Abstract
As our most qualified inspector, sage, and futurist for organizational development (OD), Warner has set the standard for what great organizational change and development should be. He has recently accused the field of being stagnant and in need of new approaches to organizational change. In his view, there has been no innovation in OD since appreciative inquiry was introduced in 1987. This article takes seriously Warner’s challenge and discusses positive organizational scholarship (POS) as a step forward in innovative OD scholarship. POS highlights some phenomena that have largely been overlooked in mainline OD articles, and the article provides illustrations of successful POS interventions relying on a POS–OD approach to change. A sampling of new OD-type intervention practices is introduced.
Keywords
Warner Burke is unquestionably among the two or three most important living authorities on the discipline of organizational development (OD). Not only was he mentored by the founders of the field, and now represents the roles of leading advocate and critic for the field, but Warner has elaborated and clarified the importance of many of the founders’ original contributions. My own intellectual fire was sparked many decades ago by the Addison Wesley series on OD, and the names of the founders—most of whom Warner studied with and knew personally—were my heroes before I even knew this discipline existed. Warner has founded or edited every major academic journal in the field—most recently the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (JABS), which serves as the most important outlet for current OD work—and he is one of the few individuals alive who can legitimately claim the right to be inspector, sage, and futurist for OD. He has played those roles extraordinarily well (e.g., Burke, 2011, 2018).
In this tribute to Warner, I would like to highlight some of my and my colleagues’ work that has been inspired by and nurtured through Warner’s care. His suggestions for needed development and important next steps in OD have motivated me and many others to address issues that were largely outside the domain of traditional OD in its first 50-year history.
In this article, I will propose that—contrary to Warner’s observation that there has been no innovation and no new approaches to organizational change since appreciative inquiry was introduced in 1987 (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987)—positive organizational scholarship (POS) represents a step forward in OD scholarship. It highlights some phenomena that have largely been overlooked in mainline OD articles. This is demonstrated by an examination of articles published in JABS between 1990 and 2019. Negatively motivated change clearly predominated the literature compared to investigations of positive change during those years. Classifying the approximately 700 articles published in JABS from 1990 to 2019—according to their focus on negative change (e.g., overcoming problems), positive change (e.g., seeking positive deviance), or neutral topics (e.g., discussions of methods or the field)—revealed that approximately 40% of the articles addressed negatively motivated change and only 4% of addressed positive change up until 2013. The remainder of published articles addressed neutral topics such as biographies, methodologies, the field of OD, or special topics such as IT, architecture, or global culture. Since 2013, however, a shift has begun to appear, with 19% of articles (including two special issues) focused on positive change, and—with the encouragement of Warner—JABS has been at the forefront of fostering organizational change based on a positive lens.
Positive Organizational Scholarship
The field of POS was developed to investigate the positive outcomes, practices, attributes, and changes that occur in organizations and their members. POS aims to reveal and foster positive capabilities and activities that lead to flourishing in organizations. Researchers adopting a positive lens advocate the inclusion of positive phenomena in organizational change and development because, ostensibly, these phenomena account for variance in performance that may otherwise be overlooked.
Having a foundation in the scientific method is the basis on which most concepts, relationships, and prescriptions develop staying power in the social sciences. Intellectual fads come and go, charlatans and motivational speakers become popular by generalizing from an intriguing study or two, but usually it is the empirical and theoretical foundations that create longevity and continuing impact. This is the reason POS has tried to combine rigorous research with OD interventions and organizational change initiatives.
Unlike positive psychology, POS did not emerge as an attempt to rebalance the prodigious emphasis on illness and languishing in organizations. Neither organizational research nor OD practice has been focused overwhelmingly on failure, damage, and demise. Kurt Lewin, generally viewed as the father of OD, specifically emphasized achieving positive gains in society. POS arose, instead, because an array of organizational phenomena were being ignored; consequently, such phenomena were neither systematically studied nor valued. It was usually not considered legitimate in scientific circles, for example, to discuss the implementation or effects of virtuousness in organizations or to use terms such as “flourishing” or “positive deviance” to describe outcomes. Studies of compassion and forgiveness—two of the early studies in the POS literature (Cameron & Caza, 2002; Dutton et al., 2006)—certainly diverged from the mainstream of organizational science and from OD. Similarly, certain kinds of organizational processes remained largely uninvestigated, including high-quality connections (Dutton & Ragins, 2007), thriving (Spreitzer et al., 2005), positive deviance (Lavine, 2012), and positive energy networks (Baker et al., 2003, 2004).
POS also arose because the outcome variables that dominated the organization literature focused mainly on profitability, competitive advantage, problem solving, power dynamics, conflict and competition, and economic efficiency (Davis, 2009). Granted, outcomes such as job satisfaction, justice, and teamwork have appeared frequently in organizational studies and the OD literature (Kramer, 1999), but alternative outcomes such as psychological, social, and eudaemonic well-being (Keyes, 2005)—including social integration, social contribution, social coherence, social actualization, and social acceptance—as well as human sustainability (Pfeffer, 2010), were largely outside the purview of mainline studies. The very best of the human condition—eudaemonism—was not a high priority in organizational scholarship and in OD interventions.
POS is unapologetic in emphasizing affirmative attributes, capabilities, and possibilities more than problems, threats, and weakness, so that strengths-based activities and outcomes are highlighted (Clifton & Harter, 2003). Again, an affirmative approach does not exclude considering negative events and problem solving. Rather, these are incorporated in accounting for life-giving dynamics, generating resources, and flourishing outcomes (e.g., Dutton et al., 2006; Dutton & Glynn, 2007; Weick, 2003). For example, POS research spotlighted how the virtuousness of organizations is associated with financial performance in the context of downsizing, in contrast to a more typical focus on how organizations try to mitigate the harmful effects of downsizing (Bright et al., 2006; Cameron et al., 2011). POS research examined organizational practices that enable work meaningfulness through crafting a sense of calling in contrast to a more typical focus on employee productivity, engagement, or morale (Berg et al., 2010; Wrzesniewski, 2003). POS research identified how cascading empowerment processes create broader inclusion of stakeholders in public organizations, in contrast to a focus on the political dynamics of stakeholder demands (Feldman & Khademian, 2003). And, POS research highlighted how prioritizing positive leadership accounted for more positive outcomes in educational institutions compared with a focus on demographic, pedagogical, or socioeconomic factors in the classroom (Cameron, in press; Goddard & Salloum, 2012).
POS as a field of study is not limited just to OD, of course, but it incorporates many OD practices and approaches, and it shares many of its goals and fundamental assumptions—for example, the inherent worth of individuals, freedom, work that unleashes human capability, and authenticity and openness. It also expands the boundaries of traditional organizational theories to make visible extraordinarily positive outcomes, virtuous processes, and high-quality relationships that receive much less attention within organizational studies.
In other words, POS helps identify new insights related to OD which have emerged since appreciative inquiry was introduced in 1987 (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). Because the importance and credibility of any new approach depends, at least partly, on verified relationships with successful outcomes, I review very briefly some key aspects of POS and, especially, how it has been successfully applied to positive organizational change as well as why it represents an important step forward in the field of OD, especially in what Warner refers to as loosely coupled systems (Burke, 2011; Weick, 1976).
POS does not stand in contrast to the array of qualitative descriptions of change interventions, but it extends beyond them in its desire to develop rigorous, systematic, and theory-based foundations for positive phenomena. POS requires careful definitions of terms, a rationale for prescriptions and recommendations, consistency with scientific procedures in drawing conclusions, and grounding in previous related work. It is also important to point out that an interest in POS implies a commitment to the full spectrum of activities involved in scholarship. This includes the practical application of this knowledge in organizations, interventions to help organizations achieve extraordinary success, and the dissemination of knowledge in classrooms and training facilities.
These four convergent uses of the concept of positive—adopting a positive lens, investigating extraordinarily positive performance, espousing an affirmative bias, and exploring virtuousness—do not precisely define the term positive per se, but they do identify the scholarly domain that POS scholars are attempting to map and practitioners are attempting to perpetuate. Similar to other concepts in organizational science that do not have precisely bounded definitions (e.g., culture, innovation, core competence), this mapping provides the conceptual boundaries required to locate POS as an area of inquiry.
The progress or advancements in POS research in the context of OD interventions can be highlighted by a brief review of a few of the studies that have been conducted in the last decade or so. The irony in many of these findings is that, by definition, positive practices do not need to produce traditionally pursued organizational outcomes in order to be of worth. An increase in profitability, for example, or even the increase in employee well-being or engagement, is not the criterion for determining the value of POS in organizations. Positive phenomena that are associated with POS are inherently valued because they are eudaemonic—of inherent value by themselves. In fact, positive practices—including virtuous actions such as institutionalized gratitude, compassion, integrity, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, and love—have been claimed to be necessary to perpetuate the human species (Gouldner, 1960; Merton, 1968). Miller (2007) pointed out that a selective genetic bias for human moral virtuousness exists. He argued that even mate selection evolved at least partly on the basis of displays of positive practices and virtuous behavior. Haidt (2007) proposed that an orientation toward the positive is inherent in all human beings, and that it is a product of an intuition toward virtuousness developed from birth.
A substantial amount of empirical evidence exists confirming that the human inclination toward positivity and virtuousness is inherent and evolutionarily developed (Tangney et al., 2007; Miller, 2007). Some have proposed, for example, that inherent positivity develops in the brain before the development of language (Sharot et al., 2007). Studies of neuro functioning indicate that individuals have a basic instinct toward morality and are organically inclined to be virtuous (Haidt, 2006; Hauser, 2006). One scientist asserted that all human beings are “genetically disposed” to positive acts of virtuousness, and observing and experiencing positive practices helps unlock the human predisposition toward behaving in ways that benefit others (Krebs, 1987).
Whereas positivity is inherently valued for its own sake at the individual level, POS examines the effects of positive practices in organizations, not just in individuals outside an organization context. Studies have shown that organizations in a variety of industries (including financial services, health care, manufacturing, education, and government) that implemented and improved positive practices over time also increased their performance in desired outcomes such as profitability, productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. Positive practices that were institutionalized in organizations—including providing compassionate support for employees, forgiving mistakes and avoiding blame, fostering the meaningfulness of work, expressing frequent gratitude, showing kindness, and caring for colleagues—led organizations to perform at significantly higher levels on desired outcomes than most organizations (Cameron et al., 2004; Cameron et al., 2011; Gittell et al., 2006). Examples of these studies are briefly summarized below.
Application
Practicing and applying POS in organizations has taken a variety of forms—for example, empirical data collection, producing case studies, developing application tools, convening teams of interventionists, designing university courses and executive education programs—but certain OD-influenced interventions have been especially impactful. I will briefly (and superficially) describe just three that have occurred in what Warner labels loosely coupled systems. He stated as follows: So we must learn to work with loosely coupled and highly decentralized systems and help them operate better, that is, the work may be more about improvement not revolution. (Burke, 2011; p. 163)
I highlight these projects not because they are the most important examples of successful interventions, but because they were conducted in loosely coupled systems and pursued OD-style interventions. Moreover, they introduced a twist to the normal consultant-led organizational change initiatives. None of the projects followed a traditional OD intervention strategy but were significantly influenced by OD practice while, at the same time, pursuing a POS-oriented improvement initiative.
Ross School of Business
A new dean was appointed at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan at a time when the school found itself struggling financially, culturally, and strategically. Financially, the school was approximately $40 million in debt. This represented slightly less than half of the expendable operating budget. Culturally, the school lacked cohesion and a common identity. This was particularly apparent in a demoralized leadership team. Members felt isolated, disempowered, and unheard. Faculty and staff engagement scores were at very low levels. A staff survey showed that trust and morale were low and staff turnover was high. Strategically, no overarching vision or strategy guided decisions and resource allocations, and the school was not distinctive from a variety of other highly ranked business schools. Sliding international rankings suggested that the school was in danger of losing its position among top-ranked schools.
The OD-style intervention took the form of a large number of convened discussion groups among multiple internal (e.g., faculty, staff, and students) and external (e.g., donors, alumni, recruiters) constituencies to address, first of all, the desired culture and strategy of the school. Four strategic pillars were delineated as a result of the meetings:
Action: This pillar reflects the school’s strength in action learning which the school had introduced 20 years before.
Analytic: This pillar reflects an emphasis on rigorous research and teaching.
Boundarylessness: This pillar reflects being part of a highly multidisciplinary, collaborative, and diverse environment where boundaries are porous.
Positive: This pillar reflects a focus on developing leaders who make a positive difference in the world.
The Positive pillar was the most difficult for faculty and staff members to understand and support. This pillar did not appear to be as relevant to the school as the others and was even, potentially, at odds with conventional business assumptions. Some doubted the viability of this pillar for generating the resources necessary for the school to thrive. Some staff groups were unsure how the pillar would attract prospective students, recruit top-notch faculty and staff members, and translate into better job placements for students. Some scholars doubted the academic rigor and relevance of a positive pillar.
Despite continuing concerns, the positive pillar was identified by the dean’s office as the priority differentiator for the school, and a variety of change initiatives were launched to reinforce, clarify, and mobilize it. Motivated by encouragement from the dean and associate deans, discussion groups among faculty departments were formed to operationalize “positive” in the context of the academic mission of the school. Task forces were created among staff members that addressed issues related to public image, student recruitment, academic reputation, research support, and placement. Innovations in the curriculum by individual faculty members were encouraged and funded. Staff units independently engaged in a variety of efforts to broadcast the centrality of this new strategic pillar through an internal and external marketing and communications plan. Figure 1 illustrates several of the initiatives undertaken over a five year period.
Examples of initiatives to apply the positive strategic pillar.
These activities did not represent the tightening of a loosely coupled system, as Warner advocated, so much as capitalizing on and coordinating the independent unit initiatives themselves. Guidance was needed from the dean’s office at the outset, but then the various loosely coupled entities created activities and initiatives that could not have been centrally prescribed. The results exceeded what a centrally directed initiative would likely have accomplished.
For example, in a relatively short time, a 20% increase in global media coverage occurred among top-tier publications in outlets such as Financial Times and Bloomberg Businessweek. This placed the school in the top four among the leading business schools in the United States in media coverage. A survey designed to assess the image of the school among external constituencies found that a majority of respondents identified positive business practices as being important to the future of business, and positive business was more strongly associated with the Ross School of Business than any other institution. Positive business also played a major role in the marketing and delivery of executive education programs as it was identified as the single most important factor in accounting for Michigan’s #1 ranking in leadership and management development for 8 consecutive years. The school also saw an increase of 30% in student applications across all degree programs, while most competitor schools reported a 3% increase. As shown in Figure 2, staff morale and retention increased dramatically, and the school became the employer of choice on the university campus.
Staff morale survey scores.
The traditional approach to the drastic financial circumstances encountered by the school usually involves mass layoffs, severe budget reductions, and eliminating investments in innovations and new programming. Guided by the positive pillar, however, the school took a substantially different approach. Open communication, honesty, and transparency regarding budgets and expenditures, and regular updates with the entire Ross community created a markedly different culture than had existed before.
The $40 million deficit was paid off in 3 years, half the targeted timeframe. According to the chief financial officer, This financial miracle would not have been possible without the culture change that resulted from the positive pillar. We applied some financial tools that helped stop the bleeding, but they did not change the trajectory of the School. They alone were not the answer. Rather, the emphasis on transparency, trust, and positive culture produced a remarkable financial change.
Not unexpectedly, the positive pillar continued to face a certain amount of resistance in the school, so complete consensus was never achieved. For example, it was judged by some faculty members (mostly quantitatively oriented faculty) as too soft and substanceless and by some faculty and staff units as unfairly favoring the behavioral science departments. Nevertheless, in a relatively short amount of time, dramatic improvement was realized—strategically, culturally, and financially.
Laureate
Another example of an OD-inspired application of POS occurred in the world’s largest university consortium—Laureate—which, in 2017, owned 69 universities in 12 regions throughout the world (https://laureate.net). At the time, Laureate represented more than one million students and approximately 135,000 staff members. 1 These institutions are located in Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, India, and Africa, and several of them are considered to be the most prestigious in their respective nations.
The chief executive officer and president of Laureate had previously been exposed to POS, and they determined that it would be the core principle around which innovation and culture change would be based in the future. Laureate was facing significant financial pressures as well as senior executive turnover, so the status quo, it was determined, was not a viable strategy for future success. A systematic process was developed by the Laureate senior team, including the human resource staff, in which it was determined that the leadership of the entire worldwide organization and all its colleges and universities would be trained in POS and engage in an OD-style change process. The particular emphasis was to be on positive leadership practices. Figure 3 illustrates the stages that were developed in Laureate to expose the entire university system to the POS approach and to the implementation of positive leadership.
Framework used at Laureate to expose the university system to POS.
The first step was to bring together the senior leaders across the Laureate organization, including presidents, chancellors, and chief academic officers of the various universities throughout the world, for a 3-day intensive workshop. The workshop centered on reviewing the empirical research that established the credibility of a POS approach to institutional performance as well as identifying practical tools and applications that leaders could institutionalize in their various universities (e.g., Cameron, 2012, 2013; Whetten & Cameron, 2020).
Participants were exposed to empirical evidence that demonstrates the impact of positive organizational practices on bottom-line institutional performance as well as on students, staff, and faculty members. In addition, a variety of practical tools including those related to leader–subordinate relationships, supportive communication, culture diagnosis and change, gratitude, contribution and generalized reciprocity, high-quality connections, and positive energy were discussed and demonstrated.
As part of the workshop, participants identified “positive energizers” in each of the 12 geographic regions. Positive energizers are individuals who convey enthusiasm, engender positive relationships, help other people flourish, and can be relied on to uplift and elevate the climate of their units. Together, the senior executives from each institution world-wide identified a group of 46 positive energizers.
These positive energizers were brought together for a 3-day intensive workshop on positive leadership and positive organizational practices. Similar to the senior executives in each institution, they were exposed to a variety of positive leadership practices and given a 90-in-90 Challenge. Their challenge, as articulated by Laureate’s Chief Executive Officer, was to infect 90% of all Laureate staff members throughout the world with POS in 90 days. To infect meant that individuals would be able to teach or explain POS practices to others—they could produce their own examples and explanations—and they would have implemented a 1% change aimed at implementing POS. That is, a small win, a micro-modification, or a personal improvement would have been implemented by each individual in 90 days.
No centrally prescribed agenda was mandated for how this 90-in-90 challenge was to be approached, and energizers were free to address the task in whatever ways they felt appropriate. Figure 4 illustrates a variety of approaches these various groups used to accomplish the task.
Approaches developed by the positive energizers to accomplish the 90-in-90 challenge.
In 90 days, 93.3% of the 135,000 staff members had been infected with POS, and more than 120,000 hours of training and workshops had been conducted. Forums, seminars, celebrations, task forces, classroom instruction, coaching, and theatrical productions were developed to accomplish the task. Almost all (99%) of contractors, interns, and temporary employees also joined with full-time employees in participating in the activities. In follow-up surveys conducted after the events, 95% of participants indicated that they would recommend the training to others, and 98% indicated that they gained new knowledge on how they could enhance their institution’s performance. Figure 5 shows results of a worldwide survey of employees after the 90-in-90 intervention. On each dimension, scores had slightly improved in just this 3-month period.
Scores on eight dimensions of positive practices.
In addition to the overall institutional strategies that were implemented, 14 different experiments were conducted to assess the impact of POS on students in classrooms. In several Laureate universities located in India, Peru, and Spain, instructors across several different disciplines volunteered to participate in the study (Benito et al., 2019). They agreed to implement a variety of POS practices in their classrooms, but no prescribed curriculum or approach was designated. The disciplines in the study included Accounting, Analytic Design Methods, Architecture, Art, Economics, Education, Human Resources, Nutrition, Physiology, and Statistics. Instructors were exposed to positive leadership practices in a workshop and then asked to incorporate whatever practices they desired in their classrooms. Data were collected comparing the POS classes to previous classes taught by the same instructors the year before. Figure 6 provides the comparisons.
Effects of positive leadership classes on students at universities in India and Spain.
Compared with courses taught by the same instructors the year before implementing POS in their classrooms, three classes in a university in India (upper left chart in the figure) showed student satisfaction scores almost a full point higher on a 1 to 5 scale. In another analysis of six separate classrooms at the same university (upper middle chart in the figure), average student test scores and grades were 7% higher, and student attendance (upper right chart in the figure) was 10% higher. In four separate classrooms in a Spanish university (lower charts in the figure), average student test scores and course grades were a half a point higher on a 10-point scale. These were not rigorously controlled experiments and clearly a variety of other factors may be at play in accounting for the results. The outcomes do suggest, however, that POS had a nontrivial impact on the institutions and on students in the classroom even across different academic disciplines and national cultures.
Business and Finance
The Business and Finance Division at the University of Michigan (B&F) consists of approximately 2,700 employees in five diverse areas: facilities and operations (e.g., custodial, grounds keeping, bus drivers); finance (e.g., auditing, budgeting); investments (e.g., portfolio management, endowment); information (e.g., data management, analytics); human resources (e.g., benefits, counseling); and shared services (e.g., computer systems, payroll). Managing such a loosely coupled entity presents a major challenge. Leaders in the B&F division determined that they wanted to engage in a culture change initiative where staff at all levels believed that “what they do matters,” and that “they can make a positive difference.” The linking theme was to develop a positive culture based on POS principles.
The head of B&F also serves as the executive vice president as well as the chief financial officer of the university. He engaged an expanded leadership group of approximately 175 leaders in the top four levels of B&F and, with the assistance of some POS faculty consultants, initiated an OD-inspired change process. One of the most important activities was to involve the entire division in a 90-in-90 Challenge.
This challenge involved, first, identifying a group of 160 positive energizers across the B&F division and charging them with the task of infecting 90% of the division’s employees with POS practices in 90 days. In this case, infecting meant to expose 90% of B&F staff to the principles of positive organizations and engage them in at least one related exercise within 90 days. Invite staff to join the one percent positive change club by personally committing to one positive practice.
Senior leaders and the volunteer positive energizers engaged in day-long forums and workshops to learn about POS practices and to begin to plan their interventions. No activities were prescribed, and individual departments created their own strategies to accomplish the challenge. Figure 7 illustrates a collage of a few of the activities that occurred during the 90-day period.
Examples of 90-in-90 challenge activities.
A central website was established for sharing ideas and for asking for help, as well as a site where energizers could download resources, templates, and other materials. Positive energizers were encouraged to share highlights of what’s going well, aka “bright spots,” via a central email location:
In a survey of the positive energizers at the outset of the challenge, 96% expressed confidence in being able to apply positive practices, and 94% were already trying new positive initiatives with their departments. Not only did they far exceed their 90% goal of infecting employees, but dozens of unique and innovative activities were implemented as part of the challenge. (See the appendix for a list of initiatives implemented at the half-way point in the 90-in-90 challenge.) An employee opinion survey indicated a substantial improvement compared with 2 years before (see Figure 8).
Improvements in employee opinion scores as a result of the positive culture initiative.
In order to not lose momentum following the completion of the 90-in-90 challenge, additional strategies were put into place with the following attributes:
Identify new goals and targets that can be measured and tracked.
Have deadlines—weekly, monthly, or by the end of a certain period.
Ensure accountability via a mechanism for people to report what they are doing.
Consider the possibility of group competition (but not if it turns negative).
Make positive leadership part of the operational strategy and connected to business operations, not just to culture change.
Reinforce the language that has been adopted (such as “positive energizers”).
Orient new staff to the positive culture so they do not feel like they are walking into a movie 30 minutes late.
In this instance, even in a loosely coupled system with departments ranging from blue-collar workers serving in campus tunnels to counselors for addiction problems to individuals managing millions of dollars in financial investments, the OD-influenced intervention that focused on positive practices knit the unit together and achieved results that had not experienced heretofore.
Conclusion
These three interventions were only cursorily described, of course, but the point in highlighting them is to supplement Warner’s perspective on OD that a need for a resurgence and for more innovation exists. The social technology of OD has been well-developed and serves as a solid foundation for intervention initiatives in organizations. On the other hand, far fewer studies based on solid empirical evidence have been reported, and in some circles, OD has been stereotyped as a fuzzy, nonrigorous practice largely led by consultants and reported in peripheral academic outlets. Empirical research has been too little-reported, and rigorous, validated studies have decreased in number. Since most OD change initiatives fail (Burke, 2018), the field has become less and less central in organizational studies and in the Academy.
This article, as a tribute to Warner’s contributions and perspectives on the field, helps highlight one potential area for growth and expansion in OD. It is the application of POS research to OD-type interventions. POS is a relatively new field of study, but sufficient empirical and theoretical grounding has been established to address some of the criticisms of OD. Importantly, it has been shown to be useful and effective in producing bottom-line results in loosely coupled systems—an area highlighted by Warner as in need of attention. It has introduced some new practices—for example, 90-in-90 challenges, 1% positive change strategies, institutionalization of virtuous practices, the integration of positive leadership with positive energy, job crafting, reflected best-self feedback, and so forth—which can supplement tried and true OD practices. It has helped articulate theory that explains why positive practices and positive interventions produce desired outcomes. It has attracted hundreds of scholars throughout the world who are continuing to expand the field through research.
The point is that OD will neither whither nor become relegated to a peripheral position in the organizational sciences as POS research and OD practice are more closely and explicitly link in the future. An optimistic future looks promising.
Footnotes
Appendix
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
