Well-Being and Work: Towards a Balanced Agenda

203 Pages·2012·1.29 MB·English

by  Philip Dewe

WELL-BEING AND WORK
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WELL-BEING
AND WORK
Towards a Balanced Agenda
Philip Dewe
Professor of Organizational Behavior,
Birkbeck University London
and
Cary Cooper, CBE
Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology
and Health, Lancaster University
© Philip Dewe & Cary Cooper 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-24352-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2012 by
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-31845-2 ISBN 978-0-230-36303-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230363038
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables viii
Introduction 1
Work stress 2
Towards well-being 4
What can we do? 4
The idea of balance 5
The structure of the book 8
Chapter 1 Setting the Scene 13
A touch of history 13
Positive psychology 15
Positive organizational scholarship 21
Positive organizational behavior 26
The good work agenda 29
Overview 32
Chapter 2 The Changing Nature of Work and
its Challenges 33
The landscape of work 33
Forces of change and human resource management 35
Management theory and its impact
on practice 38
What has become of leadership? 40
The shaping of positive leadership 42
Leadership and the role of positive psychology 44
v
CONTENTS
Positive psychology and the responsible
organization 45
Overview 46
Chapter 3 Work and Well-being: Progress and Prospects 48
Work 48
Well-being 65
Chapter 4 Resource Depletion 74
The term “stress” 74
The transactional approach: a way forward 77
Eustress: the positive side of stress 80
From stress to emotions 83
Resource depletion – work stressors 88
Overview 98
Chapter 5 Resource Accumulation 99
Happiness–unhappiness at work:
the vitamin model 100
Emotions at work 106
Job satisfaction: a surrogate measure of emotions? 108
Discrete emotions 110
Positive emotions 113
Positive psychological capital 118
From hardiness to resilience 120
Positive resources 130
Some fi nal comments 132
Chapter 6 Coping and Stress Interventions 134
Defi ning coping 135
Classifying coping strategies 138
Coping checklists and analysis 143
vi
CONTENTS
Coping effectiveness 147
Stress interventions 151
The infl uence of positive psychology 157
Overview 158
Chapter 7 Conclusions 159
Balance: towards a new perspective 159
Meaning and measurement 161
Membership 162
Moral responsibilities 163
References 165
Index 190
vii
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES
5.1 Happiness at work: A structure based on the work of Warr 104
TABLES
1.1 Positive psychology – some characteristics of a movement 22
1.2 Positive organizational behavior: An overview 30
2.1 The changing nature of work 37
2.2 What’s happening to leadership? 43
3.1 The road to job design 57
3.2 Job design and proactive behavior 60
3.3 Job design and prosocial behavior 63
3.4 Towards a defi nition of well-being 67
4.1 The evolution and defi ning of a concept: From stress to
emotions – the debate 84
4.2 Work stressors: Their evolution 94
4.3 Work stressors: Measurement issues 97
5.1 Emotions at work: The debate 117
5.2 Defi ning and understanding resilience 126
6.1 Classifying coping strategies: A themed approach 143
6.2 Sickness presenteeism 153
Note
The fi gures and tables should be read in conjunction with the text. Each
has been constructed from the cited articles in the text and reading
them together gives a much richer understanding of the points different
authors are making. Each gives an overview and brings together many
of the points made in the articles cited: these are all fully acknowledged
and referenced in the text. Where references are cited in the table they
offer the opportunity to read around the point being made.
viii
INTRODUCTION
In a speech given by Robert Kennedy at the University of Kansas in
1968, whilst he was on the campaign trail, he reflected on the state of
the nation:
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered per-
sonal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation
of material things. Our gross national product is now over $800
billion d ollars a year, but that gross national product – if we judge
the United States of America by that – that gross national product
counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and the ambulances
to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks on our doors
and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruc-
tion of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic
sprawl. It counts the napalm and counts nuclear warheads and
armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities…Yet the
gross national product does not allow for the health of our children,
the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not
include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages,
the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public
officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our
wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion
to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which
makes life worthwhile.
This is a profound declaration of what a society should aspire to, and is
reflected today in the speeches of British Prime Minister David C ameron
and President Sarkozy of France, where they extol the virtues of well-
being and emphasize the need to enhance our gross national well-being.
Indeed, to reinforce this, the United Kingdom government has intro-
duced a number of well-being categories to the national c itizen’s survey
carried out by the Office of National Statistics, an effort to track the
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