ChapterPDF Available

Positive Deviance

Authors:
P
Positive Deviance
Samuel Mayanja
1
, Joseph M. Ntayi
2
and
J. C. Munene
2
1
School of Postgraduate Studies and Research,
Cavendish University Uganda, Kampala, Uganda
2
Makerere University Business School, Kampala,
Uganda
Synonyms
Abberrance;Deviation;Divergence
Definitions
Positive deviance: refers to a behavioral and
social change approach which is premised on the
observation that in any context, certain individ-
uals confronting similar challenges, constraints,
and resource deprivations to their peers, will
nonetheless employ uncommon but successful
behaviors or strategies to achieve their objectives.
Deviant employees: is someone whose behav-
ior falls far outside of organization norms.
Constructive deviance: voluntary behavior
that violates signicant organizational norms and
thus contributes to the wellbeing of an organiza-
tion, its members, or both.
Policy: a course or principle of action adopted
or proposed by an organization or individual.
Introduction
Organizations have employees who tend to devi-
ate from norms, come up with different ways of
doing things to increase their competitiveness.
The effects of deviant behaviors in the organiza-
tion have economical, sociological, psychologi-
cal, and anthropological implications. Positive
deviance (constructive deviance) is a behavior
that deviates from the norms of the reference
group and has positive effects on the organization.
It is an endogenous source of organizational cre-
ativity that has been shown to be powerful tool for
learning and change. It is positive in terms of
intention, effects, and conforms to hyper norms.
It is not harmful to other employees or organiza-
tion as a whole.
The fundamental success of the positive devi-
ance approach depends on getting the organiza-
tion to: dene its own problem based on context,
develop and use its own information to discover
the scale of the problem and any positive deviants,
determine whether the successful practices are in
detail to be understood by other employees,
design practical ways of spreading and sharing
these practices among the employees, and dissem-
inate the practices among other employees to
replicate them.
Positive Deviance can be used when a problem
meets several criteria, which are (1) the problem is
not merely technical, (2) that other solutions have
not worked, and (3) that there is a commitment in
the organization/community to address the
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
A. Farazmand (ed.), Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3965-1
problem (Pascale et al. 2011). Within Positive
Deviance, the focus is on the positive outliers of
the normal distribution. The Positive Deviance
approach challenges managers to think outside
of the dominant frameworks. Therefore, the Pos-
itive Deviance approach is an asset-method.
The organization policies guide the individual
behavior and practices to have harmony. Positive
deviant behaviors have a greater tendency to
resign, and develop stress related problems and
low morale because their ideas may not be
accepted by management and fellow employees.
Positive deviant employees tend to experience
low self-esteem, an increase in fear and lack of
condence at work, as well as physical and psy-
chological pain. Together with these negative out-
comes, deviant behaviors of employees can also
be functional and constructive. For example, vio-
lating organizational norms by demonstrating
deviant behaviors can serve as a source of inno-
vation and creativity, thus contributing to the
organizations competitive advantage as well as
to the societal well-being.
Constructive Deviance
Constructive deviance is voluntary behavior that
violates signicant organizational norms and thus
contributes to the well-being of an organization,
its members, or both. Despite the fact that these
behaviors are sometimes impermissible by the
managerial level, they assist the organization in
achieving its objectives. These behaviors can be
divided into two main categories. The rst, inter-
personal constructive deviance, is directed at indi-
viduals and comprises behaviors such as
disobeying managerial orders in order to improve
organizational processes. The second, organiza-
tional constructive deviance, is directed at the
organization and comprises two types of behav-
iors: innovative behaviors aimed at helping the
organization nding creative ways to solve prob-
lems and behaviors that challenge existing norms
in order to help the organization breaking rules in
order to solve clientsproblems. Constructive
deviance does not embarrass the employee and
hence enables direct measuring through self-
reports.
Attributes of Positive Deviance
Uncommon Practices
Uncommon practices and disagreements create
freedom among employees to make use of their
ability and judgment innovatively, even when
they deviate from the norms (Albanna and Heeks
2019; Kibirango et al. 2018). When employees
deviate from the norms, they are capable of
boosting their creativity while addressing pre-
vailing challenges, generate more spontaneous
ideas, come up with new experiences, and venture
creations. Uncommon practices develop a high
degree of resonance interaction and not predation
that requires individuals with different back-
grounds, sets of experiences to connect in a very
meaningful way to access resources from entre-
preneurial networks. Mertens and Recker (2017)
argue that a common assumption in most of these
studies is that divergent opinions emerge sponta-
neously with elements of the environment, the
person or the interaction between both making
this emergence more or less likely. However,
Hendryadi and Suryani (2019) argue that leaders
can also actively stimulate divergent opinions,
where managers have leadership skills, which
may not be the case among small-medium orga-
nizations in developing countries because of
bureaucratic culture.
In this case, heterogeneity, the vast diversity of
components, agents, and parts involved in an
ongoing variety of distinct interactions with
others, is one of the important features of complex
leadership systems that manage employees with
uncommon practices. This is true for an organiza-
tion with the presence of leadership that can oper-
ate and coordinate different individuals with
different background and informational differ-
ences. This is still a challenge among small orga-
nizations with individuals who happen to possess
opposing view-points since it is difcult to chal-
lenge the structures of small-medium organiza-
tions where the business owner is likely to be
part of every decision made.
2 Positive Deviance
Novelty Experiments
Novelty experiments can produce unique experi-
ments that have the potential to become seeds for
unprecedented organizational action. Innovative
behavior or tactics are evaluated, scrutinized,
and tried before they are made accessible to all
or considered for implementation. Creativity and
problem solving are important elements of action
that enable the emergence of novelty. The novelty
to be successful, rules are changed in ways that
enable the convergence of disparate, sometimes
conicting individual perspectives, preferences,
and activities into effective and predictable col-
lective action (Mayanja et al. 2019). During
periods of uncertainty, reinforcing feedback is
offered to certain process uctuations through
amplifying actions that seem to offer promising
new ways to bring back stability. In this way, new
structures grow through the gradual accretion of
constructive deviations that work. Experiments to
acquire resources produce information; feedback
(under promising conditions) leads to signicant
expected value with regards the resources that
could be discovered. This positive feedback loop
is generative of possible future ecological niches
for the system. However, if risks and rewards are
not properly recognized and modeled, this feed-
back may end up not being benecial to the
organization.
New Knowledge Values
New knowledge values is when employees
observe how new ideas, knowledge, and innova-
tions are formed from divergent opinions in an
institution. Employees who notice and observe
how new ideas, knowledge, and innovations
evolve are likely to attach different meaning to
information. Without new knowledge value,
employees with no differences, social network
agents would disseminate more of the same infor-
mation along the network (Mayanja et al. 2019).
The new knowledge value created by manage-
ment and employees help in identifying new
opportunities, which are exploited using the inter-
actions, ties, and networking style within a social
network. When managers and employees share
with one another information and meaning
attached to differences in perception, this is likely
to inuence the choices and actions that connect
people and create new knowledge. However,
Bohnet and Saidi (2019) argue that differences
in absolute informedness may not be associated
with performance differences. Instead, informa-
tional differences can have an effect on perfor-
mance only when subjects are differently treated,
and the seemingly less well-informed subjects
perform signicantly worse.
Organizations do have positive deviant
employees who can contribute to competitiveness
of any entity. This may happen when leadership
creates enabling environment for the employees
to act with autonomy in mind. Positive deviants
need conducive environment for:
Acceptability
Positive Deviance is an innovative approach that
enables organizations to discover their inherent
wisdom. All members of the organization have
the opportunity to contribute to the solution and
broader adoption of the solution. The Positive
Deviance approach strives to accomplish sustain-
able behaviors through interactions and feedback
by identifying new ways of solving problems and
accessing resources from different social and
business networks. Positive deviants are more
capable of promoting behavior change, because
they are not inhibited by differences in experi-
ences or culture (Frese and Gielnik 2014). The
positive deviants face the same challenges and
barriers and share the same norms and values as
the nonpositive deviants. Therefore, nonpositive
deviants can identify themselves with the positive
deviants, because if they can do it, we can also
do it.Therefore, positive deviants serve as role
models for nonpositive deviants. This implies that
the solutions of the positive deviant role models
are more solutions proposed by experts, which
results in the second premises of Positive
Deviance.
Competitiveness
Employees with divergent views come up with
unique solutions to the problems through learning
from each other. The solutions of positive devi-
ants are based on the available resources within
the organization, social, or business network.
Positive Deviance 3
Therefore, solutions remain feasible which makes
positive deviant solutions more sustainable. This
results in the third premises of Positive Deviance.
Adoption
Positive Deviance is a peer-based learning process
through individual interactions. In the Positive
Deviance approach, the manager creates a condu-
cive environment for employees to learn from
each other through feedback. The manager facil-
itates all stages of the Positive Deviance approach
(Bhattacharya and Singh 2019; Pascale et al.
2011). The stages of Positive Deviance cover
the identication of the needs in the organization,
the problem, and the positive deviants. Moreover,
the uncommon behaviors and/or practices of the
positive deviants are discovered, which is often
called the Positive Deviance inquiry. Thereafter,
interventions are designed based on the results
(van Dick and Scheffel 2015). In the intervention,
nonpositive deviants should learn the micro-
behaviors from positive deviants, which is related
to peer-based learning, and practice the new ways
of doing things together. One of the principles of
Positive Deviance is that you are more likely to
act your way into a new way of thinking than to
think your way into a new way of acting(Pascale
et al. 2010, p. 38). This implies that adopting new
behavior is more feasible through modeling than
through knowledge transfer, which results in the
rst premises of Positive Deviance.
Positive Deviance as a Management
Method
Organizational behavior literature shows that
there is a greater likelihood that employees
engage in positive deviant behaviors once they
are psychologically empowered in the working
environment. Cameron and Spreitzer (2011)
state that psychological empowerment is likely
to be a key enabler of positive deviance. They
posit that an empowered mindset is critical for
adoption. Empowerment enables employees to
participate in decision making, helping them to
break out of stagnant mindsets to take a risk and
try something new. Organizational behavior
researchers point out that the pervasive inuence
of norms provides a means of control over what
people say and do. Positive deviance requires real
risk, and it requires departing from norms in a
positive way often making others uncomfortable.
In other words, when companies empower their
employees, they are more likely to engage in risk-
taking behaviors that depart positively from the
norms of the organization in a way that is bene-
cial to the organization. And companies making
their employees empowered have led to much
nancial and psychological gain: supervisors
who report higher levels of empowerment are
seen by their subordinates as more innovative,
upward inuencing, and inspirational. Despite
organizational acceptance of positive deviance,
as a management method, has not been explicitly
investigated.
There are research and practical gaps in posi-
tive deviance knowledge within the arena of orga-
nizational science. First, the underlying
mechanisms of positive deviance methods which
give rise to claims of endogenous innovation suc-
cess remain a subject of future research. More
especially issues related to willingness to adopt,
ability to adopt, and capacity to reward. This is a
necessary step to realize the potential of positive
deviance as a concept, without which the concept
has limited practical utility and fails to fulll the
requirements of engaged scholarship.
Second, it is widely recognized that deviance
can have deleterious outcomes as well as positive
outcomes. Hence, management may be reticent to
encourage rule-breaking as a means of innovation,
compounding the importance of providing clearly
elucidated mechanisms by which positive devi-
ance operates as a form of endogenous innova-
tion. Positive deviance has merit as a management
method for innovation. Namely, management
potentially tolerates deviance from both formal
and informal norms as a means of endogenous
innovation. Management is likely to be more
accepting of informal deviance than formal devi-
ance because controls are varied and differ from
individual to individual and group to group
(Vadera et al. 2013).
Positive Deviance can be majorly categorized
into formal and informal. Formal deviance is a
4 Positive Deviance
behavior that violates social norms, practices, or
policies of an organization. Informal deviance
refers to violations of informal social norms,
which are norms that have not been codied into
policies. Management may be reluctant to discuss
informal deviance relative to formal deviance.
This reluctance could not be attributed to negative
evaluation of the deviant behavior, itself, as both
informal and formal deviance are often viewed
positively as well as negatively. Hence, it is
argued that reluctance may be indicative that man-
agement perceives formal breaches as an indicator
of management failure, whereas informal
breaches are not. The ultimate evaluation, then,
depends on the reference group judging the
behavior (management) and their perception of
the behavior rather than the objective behavior
itself.
Challenges of Managing Positive
Deviants in Developing Countries
In developing countries, small-medium organiza-
tions face a challenge of managing employees
with deviant behaviors since they have a greater
tendency to resign, develop stress related prob-
lems, and have low morale. They sometimes
experience low self-esteem, an increase in fear
and lack of condence at work, as well as physical
and psychological pain. This normally happens
where innovations and resource allocation are
highly controlled by top management.
Employees may not be willing to adopt posi-
tively deviant behavior based on the premise that
the norms and policies in the organization pro-
mote resistance to change to adopt new complex
behaviors.
Organizations may not have results-based
credibility to measure behavior-based view of
positive deviance. These judgments may invoke
cognitive and/or affective resistance to change,
limiting willingness to adopt. The implication is
that good ideas may be disregarded if they are not
perceived as positive and/or the source is not
trusted, making them unable to generate intrinsic
motivation and credibility.
Ability to adopt behavior-based and outcome-
based approaches to positive deviance is a chal-
lenge. Specically, positive deviance assumes that
positively deviant behaviors can be implemented
by all organizational members owing to common-
ality in goals, resources, and constraints which
may not be the case.
Recommendations
Organization leaders should create enabling envi-
ronment for error and trail. Employees should be
given freedom to make experiments guided by
policies. In case an error is made by positive
deviant employee, management should focus on
the process of learning from the mistakes and how
to improve on the new generated ideas without
punishing the employee since it kills initiatives.
The organization systems should accommodate
information sharing and error management.
Managers can stimulate the emergence of pos-
itive deviance by deviating themselves and
encouraging employees to learn from errors by
rewarding and scaling good practices. Individuals
that positively deviate stimulate positive deviance
in their teams.
Managers that consistently reward, reprimand,
and that keep a tight control over processes, yet at
the same time invite employees to actively partic-
ipate in design making and optimizing work
design, are likely to stimulate the highest degree
of positive deviance.
Nurturing positive deviants require an enabled,
adequate, and favorable internal working environ-
ment with a certain degree of freedom and
exercised tolerance of trials and error. In this
case, organization managers ought to provide a
exible platform for enhanced rational thinking
and learning. Positive deviance is used to develop
interventions and implementation process based
on the successful behaviors and strategies of indi-
viduals at risk. Despite their circumstances, they
perform better than their peers did.
Positive Deviance 5
Conclusion
Acceptance is highest and broadest when manage-
ment embrace deviance from both formal and
informal norms. However, formal deviance is
monitored more closely than informal deviance
and, if considered undesirable, will be discour-
aged using relational governance. Organizations
that manage Positive Deviance well are likely to
remain competitive because of their continued
innovations.
Cross-References
Business and Management
Education
Leadership
Psychology
Public Administration
Public health
Sociology
References
Albanna B, Heeks R (2019) Positive deviance, big data,
and development: a systematic literature review. Elec-
tron J Inf Syst Dev Ctries 85(1):e12063
Bhattacharya S, Singh A (2019) Using the concepts of
positive deviance, diffusion of innovation and normal
curve for planning family and community level health
interventions. J Family Med Prim Care 8(2):336
Bohnet I, Saidi F (2019) Informational inequity aversion
and performance. J Econ Behav Organ 159:181191
Cameron KS, Spreitzer GM (eds) (2011) The Oxford hand-
book of positive organizational scholarship. Oxford
University Press, Oxford
Frese M, Gielnik MM (2014) The psychology of entrepre-
neurship. Annu Rev Organ Psych Organ Behav
1(1):413438
Hendryadi S, Suryani BP (2019) Bureaucratic culture,
empowering leadership, affective commitment, and
knowledge sharing behavior in Indonesian government
public services. Cogent Bus Manag 6:1. https://doi.org/
10.1080/23311975.2019.1680099
Kibirango MM, Munene JC, Mutumba A (2018) Makerere
University business school co-evolution journey: the
role of extraordinary performers. Emerald Emerg Mar-
kets Case Stud 8(3):116
Mayanja S, Ntayi JM, Munene JC, Wasswa B, Kibirango
MM (2019) Critique does not equate to rebellion: Pos-
itive deviance and entrepreneurial networking among
small and medium enterprises in Uganda. African Jour-
nal of Business Management 13(1):1122
Mertens W, Recker JC (2017) Positive deviance and lead-
ership: An exploratory eld study
Pascale R, Sternin J, Sternin M (2010) The Power of
Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve
the Worlds Toughest Problems. Cambridge: Harvard
Business Review Press.
Pascale R, Sternin J, Sternin M (2011) Betting on anomaly:
the power of positive deviance: how unlikely innova-
tors solve the Worlds toughest problems. Business
digest, 213 p
Vadera AK, Pratt MG, Mishra P (2013) Constructive devi-
ance in organizations: integrating and moving forward.
J Manag 39(5):12211276
van Dick G, Scheffel R (2015) Positive deviance. A liter-
ature review about the relevance for health promotion
6 Positive Deviance
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
Full-text available
This paper aims to clarify the relationship among bureaucratic culture, empowering leadership, knowledge sharing behavior and affective commitment in the Indonesian public sector organizations. A total of 371 respondents from eleven local government public service institutions participated in this research. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used for model testing. The results of this study indicate that bureaucratic culture has a negative and significant relationship with empowering leadership and affective commitment. Empowering leadership has a positive and significant impact on knowledge sharing behavior and affective commitment, and also mediated the relationship between bureaucratic culture with knowledge sharing behavior and affective commitment. The direct relationship between bureaucratic culture and knowledge sharing behavior proved insignificant, however, indirectly proved significant via empowering leadership. The tests of such relationship are expected to contribute to the theory and practice of the government sector.
Article
Full-text available
In medical schools across the globe, students are taught about the "THE NORMAL CURVE" as a part of statistics unit of Public Health, Community, and Family Medicine. However, its potentials for explaining the subject of health education and behavior change are grossly underutilized. Through this article, we attempt to demonstrate that this can be sorted out by integrating theories of Positive Deviance and Diffusion of Innovation through extrapolation of the concepts of "THE NORMAL CURVE" for explaining or planning things and events in Public Health, Community, and Family Medicine.
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the relationship between positive deviance and entrepreneurial networking among SMEs. Using a mixed method approach combined self-administered questionnaires and interview guide covering 228 SMEs in Uganda, the cross-sectional nature of this study revealed key nuances about SMEs. The research findings confirmed a significant positive relationship between positive deviance and entrepreneurial networking among SMEs in Uganda. The findings also revealed that: SME owner/ managers should create enabling environment for people with divergent views to interact with each other to innovate new practices, such as accessing resources from the networks; managers should initiate new policies for error management to allow employees room to learn from mistakes; managers should acquire new skills of leadership skills to manage and utilize the knowledge and skills of positive deviants. This research therefore contributes to existing scholarship by providing nuances in the study of positive deviance and entrepreneurial networking among SMEs in Uganda through employing a complexity approach that transcends previous academic focus on social network theory.
Article
Full-text available
Positive deviance is a growing approach in international development that identifies those within a population who are outperforming their peers in some way, eg, children in low‐income families who are well nourished when those around them are not. Analysing and then disseminating the behaviours and other factors underpinning positive deviance are demonstrably effective in delivering development results. However, positive deviance faces a number of challenges that are restricting its diffusion. In this paper, using a systematic literature review, we analyse the current state of positive deviance and the potential for big data to address the challenges facing positive deviance. From this, we evaluate the promise of “big data‐based positive deviance”: This would analyse typical sources of big data in developing countries—mobile phone records, social media, remote sensing data, etc—to identify both positive deviants and the factors underpinning their superior performance. While big data cannot solve all the challenges facing positive deviance as a development tool, they could reduce time, cost, and effort; identify positive deviants in new or better ways; and enable positive deviance to break out of its current preoccupation with public health into domains such as agriculture, education, and urban planning. In turn, positive deviance could provide a new and systematic basis for extracting real‐world development impacts from big data.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Positive deviance refers to behavior that deviates from the norms of the reference group and has positive effects on the organization. It is an endogenous source of organizational creativity that has been shown to be powerful tool for learning and change. Despite growing interest, little remains known about the factors that stimulate positive deviance; in particular, how management can enable its emergence. In this paper, we explore the relationship between leadership and positive deviance through a conversion mixed methods field study of two hierarchical layers of store management in a large Australian retailer. Our findings indicate that management can best enable the emergence of positive deviance by combining empowering leadership behaviors with adequate levels of contingent reward and monitoring behaviors. These findings suggest that, depending on the frame of reference, positive deviance may emerge as a source for innovation that is endogenous to routines, rather than deviance from routines.
Article
Full-text available
In this review of the psychology of entrepreneurship, we first present meta-analytic findings showing that personality dimensions, such as (general) self-efficacy and need for achievement, and entrepreneurial orientation are highly associated with entrepreneurship (business creation and business success). We then discuss constructs that were developed within entrepreneurship research, such as entrepreneurial alertness, business planning, financial capital as resources, and entrepreneurial orientation, and how they can be better understood by taking a psychological perspective. Next, we elaborate how traditional psychological constructs have been utilized in entrepreneurship and how this may enhance our knowledge in industrial and organizational psychology (with respect to, for example, knowledge, practical intelligence, cognitive biases, goals and visions, personal initiative, passion, and positive and negative affect). Finally, we provide an overall framework useful for the psychology of entrepreneurship, and implications for future research.
Article
Full-text available
A growing literature explores the notion of constructive deviance conceptualized as behaviors that depart from the norms of the reference group such that they benefit the reference group and conform to hypernorms. We argue that constructive deviance is an umbrella term that encompasses several different behaviors, including taking charge, creative performance, expressing voice, whistle-blowing, extra-role behaviors, prosocial behaviors, prosocial rule breaking, counter-role behaviors, and issue selling. Using the three common mechanisms underlying constructive deviance to organize our review (intrinsic motivation, felt obligation, and psychological empowerment), we provide an emergent model that integrates extant empirical work on the antecedents of constructive deviance. We conclude by discussing issues for future research, such as examining obstacles, outcomes, and unexplored mechanism dynamics associated with constructive deviance.
Article
In labor markets, some individuals have, or believe to have, less data on the determinants of success than others, e.g., due to differential access to technology or role models. We provide experimental evidence on when and how informational differences translate into performance differences. In a laboratory tournament setting, we varied the degree to which individuals were informed about the effort-reward relationship, and whether their competitor received the same or a different amount of information. We find performance is adversely affected only by worse relative, but not absolute, informedness. This suggests that inequity aversion applies not only to outcomes but also to information that helps achieve them, and stresses the importance of inequality in initial information conditions for performance-dependent outcomes.
Article
Subject area Corporate entrepreneurship; Intrapreneurship; Human Resources. Study level/applicability MBA students in Human Resource, entrepreneurship and/or PhD students in the areas of Human Resource, Corporate Entrepreneurship and/or on Intrapreneurship studies. Case overview This case reveals that progressive change originated from individual’s positive deviance approaches, opportunistic sensitivity, ability to learn, evaluate and the ability to develop ideas on how to exploit or pursue identified opportunities (intrapreneurial behaviour). Expected learning outcomes The student will learn to deal with the complex nature of organisations and the tendencies of institutional processes to be uncertain, unpredictable, and uncontrollable; appreciate the internal workings of an organisation, the external environment; and understand the role of generative leadership, positive deviance, novelty ecosystems and intrapreneurial behaviour and the fact that connections and interactions in a social network are non-linear or non-proportional. This means that complex system predictions can be much more than simple regression predictions. They will be able to apply both bottom-up and top-down influences from proactive leadership or generative leadership events and benefit from positive results and the emergence of innovation. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS: 3 Entrepreneurship.
Book
Positive organizational scholarship (POS) is an umbrella concept used to emphasize what elevates and what is inspiring to individuals and organizations by defining the possibilities for positive deviance rather than just improving on the challenging, broken, and needlessly difficult. Just as positive psychology explores optimal individual psychological states rather than pathological ones, POS focuses attention on the generative dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster resiliency in employees, enable healing and restoration, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance. While POS does not ignore dysfunctional or typical patterns of behavior, it is most interested in the motivations and effects associated with remarkably positive phenomena how they are facilitated, why they work, how they can be identified, and how organizations can capitalize on them. This book is a major resource on POS. Eighty articles review basic principles, empirical evidence, and ideas for future research relating to POS. They focus on using a positive lens to address problems and challenges in organizational life and they draw on POS to expand the domain of other disciplines including ethics, economics, peace, spirituality, social movements, and sustainability.