Positive Organisational Scholarship – Interview with Professor Kim Cameron

Kim Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, author of Positive Leadership and Positive Organizational Scholarship and number of other books on positive organizational scholarship. Professor Cameron shared some of his key insights with us on how organizations can be both more productive but also more positive places to work.

When asked about the development of the discipline of Positive Organizational Scholarship, Cameron describes his personal story that began about 20 years ago when studying organizations that were downsizing: consolidating, retrenching and laying people off. He noticed in his research over a period of several years that when organizations downsize they tend to deteriorate in performance: productivity, morale, innovation all decline. He noted however that there are 10 to 15% of organizations that improve and flourish after downsizing.

“The question over time became, how do you explain those very few organizations that get a lot better versus those that do not? I had begun forming an impression over a number of years that the difference was something I referred to as virtuous behavior in the organizations that flourish. That is forgiveness and integrity, compassion, benevolence, optimism, hope and gratitude – all that we aspire our children to develop.”

He worked with Jane Dutton and Robert Quinn on developing the discipline which they named Positive Organizational Scholarship: an empirical and theoretically grounded field of study focusing on the complexities of positivity at an organizational level.

“The field caught on because I think at our very core people believe if the world was more virtuous there would be no poverty, there would be no war. Everyone would be well educated. It would be the best of the human condition. We’re essentially studying not only how do you overcome problems and challenges but how do you unleash the potential in human beings to become the best they can imagine? We sometimes refer to that as positive deviance. We’re studying how you find the attributes of a flourishing thriving organization. If you could identify it then how do you predict it? How do you foster it? How you enable it? That is essentially how positive organizational scholarship emerged.”

A variety of factors make a difference to organizations thriving, including virtuous practices. “We’ve discovered that when organizations develop or… institutionalize virtuousness by being more compassionate, more supportive, kinder to employees, forgiving of mistakes, it has a major impact on profitability, productivity goes up, quality is better, there are fewer errors.”

Another research finding is that relationships matter. Jane Dutton’s work highlights the need for high quality connections, which may be temporary interactions. Fostering high quality connections improve performance – they benefit employees and those they serve like customers, suppliers and people outside the organization.

Positive energy is life-giving and has an organizational impact: positive energizers, people who leave others uplifted and energized are higher performers themselves.

In terms of performance, Cameron states that energy is four times more important than influence and four times more important than information.  Because everyone can be an energizer, this is not a zero-sum game: it leads to collaboration as positive energy is an attractor.

Positive, energizing leaders

• help other people flourish, which is positively energizing
• are heedful, pay attention, and give people their focus as opposed to being distracted
• are problem solvers rather than problem creators

The mechanisms through which virtuousness leads to improved results include the heliotropic effect: all living systems are inherently attracted to the positive and avoid, or are diminished in the presence of the negative.

One theory is that inherent in the human condition is the tendency to do better when there are positive practices and a positive climate.

Another is the broaden-and-build theory, established by Barbara Fredrickson: “when you expose people to virtuous, positive emotions you tend to broaden their perspective. People can actually take in more information broadening and building.”

This also buffers the organization against trauma: when they implement a variety of positive practices, especially positive leadership and institutionalizing virtuousness, the negative factors that almost always occur in downsizing tend to be diminished.

Professor Cameron highlights some evidence-based interventions which have an impact on functioning including the fact that people who keep a gratitude journal are healthier and have higher levels of cognitive functioning, mental flexibility and creativity than their counterparts who keep regular diaries.

People with contribution goals – e.g. I want to contribute, I want to make something better, I want to have something improve as the result of my efforts – perform better than those who set themselves achievement goals.

Contribution is even more important than reward. “Most organizational reward systems are based on giving people stuff but as it turns out that much higher performance can be predicted if not only do you give people stuff but you give them the opportunity to contribute to somebody or something else” he adds.

Cameron concludes by sharing tools developed to help organizations flourish, from ‘best-self feedback’ through a job-crafting exercise for increased meaning to ways of establishing the networks of quasars, the bright stars who have the potential to infect your organization with virtuousness and positivity.

Kim S. Cameron is William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organization at Ross School of Business and Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. His current research focuses on the virtuousness of, and in, organizations and their relationships to organizational success.  He is one of the co-founders of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan

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