organiza-
tional benefits. At the individual level, interest
creates the urge to explore, take in new infor-
344 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
mation and experiences, and expand oneself
in the process. At the organizational level,
interest, considered collectively, can facilitate
meaningful interpersonal encounters. These
meaningful interpersonal encounters result in
enhanced social connections and team-build-
ing behavior. A beneficial organizational con-
sequence is the creation of a better work
climate and increased productivity.
This upward spiraling effect is in marked
contrast to the effects of a number of negative
emotions. Consider the case of depression.
Distressingly, depression has reached epi-
demic proportions in the United States.
Recent figures indicate that literally tens of
millions of Americans have taken (or are
currently taking) various forms of anti-
depression medications. Unlike the uplifting
effect of positive emotion, negative feelings
of depression or anger or fear tend to lead to
narrowed, pessimistic thinking which can
produce a further downward spiral, leading
to ever-worsening moods and feelings.
HOW HAPPINESS HELPS US TO
GROW: A DEMONSTRATION
OF THE BROADEN-AND-
BUILD APPROACH TO
MANAGEMENT
We have already seen that happiness, when
defined as PWB, promotes higher levels of
job performance. We have also learned that
those high in PWB are in a better position to
benefit from positive work experiences than
are their counterparts who are lower in PWB.
Through the impetus provided by high levels
of PWB, happier or more psychologically
well employees are more easily able to
‘‘broaden-and-build’’ themselves and be-
come more creative, resilient, socially con-
nected, physically and mentally healthy, and
more productively effective. In addition, and
of further benefit, these effects are seen as
persisting over time and across situations.
As an illustration of this idea, consider a
recent study by the present authors. In this
study we found strong empirical support for
the idea that those high in PWB can benefit
more from a satisfying job than do those low in
PWB. In other words, employee PWB moder-
ated or influenced the job satisfaction to job
performance relation. Specifically, the more
positive the PWB of the employee, the stron-
ger [more statistically robust] was the
observed relation between job satisfaction
and job performance. Considered together,
PWB, job satisfaction and the PWB by job
satisfaction interaction (the moderator effect)
accounted for approximately 25% of the var-
iance in employee job performance ratings.
This finding strongly supports our premise of
a distinct competitive advantage for those
organizations able and willing to foster a
psychologically well workforce and work
environment.
To emphasize the potential pecuniary
benefits of these findings, consider the follow-
ing example. Suppose you manage 10 electri-
cal engineers. Furthermore, each engineer is
paid $1,250 per week, or $65,000 a year in
salary. You know that, for a number of reasons
–including their PWB –each engineer’s pro-
ductivity varies by as much as $500 a week, or
roughly $25,000 a year. (This is consistent with
national averages across occupations, which
indicate your engineers are typically produc-
tive for only 4.8 hours for every 8 hours that
you pay them!) Let us put this in the context of
our reported results. PWB and job satisfaction
account for roughly 25% of this $500 a week in
performance variance for our engineers. This
translates into $125 per week/per person in
lost productivity! With 10 employees, this
translates to $1,250 per week in performance
variance, for 100 employees, the numbers are
$12,500 per week or $650,000 per year. Of
equal importance, as we will momentarily
detail, various intervention strategies can be
used to select psychologically well job appli-
cants. Current employees can also be more
effectively trained and placed based upon
knowledge of their PWB. In our concluding
sections, we provide suggestionsfor proactive
business executives interested in developing
progressive, employee-centered intervention
strategies designed to serve the dual purpose
of enhancing both PWB and employee perfor-
mance.
345
HOW TO BUILD A HAPPY
WORKFORCE
Employee-focused, positive psychological-
based interventions at work can take three
general forms: composition, training, and
situational engineering. Composition empha-
sizes selecting and placing people into appro-
priate positions, training emphasizes assisting
workers so that they ‘‘fit’’ their jobs more
closely, and situational engineering empha-
sizes changing the work environment so
that it more closely fits the needs of one’s
employees. Our ‘‘extended’’ happy/produc-
tive worker thesis has implications for each
approach.
The Composition (or Selection)
Approach to Promoting
Happiness
Research has clearly established that PWB
is stable over time. In fact, one of our
studies has established substantial test-ret-
est correlations of up to 5 years in duration.
These findings give clear support to the
notion that people who report being happy
(or unhappy) at one point in time are likely
to be happy (or unhappy) at another
point in time, and provide evidence sup-
portive of the notion of the heritability of
happiness.
Interesting research on the possible her-
itability of happiness (and job satisfaction)
has been reported by a number of scholars.
While beyond the scope of the present
discussion, the possibility of a genetic
basis for various employee attitudes and
emotions has been highly controversial in
organizational research. Nevertheless, and
very relevant from a management perspec-
tive, research supportive of a possible
genetic basis does not necessarily imply that
well-being stability is solely due to the per-
sonal characteristics of the individual.
Employee PWB, and level of job satisfaction
for that matter, may well be stable over time
because one’s life or job circumstances are
stable as well. For example, an employee
may remain at the same job or at a very
similaroneforanynumberofreasons.Asa
result, the ‘‘fact’’ of employee attitudinal
stability should not solely be used to argue
against the possibility of successful training
and situational engineering-based interven-
tions.
We should point out that selecting the
happiest employees does raise the specter of
some potentially serious ethical issues. The
failure to select prospective employees on
the basis of their level of PWB could depress
these individuals further, which in turn
could make these job candidates even
more unemployable in the future. This
can engender considerable human and soci-
etal costs. As a consequence, careful con-
sideration of these and other related issues
is of paramount importance for manage-
ment personnel, employing organizations,
and practicing consultants, interested in
using various measures of PWB to select
happy workers.
Training
Another option is to change employees by
helping them learn to be happier. There is
good evidence that various types of stress
management training can have positive
effects on worker happiness. A number of
strategies exist where individual employees
can proactively self-monitor or manage their
personal perceptions to enhance positive, and
discourage negative, displays of momentary
mood and emotion. For example, construc-
tive self-talk is a conscious effort to replace
negative with more positive and reinforcing
self-talk. There are a number of other cogni-
tive restructuring techniques designed to be
beneficial in temporarily altering an employ-
ee’s current emotional state or providing
more permanent or dispositionally-based
changes in their behavior. One such trait is
learned optimism. Learned optimism is
viewed as a developed trait or style empha-
sizing positive thought patterns. As the name
indicates, employees can be trained to better
utilize ‘learned’optimism techniques, both
within and outside the work environment.
As one benefit, research has clearly demon-
346 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
strated that optimistic employees perform
more effectively on a wide range of jobs
and occupations, especially those involving
significant interactions with others.
Metropolitan Life Case
As everyone knows, selling is not easy. It
requires great persistence in the face of see-
mingly consistent rejection. The executives at
Metropolitan Life learned this fact all too
well. While they rigorously selected less than
1 in 10 sales agent applicants, half would quit
in the first year. Equally disheartening, of
those who stayed, most produced less and
less the longer they remained with the com-
pany as sales agents. In any event, by the end
of the fourth year, 80% were gone. As it
turned out, employee optimism predicted
level of sales. Sales agents ranked in the
top half on an optimism scale sold 37% more
insurance on average in their first 2 years
than those agents who scored in the lower
half of the scale and were more pessimistic.
Even more impressive, agents who scored in
the top 10% on optimism sold 88% more than
those in the bottom 10%. As executives at
Metropolitan Life discovered, the best news
was that an optimistic approach is learnable.
Situational Engineering
The third approach to possible interventions
involves changing the environment so that it
promotes, or at least does not impair, worker
PWB. Situational engineering would appear
to be a promising technique, in that there is
evidence that working conditions strongly
affect employee PWB. As with the selection
and training approaches, situational engi-
neering provides a variety of options for
organizations to create a happier, more satis-
fied, workforce. In fact, research has doc-
umented that something as simple as
providing tangible social support can help
reduce the negative impact of stressful jobs.
More generally, employers can manipulate
or reengineer any number of organizational
factors (i.e., physical, role, task, and/or inter-
personal demands) shown to be related to
increased displays of employee emotion at
work. For example, work-family conflict
seems to diminish life satisfaction and
increase negative displays of emotion. Alter-
natively family-friendly policies, such as
flextime and childcare programs, should
increase employee PWB. Finally, we should
not neglect the more obvious change strate-
gies. Research has shown that equitable pay
tends to promote high levels of PWB. In
short, there are a number of available options
for designing human resource techniques to
enhance PWB and subsequent employee per-
formance.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Applied research’s interest in employee hap-
piness has long centered on the happy/pro-
ductive worker thesis. However, the results
have sometimes proved disappointing. For-
tunately, recent work shows great promise. It
seems that the generations of managers and
business executives who believed that a
happy worker is a productive worker are
correct when considering employee happi-
ness as PWB. Of noteworthy relevance in the
‘‘holy grail’’ pursuit of providing greater
insight into the happy/productive worker
thesis is the further development of such
positive-based approaches as the broaden-
and-build model. The broaden-and-build
model provides the necessary framework
to explain the possible interactive role of
PWB on the job satisfaction/job performance
relation. Considered individually, PWB
has demonstrated statistically significant
relations to employee performance. The psy-
chological well-being/job performance cor-
relation is consistently in the .30–.50 range.
Furthermore, results were discussed here
which clearly demonstrate that consideration
of the interaction effects of PWB on the job
satisfaction/job performance relation are sig-
nificantly more statistically robust.
In addition to PWB, the broaden-and-
build model supports the possible adaptive
and interactive nature of a number of other
positive-based employee emotions. Joy, exhi-
347
laration, optimism and interest all share the
potential ability to broaden an employee’s
momentary thought–action experiences and
provide valuable assistance in helping to
further build the employee’s personal re-
source arsenal. This means that in addition
to studies on happy/productive workers, we
may eventually see [and we actively encou-
rage] research on serene/thoughtful work-
ers, caring/helpful workers, joyous/honest
workers, and exhilarated/creative workers.
We close by emphasizing an important
point. Employee PWB has both theoretical
and applied relevance in today’s society.
Using the Positive Psychology/Positive
Organizational Behavior (POB) framework,
it seems evident that promoting employee
PWB is an intrinsic good for which all should
work. If this approach promotes better job
performance, which the findings strongly
suggest is the case, then so much the better.
Regardless, the pursuit of employee PWB
remains valuable for its own sake. In closing,
roughly 2,500 years ago, Aristotle posed the
question of what constitutes the good life.
Similar to Aristotle, our response is that
the pursuit of happiness (eudaimonia to Aris-
totle), properly defined, is a pivotal first step
in any attempt to address this age-old ques-
tion.
348 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
For a further discussion of the happy/pro-
ductive worker thesis and related topics, see
E. Mayo, The Problems of an Industrial Civiliza-
tion (New York: MacMillan, 1933); B.M. Staw,
‘‘Organizational Psychology and the Pursuit
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ality and Social Psychology 80 (2001): 804–813.
For a fascinating look at early work on
advertising, see the following work, all by
D.B. Lucas and C.E. Benson, ‘‘The Relative
Value of Positive and Negative Advertising
Appeals as Measured by Coupons
Returned,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 13
(1929): 274–300; ‘‘The Historical Trend of
Negative Appeals in Advertising,’’ Journal
of Applied Psychology 13 (1929): 346–356;
‘‘The Recall Values of Positive and Negative
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Results for Positive and Negative Advertise-
ments,’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 14
(1930): 363–370.
Highly readable overviews of the
broaden-and-build model of positive emo-
tions are contained in B.L. Fredrickson,
‘‘What Good are Positive Emotions?’’ Review
of General Psychology 2 (1998): 300–319; B.L.
Fredrickson, ‘‘The Role of Positive Emotions
in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-
Build Theory of Positive Emotions,’’ Ameri-
can Psychologist 56 (2001): 219–226; B.L. Fre-
drickson, ‘‘Positive Emotions and Upward
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J.E. Dutton, and R.E. Quinn, eds., Positive
Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a
New Discipline (San Francisco: Berrett-Koeh-
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To read more about the positive psy-
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movements, see F. Luthans, ‘‘Positive Orga-
nizational Behavior: Developing and Main-
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Management Executive 16 (2002): 57–72; F.
Luthans, ‘‘The Need for and Meaning of
Positive Organizational Behavior, Journal of
Organizational Behavior 23 (2002): 695–706;
T.A. Wright, ‘‘Positive Organizational Beha-
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Journal of Organizational Behavior 24 (2003):
437–442.
For a further discussion of the ‘‘repair
shop’’ perspective, see C.D. Ryff and B.
Singer, ‘‘The Contours of Positive Human
Health,’’ Psychological Inquiry 9 (1998): 1–28;
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Human Flourishing—The Study of That
Which Makes Life Worthwhile,’’ in C.L.M.
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349
ton, DC: American Psychological Associa-
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For a good overview of what psycholo-
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E. Diener, E.M. Suh, R.E. Lucas, and H.L.
Smith, ‘‘Subjective Well-Being: Three Dec-
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(1999): 276–302.
The following empirical work by Staw
and his colleagues is highly supportive of
the happy/productive worker thesis, B.M.
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Wiser vs. Happier-and-Smarter Hypotheses,’’
Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (1993): 304–
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comes: Two Longitudinal Tests of the Happy-
Productive Worker Thesis,’’ Journal of Organi-
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The present authors have consistently
demonstrated that PWB is related to various
measures of job performance. For one of the
first studies examining the relation between
PWB and performance, see T.A. Wright, D.G.
Bonett, and D.A. Sweeney, ‘‘Mental Health
and Work Performance: Results of a Long-
itudinal Field Study,’’ Journal of Occupational
and Organizational Psychology 66 (1993): 277–
284; T.A. Wright and R. Cropanzano, ‘‘Psy-
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P.J., and G.L. Moline, ‘‘When a Happy Worker
is a Productive Worker: A Preliminary Exam-
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see T.L. Robbins and A.S. DeNisi, ‘‘A Closer
Look at Interpersonal Affect as a Distinct
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For work on the meaning of work, see A.
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R.E. Quinn, eds., Positive Organizational Scho-
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physiological basis for human emotions,
see B.L. Fredrickson and R.W. Levenson,
‘‘Positive Emotions Speed Recovery from
the Cardiovascular Sequalae of Negative
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191–220.
To read further on the possible moderat-
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job satisfaction to job performance relation,
see T.A. Wright and R. Cropanzano, ‘‘The
Role of Psychological Well-Being as a Mod-
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and Job Performance,’’ Paper Presented at the
2003 meeting of the Society for Industrial and
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Imbedded in Organizations: Some Implica-
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139; R. Cropanzano and T.A. Wright, ‘‘A
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ship Between Well-Being and Job Per-
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tion: Environmental and Genetic Compo-
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350 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
To learn more about the benefits of
learned optimism, see M.E.P. Seligman,
Authentic Happiness (New York: Free Press,
2002); M.E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism:
How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
(New York: Pocket Books, 1998).
For a more comprehensive review of
research on organizational reengineering,
see J.C. Quick, J.D. Quick, D.L. Nelson, and
L.L. Hurrell, Preventive Stress Management in
Organizations (Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association, 1997).
Thomas A. Wright is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the
University of Nevada, Reno and author of 60 scholarly articles and
chapters. Wright also enjoys consulting on such topics as optimizing
employee performance and organizational productivity, developing
effective employee recruitment and retention strategies, and finding
innovative ways to enhance employee health and well-being (Tel.: +1 775
784 6993x320; e-mail: taw@unr.neveda.edu).
Russell Cropanzano is the Brien Lesk Professor of Organizational
Behavior in the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management. His
research focuses on perceptions of organizational justice as well as on the
experience and impact of workplace emotion. Dr. Cropanzano has
authored over 80 scholarly articles and chapters.
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