POSITIVE ORGANIZATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP CONCEPT: AN OVERVIEW AND FUTURE STUDIES

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview about the insightful Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) concept, which is considered as one of the most important management theoretical developments over the past decade. Therefore, it reviews the meaning, scope, domains, major constructs, outcomes, and theoretical overlaps related to POS, as well as providing a critical analysis of this umbrella concept. In doing so, it is expected to contribute to further understanding of POS theoretical richness as a path to the improvement of workplaces. Despite the difficulties and problems discussed here (e.g., few empirical work, validity issues, and some theoretical intersections) under the relatively new POS concept has ever gathered germane knowledge that has helped to explain how organizations improve their dynamics and general outcomes by adopting more constructive approaches. On the other hand, it is exciting to find that POS concept researchers have worked with a sizeable number of constructs, topics, and ideas. This review contributes to the POS concept by closely examining some of its major constructs (fundamentally those ones that are more theoretically and empirically developed) such as compassion, connections and relationships, cooperation, courageous, flourishing, forgiveness, meaningful work, positive deviance, positive motions, resilience, thriving and virtuous aspects. The results reveal a richer understanding about their benefits and challenges, as well as emphasizing new possibilities for future studies