Positive Psychology at Work:

The Ethical Bias of This Book

The justification for this book, one that I also hope further distinguishes it from its positive-thinking cousins, is the clear reference to an ethical base. Cameron, Dutton and Quinn (2003), discussing their work on positive organizational scholarship, a sub-branch of positive psychology if you will, note that positive organizational scholarship is not value neutral:

It advocates the position that the desire to improve the human condition is universal and that the capacity to do so is latent in most systems. (Cameron et al., 2003, p. 10)

They also suggest that this school of organizational studies, while recognizing the importance to organizational life and survival of goal achievement and making a profit, chooses to prioritize for study that which is ‘life giving, generative, and ennobling’ (p. 10). In other words, they hold a firm belief that organizational life is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, it contains the potential to be both and it is a worthwhile and ethical endeavour, in which they are engaged, to discover how to help organizations unleash their potential for good.

From a slightly less lofty position, I start from the observation that most people are obliged to earn a living by working in an organization. Given this, anything we can do, as psychologists, to help that experience be life-enhancing rather than spirit-deadening is a good thing. For all those hours on someone else's payroll, to add to the sum of good things in someone's ...