Happy-Performing Managers

This book provides contemporary means to solve an age-old conundrum in management - do happy workers perform better? Decades of research and empirical evidence have been unable to establish a strong link between affective well-being, intrinsic job satisfaction and managers' performance. A unique methodology, fresh empirical evidence and a definitive analysis of previous theory and research are employed to support the happy productive worker thesis.

The authors test a kindred idea - the 'happy-performing managers' proposition, using advanced statistical techniques. Performance is measured to a previously unachievable level. New empirical evidence is used to predict how affective wellbeing and intrinsic job satisfaction influences managers' contextual and task performance. These findings are argued to have significantly progressed our understanding of what underpins human performance at work.

The book prescribes how managers' jobs might be changed to enhance or avoid a decline in happiness because managers' performance is impacting as never before on organisational productivity and the economic prosperity of nation-states. Extraordinary shifts in the global corporate environment mean managers' 'personal troubles' have now become 'public concerns'. An emerging movement to Positive Organisational Scholarship is countering such forces by developing ways to create positive human and organisational wellbeing.

Happy-Performing Managers will be invaluable to academics, postgraduate students, human resource practitioners, executives and managers who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the factors that influence human performance in the workplace.