Critique Journal of 'Thriving at Work: a Meta-analysis'

Abstract

The research article, “Thriving at work: A meta-analysis” by Anne-Kathrin Kleine, Cort W. Rudolph, and Hannes Zacher primarily focuses on employees thriving in a workplace. The goal of the authors is to focus on employees in the workplace and analyze their psychological state to determine which factors come into play when they thrive at work. The authors use the Spreitzer and Colleagues' model to determine the internal characteristics expressed by the workers. The authors have several hypotheses about thriving at work in their research. For example, one of the hypotheses is that: psychological capital is positively related to thriving at work. From this hypothesis, the authors conduct an experiment using different types of variables to study human characteristics. Ultimately, the researchers found that there was a positive relationship between psychological capital and thriving at work. With that being said, the article will focus on summarizing the journal in terms of the type of research methods used and the results found out the end to determine if the personal hypothesis was proven to be true or not.

Keywords: Thriving, Work, Psychological, Research

Critique of: Thriving at Work: A meta-analysis

To begin with, Anne-Kathrin Kleine, Cort W. Rudolph, and Hannes Zacher conducted an excellent meta-analysis based on the topic of thriving at work. The journal mentions how the word “thriving” has a different meaning in the world of organizational behavior. The authors mention that; “Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein, and Grant defined thriving at work as a positive psychological state characterized by a joint sense of vitality and learning”. This is essential to the research because it shows the blueprint for which the research will be focusing on. This leads to the main motive for the research which is to examine if there is any correlation between a person's psychological state and who is thriving at work.

Premises of Research

Research on thriving at work has been conducted numerous times over the past decade. However, the research pool needs systematic and theory-based synthesis. Researchers all around the world lack essential knowledge on the nomological network of thriving at work, including crucial antecedents and consequences. According to the authors, 'the overcharging goal of this article is to present and discuss the theoretical background, methods, and results of a meta-analysis that quantitatively integrates existing empirical-quantitative studies on thriving at work'. In other words, the main rationale behind this journal was to provide systematic research in the hypothesis that is well calculated using professional research methods. With the help of this journal, recommendations for future research and organizational practice will not be difficult to conduct.

As mentioned before, thriving at work is defined as the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and learning. The basis of this research is taken from the model of thriving at work created by Spreitzer’s team. The authors used the model as a starting point and updated it by dividing antecedents of thriving into two categories which include: individual characteristics and relational characteristics.

Individual Characteristics

The first antecedent of thriving at work is individual characteristics. As an individual, we need supportive coworker behavior, leadership, and trust amongst each other. Therefore, individual characteristics can play an important role in analyzing thriving at work. According to the authors, “individual characteristics include psychological capital, core self-evaluations, proactive personality, positive affect, (low) negative affect, (low) perceived stress, and work engagement”. In their research, the authors have formulated a hypothesis for each type of individual characteristic. To begin with, psychological capital refers to a set of resources such as; self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience a person can use to help improve performance and well-being in a workplace. The first hypothesis for psychological capital is that it is positively related to thriving at work. To continue, core self-evaluations deals with personality trait responsible for our temperaments such as locus of control, neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. The hypothesis dealing with core self-evaluations is that it has a positive relation to thriving at work. Moving on, a proactive personality deals with a person motivated to pursue opportunities for self-improvement such as knowledge, skills, and education. The author's hypothesis is that a “proactive personality is positively related to thriving at work”. To continue, individuals with positive affect are likely to interact with their environment by participating in activities which result in developing inner characteristics. The authors' hypothesis is that positive affect has a positive correlation to thriving at work. The other individual characteristic that was hypothesized to be positively related to thriving at work deals with work engagement in which an individual is in a positive and fulfilling work-related state of mind. On the other hand, negative affect and perceived stress are hypothesized to be negatively related to thriving at work.

Relational Characteristics

The second antecedent of thriving is relational characteristics. Relational characteristics focus on employees’ relationships with their coworkers. Examples of relational characteristics that the authors include are: “heedful relating, supportive coworker behavior, workplace civility, supportive leadership behavior, empowering leadership, transformational leadership, and LMX quality”. Most of the definitions of the examples go straightforward with the word itself. However, there are some such as LMX and transformational relationships, that are complex to understand. To begin with, transformational leadership deal with inspiring employees to strive for the best version of themselves and achieve their goals. LMX focuses on the relationship between leaders and followers. Therefore, high-quality LMX relationships consist of trust, respect, and responsibilities. On the other hand, the only negatively characteristic related to thriving at work is workplace incivility.

Research Method

For this journal, the authors decided to conduct a meta-analysis, which is a statistical analysis of older similar experiments to test the combined data for statistical significance. The authors used electronic engines and databases such as “Google Scholar, Web of Science, EBSCO Host, JSTOR, and ProQuest” for studies that had citations of the original paper constructed by Spreitzer and his team. For the databases, the authors searched for articles published between 2005 and 2018 that used keywords like 'thriving' and 'work'. The third method of gathering data was done by searching for prepress articles via journal websites such as the Journal of Organizational Behavior and the Journal of Applied Psychology. The fourth method was cross-referencing conference programs from the Academy of Management. The subject of the research was employees in the workplace. Employee attributes such as their age, how long they worked for, and the hours they worked every week were captured and presented in chronological order. Attributes such as gender were dummy coded in a binary fashion, such that the number zero belonged to males and the number one belonged to females.

Research Finding

After conducting meta-analytic statistics, the database found 73 independent samples, representing a sample size of 21,739 employees in the workplace. For this research, the authors described the variable rc to describe “the sample size-weighted and reliability-corrected correlation”. The value of RC close to .1 is considered small, .3 is considered moderate, and .5 is considered large. RC was utilized in the research to determine the correlation between individual characteristics and thriving at work. Klein and her colleagues conducted that psychological capital had a moderate and positive correlation with “thriving at work “(RC = .47), learning (RC = .40), and vitality (RC = .56). Core- evaluations (RC = .50), proactive personality (RC = .58), and positive affect (RC = .52)”. Each of those characteristics had a positive and strong correlation to thriving at work. On the other hand, the authors report that negative affect had “(RC = -.36) and vitality (RC = -.44) had a moderate and negative correlation with thriving and it’s unrelated to learning”. The authors also noticed that “perceived stress also had a negative correlation with thriving (RC = -.31). Work engagement had the strongest and positive correlation with thriving (RC = .64)”. These findings are significant enough to support the hypotheses that were previously stated.

On the other hand, the authors found that relational characteristics such as “relationships with coworkers, heedful relating” had a strong and positive correlation “(RC = .50). Supportive coworker behavior” had a moderate and positive correlation “(RC = .42), and workplace civility” had a strong and positive correlation “(RC = .54) with thriving at work. Workplace incivility” had a weak and negative correlation “with thriving (RC = -.22). Relationships with supervisors, supportive leadership behavior (RC = .44), and empowering leadership (RC = .44)” all had strong and positive correlation unlike transformational leadership, where there was a weak and positive correlation with thriving (RC = .29). Finally, LMX had the strongest correlation with thriving (RC = .61). These results show that the sample size- weight and reliability-corrected correlation is significant enough to support the hypotheses.

Topic Learned from the Journal

One specific topic about organizational behavior that can be learned from this journal is attitudes and job satisfaction. Attitudes refer to evaluation statements – either favorable or unfavorable- about objects, events, or people. They reflect how a person feels about a certain topic. The reason why this topic can be learned from this journal is that a case can be made that thriving at work is similar to job satisfaction. Just like thriving has two antecedents, individual characteristics and relational characteristics, attitudes that lead to job satisfaction can be broken down into cognitive components, affective components, and behavioral components. The cognitive component involves a person's belief or knowledge about a topic. The behavioral component deals with how attitude influences the way a person behaves. Affective emotion involves a person's feelings or emotions towards a topic. All of the components could essentially be tied to employees' characteristics and relational characteristics. For example, the cognitive component can be tied into individual characteristics because belief or knowledge can lead to individual characteristics such as core self-evaluations and psychological capital. Another topic related to job satisfaction deals with employee engagement. According to Robbins and Judge,” highly engaged employees have a passion for their work and feel a deep connection to their companies”. This is similar to relational characteristics because being engaged in the environment leads to overall satisfaction, which ultimately leads to thriving in work.

Implementation in the Real World

Research about thriving in work has been conducted for decades. However, this research should be implemented in the real world because it shows significant data values that prove popular hypotheses to be true. Although the construction of state-of-the-art office spaces where employees have the luxury to socialize is important, it is not necessary to create an environment where employees are motivated and thrive in their work. Companies should look at the statistics provided by this article to formulate a plan where employees can achieve both individual and relational characteristics. For instance, companies can switch into a group-orientated fashion where employees are constantly bouncing ideas off of each other. This will help achieve characteristics such as psychological capital, proactive personality, and work engagement. By working together, employees will experience a sense of belonging which will increase their self-esteem, begin to challenge themselves, dedication, and work engagement. This will also add to relational characteristics because employees working together will begin to support each other and will have civility. Another way to achieve relational characteristics is by hiring supportive and empowering leaders who will make other employees become the best versions of themselves and increase their overall motivation and drive.

Ultimately, there are millions of studies conducted around the world to figure out the formula for creating the most efficient and thriving workplace. The truth is that there is no right formula for this equation. If that were the case, every company would have the highest employee satisfaction and production. Even though things are never perfect, steps such as this article can be taken to ensure to get the best out of every employee possible.

References

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