Hope: A Driver of Positive

Organization behaviour
Literature Review
Fred 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 todays 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 individuals self-evaluations, the positive the
persons self-regard and the more goal self-concordance is expected.

Pathways
Pathways 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?

Agency
Agency refers to peoples 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
wouldnt 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 Method
In 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 employees 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 Analysis
Two analysis were critical for purpose of this research: How different
factors maintained individuals 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 didnt get appraisal as per their

expectation but as they were progressing on their path of achieving their

personal goal they didnt 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.

Conclusion
From 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.

References
1. KEEPING AN EYE ON THE MIRROR: IMAGE ANDIDENTITY IN
ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION -JANE E. DUTTON, University of
Michigan
-JANET M. DUKERICH, University of Texas at Austin
2. 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