What contributes to thriving at wor

What contributes to thriving at work? Some antecedents
Spreitzer et al.’s (2005) model of thriving is based on the idea that thriving is socially embedded. By this, we mean that when individuals are situated in particular contexts they are more or less likely to thrive (see Figure 6.1). As the framework shows, three sets of factors which include (1) unit contextual features, (2) agentic work behaviors, and (3) resources produced in the doing of work contribute to thriving at work. Unit contextual features reflect the dominant way that work is accomplished and include such things as how decisions are made, how information is shared, and the extent to which interactions are infused with trust and respect. Agentic working behaviors reflect the ways that individuals experience their work context and how they carry out daily work activities. To be more specific, individuals are more likely to thrive to the extent that they (a) have a task focus to get their work done, (b) explore new ways of working and being to enhance their learning, and (c) heedfully relate with others in their work environment. Resources produced in the doing of work reflect the knowledge, affective, and relational assets that enable people to enact schemas to guide action. The dual arrow between the resource box and the agentic work behaviors box indicates that resources enable thriving but also are produced through the agentic behaviors of thriving employees. In this way, the resources are renewable and produced through thriving at work. While this framework has not yet been subject to rigorous empirical testing, we do have some initial encouraging empirical findings on several elements. Christianson et al. (2005) have found that in a nationally representative sample of mid-life adults, positive affective resources and
agentic work behaviors were significant predictors of thriving at work. While no measure of unit contextual features was available, the research did not find significant differences across occupational types. The level of thriving experienced by blue collar workers and their white collar or professional counterparts was similar. This finding is important because it suggests that individuals in all types of jobs have the potential to thrive if they have an opportunity to exercise agency over their work and can create and nurture the necessary resources in doing their work. Qualitative research also provides some insight about the subjective experience of thriving and growth at work. For example, Sonenshein et al. (2006) studied how people experience thriving at work and analyzed narrative accounts from a broad set of respondents. Respondents’ accounts revealed that most experiences of thriving (76 percent) involve learning, recognition and accomplishment; but almost 40 percent of thriving experiences emphasize relationships and helping connections as well. Furthermore, Sonenshein and colleagues found that properties of work (challenge, novelty, variety, etc.), working closely with others (including supervisors, colleagues, and clients), and organizational properties (culture, structure, and physical space) were all described as enabling people to thrive and grow at work.
Thriving organizations
As described above, individual thriving is an important means through which people self-regulate their own growth. But is thriving limited toindividuals? Can collectives (i.e. groups, units, or even organizations)thrive as well? And why should we care about thriving collectives? What are the implications and outcomes of thriving at the collective level? At present, to our knowledge, there is no research explicitly focused on thriving at the unit or organizational levels. Yet, these are important questions and ones that we will speculate about in the remainder of this chapter.

What is collective thriving?
Is a thriving group, unit, or organization merely the sum of its parts? That is, is it merely a set of individuals who are thriving? We do not expect a one-to-one correspondence between individual thriving and collective thriving. It may be that while individuals in an organization may be thriving, they may not be thriving in a way that benefits the organization. For example, at United Technologies, employees can enroll in any kind of educational program in which they have an interest – whether it is gourmet cooking, belly dancing, or fly fishing. While these employees are learning and likely to be highly energized, this learning is not necessarily aligned with the needs of the organization and hence may not relate to organizational thriving in the sense that the learning may not add to the organization’s capabilities or growth in any substantive way.
On the other hand, an organization may be thriving, but its individual members may not be. The organization may be learning and energized as a whole, but individual members may feel overwhelmed and depleted. For example, in today’s business environment, many organizations strive to be lean even though it may mean laying off high performing employees
who may not be part of the strategic future of the firm. And people who stay may be stretched too thin. In both cases, although their organization may be thriving, if employees see little future in the organization or if they are overwhelmed, they are not likely to feel that they themselves are thriving.
So what is collective thriving? A group, unit, or organization is thought to thrive when the collective is both learning and energized. Thriving collectives are not afraid to try new things, take risks, and learn from mistakes. They build capabilities (i.e. sets of routines) and new competencies from their learning. This collective capability can be used to respond to the demands of an unpredictable world. A thriving collective is also energized – energy which contributes to the collective capacity to cope with obstacles, challenges, setbacks and failures and to persist in their efforts (Glynn et al., 1994).
What might be some ways to measure or assess the extent to which a group, unit, or organization is thriving? Certainly, we would expect that employees and outsiders would perceive the collective as growing. From an energy standpoint, we would expect a thriving collective to have high levels of employee vitality which may show up through increased activity, persistence, innovation. The energy network methodology of Baker et al. (2003) may be a useful method for identifying the magnitude of positive and negative energy in a collective. From a learning standpoint, we would expect that thriving collectives have more cognitive and behavioral complexity that comes from their learning orientation. Why does collective thriving matter? Why should we care whether groups, units or organizations thrive?
Organizational scholarship typically has tended to emphasize performance outcomes, at the expense of considering social and public objectives (Walsh et al., 2003). We take seriously the idea that organizations are social entities as well as economic ones. Thus, thriving matters at the collective level because it enhances the vitality of our social and public environments. Most economists agree that knowledge economies differ from goods-producing economies. If we accept that previous industrial economic indicators may provide an inadequate account of the state of nations in a knowledge economy (David, 1999, as cited in Barley and Kunda, 2001), it is quite possible that the collective vitality of the workforce may be an important economic indicator and a way to conceptualize value in a postindustrial world. If so, our ideas about thriving can provide some
insight to organizational theorists about how this alternative production value is created and the underlying logic of organizing to achieve it. It is plausible to think that thriving collectives have a number of outcome which would enhance the long-term sustainable performance of the collective. First, scholars have noted that the world confronting organizations is increasingly characterized as discontinuous, uncertain, and chaotic. Uncertain conditions favor organizations that are flexible and can adapt quickly to changing conditions. It is possible that organizations with many thriving individuals will be more responsive to these conditions. Second, we would expect that the learning inherent in thriving may
lead to new behavioral routines/repertoires. This could enable increased capability to improvise or recombine competencies to solve new problems. The energy inherent in thriving can contribute to an increased ability to build, repair, sustain, and endure challenges/problems/crises. In short, we expect that thriving collectives are likely to be more resilient in the face of adversity or hardship. Third, given that prior research has found that individuals who thrive
at work are likely to be healthier, perhaps the most obvious implication and important outcome for thriving collectives is reduced health care costs. It may be that thriving organizations can save millions of dollars in health care costs. The non-profit/non-partisan National Coalition on Health Care estimates that the average total cost to organizations for health care benefits rose 14.7 percent in 2002, at a time when general inflation hovered around 2 percent, and it continues to rise. For each automobile it produces, General Motors spends more on health care (approximately $1500/automobile) than it does on steel.

Results (Indonesian) 1:

Apa yang memberikan kontribusi untuk berkembang di tempat kerja? Pendahulunya beberapaSpreitzer et al.’s (2005) model of thriving is based on the idea that thriving is socially embedded. By this, we mean that when individuals are situated in particular contexts they are more or less likely to thrive (see Figure 6.1). As the framework shows, three sets of factors which include (1) unit contextual features, (2) agentic work behaviors, and (3) resources produced in the doing of work contribute to thriving at work. Unit contextual features reflect the dominant way that work is accomplished and include such things as how decisions are made, how information is shared, and the extent to which interactions are infused with trust and respect. Agentic working behaviors reflect the ways that individuals experience their work context and how they carry out daily work activities. To be more specific, individuals are more likely to thrive to the extent that they (a) have a task focus to get their work done, (b) explore new ways of working and being to enhance their learning, and (c) heedfully relate with others in their work environment. Resources produced in the doing of work reflect the knowledge, affective, and relational assets that enable people to enact schemas to guide action. The dual arrow between the resource box and the agentic work behaviors box indicates that resources enable thriving but also are produced through the agentic behaviors of thriving employees. In this way, the resources are renewable and produced through thriving at work. While this framework has not yet been subject to rigorous empirical testing, we do have some initial encouraging empirical findings on several elements. Christianson et al. (2005) have found that in a nationally representative sample of mid-life adults, positive affective resources andagentic work behaviors were significant predictors of thriving at work. While no measure of unit contextual features was available, the research did not find significant differences across occupational types. The level of thriving experienced by blue collar workers and their white collar or professional counterparts was similar. This finding is important because it suggests that individuals in all types of jobs have the potential to thrive if they have an opportunity to exercise agency over their work and can create and nurture the necessary resources in doing their work. Qualitative research also provides some insight about the subjective experience of thriving and growth at work. For example, Sonenshein et al. (2006) studied how people experience thriving at work and analyzed narrative accounts from a broad set of respondents. Respondents’ accounts revealed that most experiences of thriving (76 percent) involve learning, recognition and accomplishment; but almost 40 percent of thriving experiences emphasize relationships and helping connections as well. Furthermore, Sonenshein and colleagues found that properties of work (challenge, novelty, variety, etc.), working closely with others (including supervisors, colleagues, and clients), and organizational properties (culture, structure, and physical space) were all described as enabling people to thrive and grow at work.Thriving organizationsAs described above, individual thriving is an important means through which people self-regulate their own growth. But is thriving limited toindividuals? Can collectives (i.e. groups, units, or even organizations)thrive as well? And why should we care about thriving collectives? What are the implications and outcomes of thriving at the collective level? At present, to our knowledge, there is no research explicitly focused on thriving at the unit or organizational levels. Yet, these are important questions and ones that we will speculate about in the remainder of this chapter.

What is collective thriving?
Is a thriving group, unit, or organization merely the sum of its parts? That is, is it merely a set of individuals who are thriving? We do not expect a one-to-one correspondence between individual thriving and collective thriving. It may be that while individuals in an organization may be thriving, they may not be thriving in a way that benefits the organization. For example, at United Technologies, employees can enroll in any kind of educational program in which they have an interest – whether it is gourmet cooking, belly dancing, or fly fishing. While these employees are learning and likely to be highly energized, this learning is not necessarily aligned with the needs of the organization and hence may not relate to organizational thriving in the sense that the learning may not add to the organization’s capabilities or growth in any substantive way.
On the other hand, an organization may be thriving, but its individual members may not be. The organization may be learning and energized as a whole, but individual members may feel overwhelmed and depleted. For example, in today’s business environment, many organizations strive to be lean even though it may mean laying off high performing employees
who may not be part of the strategic future of the firm. And people who stay may be stretched too thin. In both cases, although their organization may be thriving, if employees see little future in the organization or if they are overwhelmed, they are not likely to feel that they themselves are thriving.
So what is collective thriving? A group, unit, or organization is thought to thrive when the collective is both learning and energized. Thriving collectives are not afraid to try new things, take risks, and learn from mistakes. They build capabilities (i.e. sets of routines) and new competencies from their learning. This collective capability can be used to respond to the demands of an unpredictable world. A thriving collective is also energized – energy which contributes to the collective capacity to cope with obstacles, challenges, setbacks and failures and to persist in their efforts (Glynn et al., 1994).
What might be some ways to measure or assess the extent to which a group, unit, or organization is thriving? Certainly, we would expect that employees and outsiders would perceive the collective as growing. From an energy standpoint, we would expect a thriving collective to have high levels of employee vitality which may show up through increased activity, persistence, innovation. The energy network methodology of Baker et al. (2003) may be a useful method for identifying the magnitude of positive and negative energy in a collective. From a learning standpoint, we would expect that thriving collectives have more cognitive and behavioral complexity that comes from their learning orientation. Why does collective thriving matter? Why should we care whether groups, units or organizations thrive?
Organizational scholarship typically has tended to emphasize performance outcomes, at the expense of considering social and public objectives (Walsh et al., 2003). We take seriously the idea that organizations are social entities as well as economic ones. Thus, thriving matters at the collective level because it enhances the vitality of our social and public environments. Most economists agree that knowledge economies differ from goods-producing economies. If we accept that previous industrial economic indicators may provide an inadequate account of the state of nations in a knowledge economy (David, 1999, as cited in Barley and Kunda, 2001), it is quite possible that the collective vitality of the workforce may be an important economic indicator and a way to conceptualize value in a postindustrial world. If so, our ideas about thriving can provide some
insight to organizational theorists about how this alternative production value is created and the underlying logic of organizing to achieve it. It is plausible to think that thriving collectives have a number of outcome which would enhance the long-term sustainable performance of the collective. First, scholars have noted that the world confronting organizations is increasingly characterized as discontinuous, uncertain, and chaotic. Uncertain conditions favor organizations that are flexible and can adapt quickly to changing conditions. It is possible that organizations with many thriving individuals will be more responsive to these conditions. Second, we would expect that the learning inherent in thriving may
lead to new behavioral routines/repertoires. This could enable increased capability to improvise or recombine competencies to solve new problems. The energy inherent in thriving can contribute to an increased ability to build, repair, sustain, and endure challenges/problems/crises. In short, we expect that thriving collectives are likely to be more resilient in the face of adversity or hardship. Third, given that prior research has found that individuals who thrive
at work are likely to be healthier, perhaps the most obvious implication and important outcome for thriving collectives is reduced health care costs. It may be that thriving organizations can save millions of dollars in health care costs. The non-profit/non-partisan National Coalition on Health Care estimates that the average total cost to organizations for health care benefits rose 14.7 percent in 2002, at a time when general inflation hovered around 2 percent, and it continues to rise. For each automobile it produces, General Motors spends more on health care (approximately $1500/automobile) than it does on steel.