20th Feb’15

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Literature ReviewFred Luthans defined Positive Organization Behaviour 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”. Positive state like psychological capacities such as optimism, efficacy, hope, resilience, and psychological capital plays a major role in generating positive organization behaviour. The studies suggest that positively oriented behaviours may have a substantial positive impact on the performance and other desired outcomes. The positive traits that influences the individual to core self-evaluation.

Snyder, Irving, and Anderson define hope as “a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (1) agency (goal-directed energy) and (2) pathways (planning to meet goals). Hope is State like thus it is open for development and improvement. Hope capitalizes on self-initiated goal-directed motivations and behaviours. In essence, the higher an individual’s self-evaluations, the positive the person’s self-regard and the more goal self-concordance is expected.

PathwaysPathways are the replications of the perceptions of the individual on

how to achieve the desired goals. Actual experiences on of goal attainment process will improve pathway thinking process. The pathway creates a base for the Goal setting which is agency aspect of the Hope. The main objective of the pathway is how to attain the goal. Cognitive therapy can also help in generating more efficient pathways; where cognitive therapy is an effort to convert problems into solvable problems.

Hypothesis: Does Planning of the Goal/Objective improves efficiency of achieving goals?

AgencyAgency refers to people’s thoughts about the ability to begin with

and continue movement on selected pathways toward their goals. Without agency thinking the individual will not have motivation as the individual wouldn’t have any goal to work for. The decision of individual reflects the agency as it involves the decision to implement a particular pathway toward the goal of improving.

Hypothesis: Do efforts for achieving goals improve performance of the individual?

Research MethodIn this research the qualitative method has been developed to

conceptualize the role of hope in Positive Organization behaviour. For the research 10 individuals have been interviewed from different organization to understand how hope plays roles in any employee’s performance and how it drives different positive traits which relates to Positive organization behaviour. Questionnaire was used to interview the individuals which included questions such as;

1. Are you satisfied with the current salary and other perks offered?2. If no, then what are the different factors that are holding your faith in

the organization?3. Was the last performance appraisal was up to your expectation? 4. If no, then what contributed to your thought of staying in the

organization?5. Do you like the working environment of your organization?6. What are the factors apart from salaries and perks that inspire you to

work in the organization? 7. Do you like to work overtime to achieve your targets given by your

superior?8. Do you set your own targets to work upon?9. Do you look forward to work upon other assignments which are not

assigned to you?10. What are your long term and short term goals?11. Have this targets, goals and extra work helped you in getting better

results?12. For how many years you have been working in this organization?

Data AnalysisTwo analysis were critical for purpose of this research: How different

factors maintained individual’s hope and how goal setting and setting different targets helped individual perform better.

Some of the employees were satisfied with their current salaries as they have chosen their Job benchmarking the salaries. But some individuals who has more than 5 years of experience are not satisfied with their salaries when they compared their salaries with others working in same industry; still they were working in the organization with the hope of getting promotion. Though false hope also had led to dissatisfaction in one individual where individual was having expectation of getting appraisal as he considered that good relation with superior can lead to good results. Some cases also reported that grapevine in the organization can also help in maintaining hope in the organization. Informal groups like friends and peer groups helps in staying positive when a person facing and unexpected results.

Goals attributed as a directly proportional to the performance. Setting targets and goals motivated individuals in the organization. Pathways also

attributed as positive factor. Some individual didn’t get appraisal as per their expectation but as they were progressing on their path of achieving their personal goal they didn’t take their unexpected results negatively; in fact they set a higher targets and started working on it which further helped them achieve good performance appraisal. Targets given by superior helps individuals set some benchmarks but personal targets and short term goals actually motivates them. Individuals who works upon extra assignments apart from their assigned work actually got more recognised in their job which played a role of motivator for them.

ConclusionFrom the Data analysis, alternative hypothesises should be selected.

Planning and efforts of Goals actually improves efficiency and performance. Hope capitalizes a positive organization behaviour so manager should try to identify what are different factors that contributes to hope for any individual in the organization.

References1. “KEEPING AN EYE ON THE MIRROR: IMAGE ANDIDENTITY IN

ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION” -JANE E. DUTTON, University of Michigan

-JANET M. DUKERICH, University of Texas at Austin2. “The Role of Hope in Cognitive-Behaviour Therapies”- C. R. Snyder,

Stephen S. Ilardi, Jen Cheavens, Scott T. Michael, Laura Yamhure, and Susie Sympson

3. “Emerging Positive Organizational Behaviour”- Fred Luthans, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, fluthans@unl.edu