ON BEING POSITIVE: CONCERNS AND COUNTERPOINTS

Academy of Management Review
2006, Vol. 31, No. 2, 270–291.
ON BEING POSITIVE: CONCERNS AND
COUNTERPOINTS
STEPHEN FINEMAN
University of Bath
In this article I examine the attractions and shortcomings of the “positive” neohumanisitic
turn in organizational theorizing and how positivity might be developed. I
evaluate positivity’s moral and cultural underpinnings and claims to separate positive
from negative emotions, and I explore the deployment of positiveness in HRM
programs of empowerment, emotional intelligence, and fun at work. I conclude with
suggestions on how positive scholarship could be reconfigured in light of the present
critique and against the emancipatory ideas of critical organizational theory.
The bottom-line message is that organizational
members should consider cultivating positive
emotions in themselves and others, not just as
end-states in themselves, but also as a means to
achieving individual and organizational transformation
and optimal functioning over time
(Fredrickson, 2003: 164).
[Emotional satisfaction] is fragile, by its nature
unstable and contradictory, and it can involve
negative, destructive dimensions that might also
be essential to the health of a relationship. ...If
emotional satisfaction is the raison d’être of a
relationship, then the relationship itself must inevitably
be volatile, unstable and probably short
lived (Craib, 1994: 124).
Positiveness is a recent strand in organizational
theorizing, focusing on understanding the
“best” of the human condition, “positive deviance,”
and “spirals of flourishing” (Cameron,
Dutton, & Quinn, 2003b: 4). It draws on a number
of different developments, such as appreciative
inquiry and prosocial behavior, but especially
positive psychology and its organizational psychology
offshoot, positive organizational scholarship.
Positiveness has emerged as a response
to what some psychologists consider a preoccupation
with the negative and pathological in the
study of human behavior (Seligman, 1999; Seligman
& Pawelski, 2003). Attention, they suggest,
should turn to what is good and positive—the
finest of individual experiences, intentions, and
outcomes (Luthans, 2003; Wright, 2003). Hedonic
emotional states, such as happiness, satisfaction,
joy, pleasure, and optimism, merit special
attention, especially for their contribution to virtuous
acts, such as forgiveness, nurturance, and
wisdom (Snyder & Lopez, 2002). In organizations
the quest is to find ways of “unlocking capaci-
270
ties for ...meaning creation, relationship transformation,
positive emotion cultivation and
high-quality connections” (Cameron et al.,
2003b: 10).
At first blush, the positive turn offers a seductive
discourse, with much promise. It presents a
broad vision of the sunnier side of life, where
positiveness can be harnessed for noble individual
and organizational ends. It takes over, claim
its proponents, where “positive thinking” gurus
leave off, by applying rigorous scientific method
to the folk nostrums of positivity. In this article I
wish to stand back and reflect critically on these
aspirations. Can positivity deliver on its intended
aims? What are some of its strengths
and weaknesses? How unproblematic is it, especially
when examined through a critical theory
lens? How may it be refined and developed?
To achieve this, I first review the nature of
positivity and its moral agenda, focusing on its
humanistic roots and promotion of traditional
scientific studies. Second, I discuss the attractions
of positiveness, especially its appeal as a
fix, or antidote, to the malaise of twenty-firstcentury
workplaces. Third, I raise questions
about separating positive feelings for special
attention, suggesting that positive and negative
feelings are intimately connected and that
adaptive strengths are a product of both. Fourth,
I examine the stress on positive emotional display
through a cultural lens, exposing the monocultural
tint of positiveness and the importance
of different cultural and subcultural valuations
of expressive positiveness. Fifth, I examine the
cooption of positive discourse in HRM practice,
especially in programs of empowerment, emotional
intelligence, and fun at work. I conclude

2006 Fineman
271
by bringing the positive, emancipatory aims of
critical organizational thinking alongside the
critique of positive scholarship and make a case
for making positive scholarship more “critical.”
WHAT IS POSITIVITY?
To positive scholars, positivity is a threepronged
phenomenon (Peterson & Seligman,
2003; Seligman, 2002). It first involves positive
subjective experiences, or states, such as past
and present feelings of happiness, pleasure, joy,
flow, gratification, fulfillment, and well-being.
Some feelings will be future oriented, like optimism,
hope, and faith. Their positiveness resides
in the way they “make life rewarding”
(Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002: 63). Second, there
are positive individual traits, especially the capacity
for love and vocation, courage, perseverance,
forgiveness, originality, self-determination,
self-esteem, and wisdom (Seligman &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Park and Peterson,
prominent proponents of positivity, describe
these as core ingredients of “good character,” as
derived from “brainstorming and surveying pertinent
literatures” (2003: 34). Finally, positivity is
about institutions and organizations that enable,
or can be made to enable, positive experiences
and traits in the service of organizational
“virtues,” such as responsibility, nurturance, altruism,
civility, moderation, tolerance, and the
work ethic (Bernstein, 2003; Park & Peterson,
2003; Seligman, 2002).
Positive scholars acknowledge a world where
competition, conflict management, and selfserving
behavior prevail, but choose to distance
themselves from it. The point is made by Cameron
et al. in the introduction to their edited
book, Positive Organizational Scholarship:
Foundations of a New Discipline. Readers are
urged to switch their attention away from organizations
typified by greed, selfishness, and
winning at all costs to ones “typified by appreciation,
collaboration, virtuousness, vitality and
meaningfulness. ...Social relationships and interactions
are characterized by compassion, loyalty,
honesty, respect and forgiveness” (2003b: 3).
Links between criteria of positiveness and
“hard,” bottom-line indices are expressed
mainly in aspirational statements, such as the
following: “Despite the absence of empirical research,
there is reason to suppose that virtuousness
in organizations may be linked to positive
performance” (Cameron, 2003: 53), and “Efforts to
cultivate positive emotions may help organizations
avoid stagnation and achieve harmony,
energy, and perhaps even prosperity” (Fredrickson,
2003: 175).
The positive movement appears to be a loose
assemblage of signatories whose current or past
research resonates with positiveness’s overall
theme. There is often partisanship, and some
confusion, about what constitutes a “state” (i.e.,
malleable) or “trait” (i.e., fixed) in the cauldron
of positiveness (Luthans, 2003; Luthans & Avolio,
2003), and, as yet, there is no unified theory linking
the trinity of positive manifestations—
experiences, traits, and institutions—to specified
goals. Indeed, of sixteen major articles on
positive psychology in the January 2000 special
issue of American Psychologist, some sixty different
outcome variables are discernible (Cowen
& Kilmer, 2002). The range is no less in
Cameron et al.’s (2003c) collection. The editors
bring a wide range of subjects under the positive
umbrella, including discussions on virtues,
gratitude, resilience, transcendence, courage,
authentic leadership, appreciative inquiry, organizational
change, knowledge creation,
meaningfulness, and empowerment.
THE MORAL AGENDA: ON THE VIRTUES OF
POSITIVE DEVIANCE
“Positive deviance” marks the positive movement’s
rhetorical and moral/ideological stand.
Positive is good. Positive subjective experiences,
positive individual traits, and positive
institutions are key for producing that which is
“flourishing,” “flawless,” “excellent,” and “honorable”
(Cameron, 2003; Seligman, 2002;
Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2003). The positive
agenda represents a reaction to “negatively deviant”
inquiries that focus on illness, problem
fixing, error spotting, harm mitigation, and “the
worst things in life.” Positive deviance also captures
the wider, hegemonic ambitions of positive
researchers to disseminate positivity
“through the forces of parenting and family life,
education, various media sources, ...community
planning, political policies and so forth”
(Snyder & McCullough, 2000: 152).
Positive deviance is a normative, morally anchored
position characterized by a cluster of
predefined virtues. These virtues are derived
primarily from Aristotelian notions of eudemo-

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April
nia, the “good spirit” and happiness that come
from a life of moderation and doing well what
one does (Aristotle, 1996; Cameron, 2003; Park &
Peterson, 2003). Doing things for their own sake,
such as for love, wisdom, and self-fulfillment, is
virtuous. Doing them for the social betterment or
advantage of others is virtuous. Seeking personal
reward or recompense for ones efforts,
such as profit, power, or prestige, is not virtuous;
this acts against the internal counsel of one’s
good spirit. Displays of compassion and courage
are, therefore, void of virtue if they are performed
simply for personal recognition or applause.
The revolutionary verve of positive scholars is
striking yet attests ideologically to established
traditions that fuse positive assumptions about
human nature with moral rectitude. This is acknowledged
in some of the seminal writings of
positive scholars (e.g., see Linley & Joseph, 2004,
and Seligman, 2003). In their different ways, humanistic
writers/therapists such as Carl Rogers,
Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Victor Frankl
have concerned themselves with the positive
features of human functioning (Bohart & Greening,
2001; Lazarus, 2003; Shapiro, 2001; Taylor,
2001; Tennen & Affleck, 2003; Wright, 2003); some
especially have focused on the workplace and
its management. There is Rogers’ (1995) notion of
relationships built on honesty, mutual respect,
empathy, and unconditional affirmation, and
Maslow’s (1998) shift in interest from psychologically
troubled people to the contentments and
creativity of the self-actualized. Indeed,
Maslow’s book Motivation and Personality (1954)
contains a chapter entitled “Toward a Positive
Psychology.”
Positiveness embraces the assumption that
humans have an intrinsic desire to self-realize—to
express their capacities to the fullest extent.
Unlike the Freudian struggle to contain the
dark impulses of “original sin,” positiveness offers
a portrait of human beings all too ready to
connect positively and prosocially with the
world, given the right opportunity. It is their key
route to self-realization and happiness. Humans,
therefore, have a “nature” that predisposes
them to act in ways that come to be
judged by self and others as “good” (Horney,
1945; Linley & Joseph, 2004). In this manner, current
renditions of positiveness reinvent many of
the spokes of the traditional positive wheel, but
the difference now is in privileging “scientific
psychology and measurement,” an evidencebased
endeavor (Diener, 2003; Peterson & Seligman,
2003).
THE ATTRACTIONS OF POSITIVENESS
Positiveness is typically described as an optimistic
route to optimistic outcomes. Thus, individual
and collective happiness and well-being
rank high on the positive agenda—happiness
tied to doing intrinsically valued things for oneself
and for others, such as acts of gratitude and
kindness. As accessed through appreciative inquiry
(asking positive questions), positive emotions
are said to hold the key to “forge paths
towards positive change and ...organizational
well-being” (Cooperrider & Sekerka, 2003: 236)
and to predicate a “better human awaiting to
being discovered” (Snyder & McCullough, 2000:
159).
So presented, positiveness offers a counter
discourse to the “moral malaise” of advanced
consumerist societies, where increasing material
wealth and consumption seem not to enhance
happiness (e.g., Diener & Seligman, 2004;
Kasser, 2002; Myers, 2000). In place of material
wealth, positive scholars advocate a life shaped
by virtues—notably, ones enunciated by the philosophers
of ancient Greece, such as wisdom,
courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence
(Peterson & Seligman, 2002).
Positive scholars seek to ignite and nurture an
individual’s potential for intrinsic, positive valuation,
even though the goal may be external to
the actor. In doing so, they propose a number of
particular benefits—for example, that genuine
expressions of gratitude and compassion can
act as softeners and antidotes to the corrosive
effects of anger, envy, and greed in organizations
(Emmons, 2003; Frost, Dutton, Worline, &
Wilson, 2000); that positive emotions, such as
pride, joy, and contentment, can produce selfreinforcing
“upward spirals” of well-being and
“optimal” organizational functioning (Fredericksen,
2003); that organizations are more robust
when they encourage “principled dissent,” the
courage to overcome fear and speak out in defense
of a strong moral right (Worline & Quinn,
2003); that experiencing positive emotions on the
job is linked to better performance and higher
levels of organizational citizenship (Cameron et
al., 2003a; Diener & Seligman, 2004; George &
Brief, 1992); that the fusing of personal identity

2006 Fineman
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with one’s work can create meaningfulness (Nakamura
& Csikszentmihalyi, 2002; Pratt & Ashforth,
2003); that the authentic leader is someone
who is true to him/herself, a person who is confident,
hopeful, optimistic, transparent, resilient,
and ethical (Luthans & Avolio, 2003); and that
executive coaching is most effective when it appeals
to the subject’s inner desires and capacities
(Kauffman & Scoular, 2004).
Positivity, thus, offers an appealing vision of
the recovered good self, which is directed toward
morally well-defined ends that embrace
others’ feelings and needs. It is a particularly
attractive prospect for those disenchanted with
the growing materialism of advanced economies
and workplaces that seem to lack compassion
or sensitivity toward their members.
Change, based on releasing the positive potential
that is already within us, holds promise of
attainable new futures.
REFLECTING ON POSITIVE CLAIMS
In critically examining the positive agenda, I
address four themes in this section:
• the appropriateness of a positiveness perspective;
• the separation of positive from negative
emotions;
• the cultural roots of positiveness; and
• the exploitation of positiveness in HRM.
The Appropriateness of Positiveness
Positiveness’s essential humanism clearly
aligns with humanistic psychologies and philosophies.
As a moral position on what individual
human nature “is,” the task becomes one of
liberating the goodness from its restraining
forces. For instance, the continuing strife, suffering,
and greed in world affairs might well cast
doubt on the unerring desire of humans to gravitate
toward kindness and love. Here, positive
scholars claim that the fault lies in the social
environment, not the person (Linley & Joseph,
2004). Carl Rogers’ positive, actualizing perspective
is similarly circular (Rogers, 1995). In acknowledging
his own lack of attention to world
violence and continuing evil, Rogers reasserts
his belief that humans are still essentially good,
if only one probes deeply enough (Zeig, 1987).
Separating the “core,” positive essentialism of
the person from his or her social context sus-
tains the logic of this perspective. The person’s
positive inclinations are taken as an immutable
given, awaiting the right circumstances to blossom.
Other theorists have been less sanguine.
Noteworthy is Freud’s oedipal original sin,
where primitive, individual, destructive forces
are continuously testing moral conduct (Freud,
1928).
Yet both Freudian and humanistic perspectives
contrast radically with recent modern and
postmodern perspectives, which eschew the
idea of a project aimed at discovering what human
beings are “really like.” As social conditions
are constantly changing throughout history,
so too, theorists argue, are the people they
produce, who, in turn, reproduce and reconstruct
their social conditions. The self, subjectivity,
and context are all part of an ongoing, inseparable,
meaning-making process (Hosking & Bouwen,
2000; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). The mutuality
is captured in social constructionist
approaches, such as Weick’s “enactment,”
where people are said to bring social structures
into existence through their interaction rituals
and sensemaking (Weick, 2001). Giddens’ “structuration”
also stresses human agency in the creation
of organizational traditions and moral
codes, which, in turn, produce invisible social
forces (“the environment”) that constrain or facilitate
behavior (Giddens, 1991).
In these formulations positiveness may be regarded
as just one of a number of different expressions
of self and identity, but intimately tied
to the power effects of which they are a part
(Gergen, 1991; Kitzinger, 1992). Positiveness as a
unilateral moral force trapped within human
nature is replaced by a perspective of contingent,
constructed “goods” among a plurality of
interests, or narratives, about oneself (Burr, 1995;
Sarbin, 1995). Positive narratives may, or may
not, be suitable ones to encourage or celebrate
but will have different meanings and implications
in different settings (Kemmelmeier, 2002).
Through such a lens, a priori lists of virtues
derived from ancient Greece appear out of step
with the values and sociological profile of late
modern capitalist societies. Consumerism, corporate
power, and fame create a cultural milieu
where competition and individual aggrandizement
are celebrated, and cunning is a virtue if it
brings business success (Ratner & Lumei, 2003).
It follows that, in imposing a particular grammar
of virtue, positive scholarship can be seen

274 Academy of Management Review
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as running contrary to the functional adaptation
of societies that have rejected the certainties
and social courtesies of the past. The rejection is
based on the failure of old values to provide
meaning in a shifting, globalized economy with
fragmented families and workplace insecurities
(Lasch, 1984; MacIntyre, 1981; Power, 1990). In
such circumstances, moral order is more plastic
and unstable—because it has to be.
We have, therefore, a picture of contingent
virtue to set against positiveness’s determinism.
What is meant as fair, humane, kind, dignified,
loving, honorable, honest, compassionate, authentic,
or courageous can vary dynamically
within and across organizational settings, while
the “positiveness” of such constructs for a particular
social order or event can be culturally
and subculturally shaped, sometimes in contradictory
terms (Compton, 2001; Miller & C’deBaca,
1994; Sandage & Hill, 2001). For example, “courageous,”
“principled” corporate whistle-blowers
are also readily regarded as traitors, reneging
on the unspoken corporate code (“virtue”) to
never wash one’s dirty linen in public (Alford,
2001; Marcia & Near, 1991). We live in an era
where terrorism for many observers is an abysmal
evil. But for its perpetrators and their backers,
it can be presented as a noble act, morally
justified as “God’s will” and, if necessary, as an
act of supreme personal sacrifice. The transmutation
of “terrorist” to “freedom fighter” represents
a major, and sometimes cataclysmic, shift
in moral meaning and action consequence. Loyalty
to other people and institutions, once prized
as unconditional virtue for an organized society,
can now be a handicap for a sustainable career
(Arthur, Inkson, & Pringle, 1999; Hatch, 1997). Indeed,
the very commendability, or intrinsic virtuousness,
of loyalty can be devalued as relationships
become more instrumentalized and
different “goods” arise. As societies move, so do
its virtues, the decay of chivalry being a case in
point (Miner, 2004).
Positive scholars’ quest to explicate the good
life appears locked into a deterministic, totalizing
picture of the positive person, who realizes
his or her self in values of individual resilience,
fair play, and kindness. A more nuanced perspective
suggests a different starting point. The
issue would be less “here are the good/positive
things for us all to strive for, and be, in organizations”
and more “what makes for goodness/
positiveness in different circumstances, and
who profits from such construals?” Arguably,
this is a more defensible position for social scientists
trying (1) to understand the organizational
world and (2) to explore the way different
“oughts” may be reconciled or developed in visions
of organizations to come. For such contingent
ends, positive scholars’ predilection for
“hard” social science (quantitative laboratory
experimentation and prestructured measures) is
restrictive, less suited to exploring fine-grained
meanings and fluctuations of experiences, positive
or otherwise (Lazarus, 2003). These are better
approached in emic accounts and local epistemologies,
by means of, for example,
interpretive analyses, discourse analyses, and
phenomenological inquiries (Fineman, 2004;
Sandage & Hill, 2001; Tennen & Affleck, 2003;
Young-Eisendrath, 2003).
The Separation Thesis
Positive scholarship proceeds on the assumption
that emotions commonly understood as positive,
such as the experience of happiness, love,
hope, or joy, are of special interest because of
the good feelings they bring to individuals and
because of their positive consequences—organizational
harmony, strength, fairness, wisdom,
and dignity. Negative emotions, such as feelings
of fear, anxiety, sadness, and hate, are regarded
as sources of disruption or destruction,
and therefore sidelined in the positive project.
But more than that, they can be uncoupled from
positive emotions so that positive feelings and
outcomes can be understood in their own right
(Peterson, 2004; Seligman & Pawelski, 2003).
This separation is arguable. Lazarus (2003), for
instance, likens positive and negative emotion
to two sides of the same coin, inextricably
welded and mutually informative. It is out of
negative experiences that positive appraisals
and meanings evolve, and vice versa. They are
in a continual, dialectical relationship. In these
terms, emotions can be subtle mixes of positive
and negative experiences and lead to differently
valued outcomes (see Campos, 2003, and
Ryff, 2003). Happiness may trigger anxiety (“will
my happiness last?”). Love can be mixed with
bitterness and jealousy. Anger can feel energizing
and exciting. Jealousy can feel unpleasant
but soften injured pride (Bagozzi, 2003). Pride can
be a positive feature of a job well done, but also
blind to justifiable criticism (hubris, overween-

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ing pride). Hope can give strength, but also shut
out one’s receptiveness to different possibilities
(blind hope). One can expect both the best and
the worst of times, while the absence of pessimism
does not necessarily secure optimism
(Peterson, 2000). “Defensive pessimism” (Held,
2002) can be a positive characteristic, moderating
risk taking to provide a “keen sense of reality
when we need it” (Seligman, 1990: 292). The
social context, its appraisal, and history are germane
to the nuances (e.g., intensity, mix) of such
feelings and their meanings.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, dealing
with negative emotions, stressful events, and
disappointment is core to identity formation—an
ongoing process that molds moral
character or “strength” (e.g., Craib, 1994; Klein,
1981). It follows, from this perspective, that the
avoidance or suppression of anxiety and disappointment
can be interpreted not as life embracing
but as a fear of life (see Lowen, 1980). Focusing
exclusively on the positive thus represents a
one-eyed view of the social world, shielded from
the frustrations and sufferings that contribute to
the contradictions of emotional satisfaction and
their contributions to personal and social development.
Tennen and Affleck elaborate the point:
An individual’s capacity to sustain an integrated
and textured experience of himself or herself and
other is an indicator of emotional maturity. ...
[To] simultaneously experience positive and negative
emotions towards the same person or situation;
to appreciate the good in people who hurt
one could easily join positive psychology’s catalogue
of human strengths. Indeed, individuals
who cannot retain a positive mental picture of a
person who frustrates his or her needs lives a
chaotic existence. Yet how does a psychology
that separates positive and negative characteristics
study a human strength that involves their
integration? (2003: 167).
In sum, critics from different emotion viewpoints
argue against the separation thesis, at
both a conceptual and empirical level (see also
Matthews & Zeidner, 2003). There is a convincing
case that positiveness closes important doors,
excluding opportunities that could well serve its
own aims. Positive experiences, learning, and
change are tied to negative occurrences and
events, as well as to positive ones.
This conclusion is illustrated by appreciative
inquiry, a prime influence on positive organizational
scholarship (Cameron et al., 2003b). Appreciative
inquiry is rooted in the belief that
fundamental, revolutionary change occurs when
the “positive core” of organizational life is
touched (Cooperrider & Sekerka, 2003: 226).
Widespread, positive change is said to emanate
from the positive emotions that people feel
when they are valued or appreciated. Appreciative
inquiry encourages organizational members
to recall such feelings and express them in
inspiring, joyful tales (Cooperrider & Sekerka,
2003). In this manner, the technique prescribes
the means and format to reconstruct and share
past feelings.
In privileging positive experiences and times,
appreciative inquiry counsels against “negative
talk” and “deficit language,” and toward a focus
on major successes, peak performance, and positive
visions (Cooperrider & Whitney, 1999). But
in exclusively favoring positive narratives, appreciative
inquiry fails to value the opportunities
for positive change that are possible from
negative experiences, such as embarrassing
events, periods of anger, anxiety, fear, or shame
(Barge & Oliver, 2003; Fineman, 2003). For Argyris
(1994), such a positive skew is anti-learning.
He sees it as closing access to crucial data for
double-loop learning, thus undermining the capacity
for individuals and groups to engage in
anything more than superficial changes. In sum,
appreciative inquiry is a glass half full for the
positive project. In reifying positive experiences
alone, it creates a conceptually truncated picture
of the way emotional experiences can contribute
to positive learning. Moreover, in privileging
positive talk, it fails to engage with the
emotionally ambiguous circumstances of the
workplace, such as when individuals feel torn
between competing possibilities and differing
voices. Steering through such dilemmas may
feel uncomfortable, even negative, but can contribute
positively to organizational coherence.
Cultural Matters
The specific emotions to be displayed are axiomatic
to positiveness’s theme. For example, in
explaining the rationale for positive scholarship,
Peterson and Seligman assert, “There is a
clear difference between people who are not
suicidal and not self deprecating ...versus
those who bound out of bed in the morning with
smiles on their faces and twinkles in their eyes.
The latter individuals can only be studied by
measuring happiness” (2003: 27). They further

276 Academy of Management Review
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add that the “grim faced” and “misanthropic”
are not appropriate role models for positive organizational
scholarship (2003: 27).
There are, however, subcultural and broader
cultural determinants of emotional display,
which complicate “desirable” or “good” patterns
of emotional expression. Both explicit and tacit
emotion display rules have been shown to characterize
and positively regulate front- and backstage
interpersonal encounters in different work
settings (Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990; Ashforth &
Humphrey, 1995; Bolton, 2003; Fineman, 1995;
Hochschild, 1979; Morris & Dachler, 2000). There
is, for example, the “seriousness” required of
participants in a court of law and the “gravity”
of the police officer on duty. Particular emotional
performances (and their attendant emotional
labors) define and reinforce differences in
power, status, and gender and shape the way
commercial and professional relationships are
sustained (Harris, 2002; Phillips, 1996; Sharma &
Black, 2001; Shuler & Sypher, 2000; Taylor &
Tyler, 2000; Wellington & Bryson, 2001; Williams,
2003).
In terms of wider cultural distinctions, we can,
for instance, see America’s allegiance to individualism
and market mentality as a heritage
that favors feeling good about oneself and
showing as much. Positive self-promotion, expressive
optimism, and “being noticed” are written
into the cultural script (Bellah, Madsen,
Swidler, & Tipton, 1991; Peterson, 2000). British
individualism has traditionally been more
guarded, forged in part from the manners of
rural gentry and yeomen and in part from Victorian
stoicism and the value placed on understatement
and emotional self-control (Block,
2002). In Chinese society Confucianism teaches
the virtues of emotional restraint and subtleness
and how these can positively affect psychological
health and preserve interpersonal harmony
and loyalty (Levenson, 1997; Markus &
Kitayama, 1994; Russell & Yik, 1996). Effusive
hope, an energizing emotion in the West, is not a
sentiment or term prevalent in cultures and subcultures
influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism
(Gross & John, 1995). Aspirations for improvement
are based more on the obligation to
perfect oneself reflectively, within the welldefined
bounds of family and social networks
(Averill, 1996).
Alongside such cultural traditions we find
transitional conditions, such as when the emo-
tion display mores of one nation begin to penetrate
those of another. For example, some Eastern
European and Asian countries have begun
to mimic the outward manifestations of American
positiveness in their commercial affairs, as
U.S. companies trade within their countries.
Russians, it is reported, have implemented the
positive, “happy” demeanor of American-style
customer service with a mixture of resistance
and bemusement (O’Conner, 2000; Smith, 1990).
Traditionally, Russians have been characterized
as having a rugged, pessimistic outlook, borne
from decades of disruption, hardship, and tragedy.
Dourness, patience, nostalgia, and bittersweet
humor have served to help stabilize personal
relationships and institutions and to curb
expectations (Hingley, 1997).
In unfolding emotion’s cultural canvas in this
manner, expressions of positive and negative
emotion are revealed to be finely tuned to personal
meanings and social values. The grim
faced should not be thought of as somehow psychologically
and/or morally inferior role models
to the ebullient faced if we are to understand
what contributes positively to particular organizational
orders.
HRM and Positiveness
Positive scholarship urges positiveness on
us—because it is seen as a surer route to better
(more humane, more effective, more meaningful,
more virtuous) organizations. It is a world view
that is panacean and seductive and, as such,
tends to be uncritical of its own stance. Indeed,
positive scholarship claims philosophical territory
similar to popular renditions of positive
thinking and optimism (Seligman & Pawelski,
2003). But while positive scholarship recruits
hard social science to buttress its ideology, popular
approaches have long taken positivity, particularly
optimism, as self-evidently axiomatic
to a healthy workplace and prosperous life. It is
a perspective epitomized by best-selling books,
such as Norman Peale’s The Power of Positive
Thinking (“the man who assumes success tends
already to have success”; Peale, 1996) and Dale
Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence
People (“believe that you will succeed, and you
will”; Carnegie, 1994). Carnegie’s and Peale’s
legacies have been perpetuated in numerous
HRM consultancy services (e.g., Blanchard, Laci-

2006 Fineman
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nak, Tompkins, & Ballard, 2003; MacDonald,
2004; Quilliam, 2003).
Critics have been concerned about the hidden
tyranny of these, and related, positive narratives.
Furedi (2003), for example, argues that all
positive discourses contribute to pathologizing
negative emotional responses to the pressures
of life. The “negative thinkers,” whose life experiences
and workplace difficulties amply justify
their anxiety, sadness, or pessimism, are persuaded
to think of themselves as odd or ill because
of their reluctance or failure to look on the
bright side—to give an optimistic gloss to their
troubles. 1 It is a process evident in the Western
predilection to pathologize those with low selfesteem.
They become, literally, suitable cases
for treatment through psychotherapeutic and
workplace programs devoted to self-esteem enhancement
(Armstrong, 2004; Ellis, 1998; Heine &
Lehman, 1995; Held, 2002; Scheier & Kraut, 1979).
It is noteworthy that the quest for self-esteem is
not a major driving force in collective cultures,
such as Japan, where negative self-appraisals
are taken as a path to self-improvement
(Beaumeister, 1987; Heine, Lehman, Markus, &
Kitayama, 1999; Held, 2002).
Engineering the Positive
If positiveness has an unexplicated shadow
side, we may ask, “What are the boundaries and
limitations of a positiveness discourse in HRM?”
Apart from appreciative inquiry (see previous
discussion), HRM interventions favored by positive
scholars include empowerment programs to
“vitalize” and “positively energize” organizations,
shifting employees toward greater positive
commitment to organizational goals (Collins,
1993; Deal & Kennedy, 1999; Feldman &
Khardemian, 2003; Meyer & Allen, 1997); programs
to boost emotional intelligence (Cherniss,
2001; Dulewicz & Higgs, 2004); and programs
aimed at increasing positiveness through “fun
events” at work (Weinstein, 1997).
Empowerment. Current organizational approaches
to employee empowerment are pre-
1 Held (2002) notes the poignant claims of some of the
survivors of the September 11 World Trade Center disaster.
They have felt isolated and abandoned because of their
inability to disclose their fears and anguish in the face of an
aggressive “look forward, look ahead” culture (Held, 2002:
967).
dominantly managerial in conception and goals
(Lawler, 1976; O’Conner, 2000; Prasad, 2001). The
discretional limits of empowerment are typically
defined by managers and passed on to
workers. As the process moves down the organizational
hierarchy, empowerment is said to
foster increased delegation and participative
decision making, often usurping or rendering
redundant traditional functions of middle management.
In line with positive thinking, a key
employee index of empowerment’s success is
attitudinal and emotional: feeling positively
aroused and positively engaged with the task
(Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Spreitzer, 1995). The
empowered employee, accordingly, is happy
and creative, enthusiastically engaged with his
or her leader’s vision of delegation, partnership,
and participation (Bailey, 1995; Murrell, 2000).
Critical theorists have viewed such efforts as
pared-down versions of “true” empowerment,
failing to address the social, economic, and political
conditions that contribute to and contain
powerlessness in the workplace (Doughty, 2004;
Elmes & Smith, 2001). The trappings of humanism
and participation are seen to be imposed on
a hierarchical system that has the interests of
others at heart, mostly stockholders and their
agents—executives and managers (Aktouf,
1992). In engendering pleasant psychological
states among employees, such empowerment
deflects attention from any disadvantageous
structural conditions of work. As a “therapeutic
fiction” (Ciulla, 2000), it reinforces employee
conformity to the organization’s norms and expectations.
This means any direct benefit for the
employee is more incidental than intentional.
As Doughty observes:
The overriding purpose of empowering employees
is to encourage them to become self-starters,
self-managers and self-disciplinarians in the ultimate
interests of management. If, in the process,
workers become happier and healthier, that is
well and good but it is not the principal purpose
of the exercise (2004: 16).
If this is an accurate reading, then however
well-meaning the intentions of empowerment
programs, they will always be constrained by
managerial/executive prerogatives and notions
of inclusivity—who is or is not to “be” empowered
and in what form. This was most evident in
early employee empowerment initiatives, where
participatory working methods were instituted
to diffuse the monotony of essentially routine,

278 Academy of Management Review
April
repetitive jobs so that labor turnover would decrease
and productivity rise (Argyris, 1998; Ford,
1969; Lawler, 1976). Recent forms of empowerment
have widened the scope of employee
empowerment within “high-performance work
systems.” Such systems embed employee empowerment
in various flexible working procedures
and structures for collaboration—among
managers, workers, and trade unions (Murray,
Belanger, Giles, & Lapointe, 2002). They are presented
by their advocates as compelling formulae
for competitive advantage (Appelbaum,
Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg, 2000; Lashley, 2001),
and by positive scholars as a “source of positive
energy,” “creativity,” and “vitality” (Feldman &
Khardemian, 2003: 344).
Yet, in an overview, Belanger, Giles, and Murray
(2002) speak of “disappointed expectations”
for employees of high-performance systems.
Frequently noted is a shift in compliance toward
corporate-required behaviors, but with employees’
subjective feelings of engagement and commitment
either unaffected or radicalized—
resistant to the perceived emotional “cloning”
attempts by management (Thompson & McHugh,
2002). Commonly observed is the skew of the programs
toward efficiency and performance criteria,
against a backdrop of organizational delayering
and downsizing (Psoinos & Smithson, 2002; Wall &
Wood, 2002; Watson, 1994). Danford, Richardson,
Stewart, Tailby, and Upchurch (2004) note a “democratic
deficit,” where management’s discourse of
“transparency” and “participation” often fails to
deliver its promises. Such findings are consistent
with others, suggesting that empowerment’s potential
for employee well-being—personal
growth, self-confidence, trust—is often limited by
a reinforcement, rather than relaxation, in the centralization
of power (Cunningham & Hyman, 1999;
Marchington, 1993; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992).
There is a portrait of managers fearing for their
own performance targets if they relinquish aspects
of their power and control (Barker, 1993;
D’Annunzio-Green & Macandrew, 1999; Lashley,
1996; Putnam, Phillips, & Chapman, 1996).
One may conclude that there are significant
gaps between the realities of organizational empowerment
and its “vitalizing” rhetoric (Claydon
& Doyle, 1996; Feldman & Khardemian, 2003;
Prasad, 2001). The gaps may vary, but from a
critical perspective, this misses the key point. Empowerment’s
positiveness is self-limiting because
it is constrained by structural inequalities in pow-
er: the paradoxical process of management taking
action to empower others, when that is itself an
exercise of power. This tension is simply accentuated
in conditions where a relentless concern for
efficiency and profit maximizing dominates any
employee partnership deals.
Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence
(EI) has been embraced by the positive
movement, appearing in major scholarly collections
on positivity (e.g., Salovey, Caruso, &
Mayer, 2004; Salovey, Mayer, & Caruso, 2002).
EI’s positiveness includes enhanced self-esteem,
well-being, flow, optimism, and community
values (Matthews & Zeidner, 2003; Schutte,
Malouff, Simunek, McKenley, & Hollander, 2002;
Zeidner, Matthews, & Roberts, 2001).
EI enthusiasts claim much for its beneficial
effects, including a happier, more rewarding life
and a tolerant, egalitarian society (Goleman,
1966). In the workplace, it has been described as
a basic competency for most jobs (Cherniss,
2001; Cherniss & Goleman, 2001) and as a capacity
that outflanks IQ in predicting outstanding
performance (Goleman, 1966; Watkin, 2000). It is
presented as especially crucial for leadership
(Cooper & Sawaf, 1997; Goleman, Boyatzis, &
McKee, 2001; HayGroup, 2000; Weisinger, 1998).
Leaders possessing high EI are said to be especially
charismatic, adept at injecting positive
feelings, such as excitement, enthusiasm, and
optimism, into work projects (Cherniss, 2001;
Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Prati, Ferris, Ammeter, &
Buckley, 2003; Sjoberg, 2001), as well as engendering
trust through high-quality interpersonal
relations (George, 2000). HRM consultants have
been strongly attracted to EI (Fineman, 2000;
Paul, 1999), many extolling its benefit in elevating
self-esteem at work.
EI’s status as a robust, viable construct is
much argued (Fineman, 2004; Matthews,
Zeidner, & Roberts, 2002). A major debate concerns
whether EI is best construed as a product
of specific abilities that assist an individual to
reason about, and operate on, emotional information
(Ciarrochi, Forgas, & Mayer, 2001; Mayer,
2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Mayer, Salovey, &
Caruso, 2004) or as a broad mix of different motivational
and dispositional characteristics that
can be applied in interpersonal and intrapersonal
settings (Bar-On, 2000; Schutte et al., 1998).
A related issue concerns the mutability of EI to
improve workers’ emotional competences and
well-being and, more generally, to combat so-

2006 Fineman
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cial problems (e.g., Boyatzis, 2001; Cherniss &
Caplan, 2001; Dulewicz & Higgs, 2004; Elias et
al., 1997; Goleman, 1966; Ormsbee, 2000). In their
comprehensive review of these programs, Matthews,
Roberts, and Zeidner conclude “there is
little research showing whether programs
touted as EI interventions are actually effective
in enhancing the kind of skills included in current
models of EI. Where evaluation is possible,
outcomes tend to be mixed or moderate” (2004:
192).
The much vaunted performatory advantages
of EI (e.g., Cherniss, 2001; Goleman, 2001) have
been challenged by some writers. Antonakis, for
example, argues that top-level leaders especially
are likely to be more advantaged if they
are immune to detecting subtle emotional nuances
in others, “because they would be able to
focus on the mission and would not be derailed
by negative emotions, pandering to individuals,
and being agreeable” (2003: 357). Furthermore,
we lack clarification on how the purported enhanced
self-esteem of high EI individuals is
likely to relate to positiveness’s prosocial behaviors.
This is in light of major empirical reviews
that reveal little influence of improved
self-esteem, in it own right, on prosocial behaviors—such
as less aggression and kindness to
and consideration of others (see Baumeister,
Campbell, Kreuger, & Vohs, 2003; Crocker &
Park, 2004; Smelser, 1989).
On these technical and conceptual issues
alone, EI is a questionable recruit for the positive
project. Yet a preoccupation among EI researchers
with definitional and measurement
issues has obscured questions about the value
substructure and power deployment of EI. For
example, popular renditions of EI have been
forged within “positive” North American cultures
(see previous discussion), where expressed
optimism is valued in and beyond the
workplace (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Fineman,
2004; Peterson, 2000; Tiger, 1979). In this respect,
EI values merge with those of positiveness. But
as a totalizing, and often hegemonic, organizational
discourse, it privileges a particular executive/managerial
notion of emotional proficiency.
This is most apparent where EI training
aims to shape the individual for emotional competence
according to the organization’s remit.
Those who fail to measure up to the required
version of emotional reality are vulnerable to
exclusion or ejection (Bolton, 2005; Collins & Porras,
2002).
Fun at work. Fun-at-work activities add a further
dimension to this picture. These are predesigned
attempts to boost employee commitment
through fun moments and structured fun events.
Fun, in these terms, makes “happiness management”
a serious HRM tool (Deal & Kennedy, 1999;
Weinstein, 1997) and is served by a growing
cadre of “humor consultants” (Caudron, 1992). It
is literally the positive face of positivity, where
the contagion of expressed joy and laughter is
harnessed to increase employees’ subjective
feelings of well-being at work, so linking expressed
with felt emotion (Doherty, 1998;
Fredrickson, 2001; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson,
1994; Isen & Baron, 1991; Mellers & McGraw,
2001; Verbeke, 1997; Vilaythong, Arnau, Rosen, &
Mascaro, 2003).
Examples of organized fun include Southwest
Airline’s “corporate culture of fun,” which has
become a model of excellence for positive scholars
(Bernstein, 2003). The airline seeks “positive
people” to create a “positively outrageous
spirit” (Deal & Kennedy, 1999; Sunoo, 1995). Admiral,
a U.K. car insurer, has set up a Ministry of
Fun in its call centers to organize such events as
poem writings, table football, conker competitions,
and fancy dress days (Sunday Times,
2005). Kinnie, Hutchinson, and Purcell (2000) report
on a call center of a major U.K. bank where
team bonding is encouraged through themed
dress-up days, raffles, and prizes for “good
ideas.” An Australian multiagency call center
celebrates its 3Fs—Focus, Fun, Fulfillment—
with events such as theme dress days, teambuilding
exercises, alcohol periods, open flirting,
and exhortations to “be yourself” (Fleming
& Spicer, 2004). 2
According to Barsoux (1993), such events are
an essential part of humanizing organizations.
They are said to have the capacity to empower
staff, lower tension, enhance creativity and job
2 Other examples are Lands End, a U.S. mail-order company,
which offers “inside out” days where employees can
wear their clothes inside out (Meyer, 1999); an engineering
firm in Sussex, United Kingdom, which engages in “silly hat
days” (Thomas, 1999); British Airways, which is reported as
having hired a “corporate jester”; IBM, which has experimented
with “playrooms” as “imagination spaces” for employees
(Collinson, 2002); and Kodak headquarters in New
York, where employees can have a “fun break” in a “humor
room” (Caudron, 1992).

280 Academy of Management Review
April
satisfaction, and reduce absenteeism and turnover
(Fatt, 2002; Ford, Newestom, & McLaughlin,
2004; Matthes, 1993; Miller, 1996; Stewart, 1996).
For the positive project, therefore, fun offers an
appealing antidote to felt pressures and dissatisfactions
of the workplace by creating a playful,
bubbly, “off-stage” demeanor (Arkin, 1997;
Fleming & Spicer, 2004). For management, it
promises reinforced employee motivation and
productivity, especially in highly routinized
jobs, such as call centers (Collinson, 2002).
Is more fun fun? There is an inherent tension
in the notion of prescribed fun at work. Fun typically
gains its “funness” from its spontaneity,
surprise, and often subversion of the extant order.
It is where self- and group-authored humor,
wit and comedy, code grievances, insults, fondness,
sexuality, and the like reinforce personal
identities and work meanings (Ackroyd &
Thompson, 1999; Bremmer & Roodenburg, 1997;
Davies, 1990; Gabriel, 1995; Holmes, 2000; Linstead,
1988; Mulkay, 1988). Structured or managed
fun cannot, in principle, substitute for such
moments, and is likely to be counterproductive if
attempted. As with empowerment programs, fun
programs resemble a seductive means of managerial
and cultural control over workers—a
feature that can constrain even the best-laid
plans of positive scholars. Fun programs run a
fine moral line between engaging willing participants
in pleasurable moments that lighten
the working day and imposing fun as an obligatory
organizational practice (“we all have to do
it here”).
Such equivocality comes through several empirical
investigations. For example, Redman
and Mathews (2002) studied a U.K. hypermarket,
which boasted a “culture of fun.” A range of
interlocking fun events characterized the organization,
and the fun norms were such that
teams and departments that happened not to
engage actively enough were publicly
“shamed” in the store’s newsletter. Redman and
Mathews found that employees were split in
their views. While some accepted the fun culture,
others found it oppressive; they resisted
management’s overtures: “some days you just
don’t feel like having fun”; “it’s not really right
that you should be told by management to have
fun”; “there’s a limit to how much fun you can
stomach sometimes” (2002: 58).
Warren (2005) shows such concerns are exacerbated
when there is a preexisting and more
general suspicion of management’s intentions.
In her study of a fun program in an information
technology organization, Warren exposed
strong negative views about the program. Despite
their compliance, employees regarded it
as a smokescreen to disguise the real conflicts
in the organization. The irony that fun events are
not always fun is also present in Hopfl’s (1994)
study of an “entertaining” management development
activity in a British airline—“The Love
Bath.” Participants were required to say nice
things about each group member in turn. Hopfl
reports: “In practice, participants found the experience
“excruciating ....TheLove Bath was a
humility-inducing experience because it robbed
the participants of their dignity and made light
of their discomfort” (Hopfl, 1994: 26).
Where fun and humor are appropriated as
tools to enhance well-being and happiness at
work, but simultaneously (and seemingly necessarily)
as means for greater management control,
positive scholarship enters complex territory.
To a large extent, they are incompatible
objectives, each pulling in different directions:
the buzz of “true” fun and humor toward the
anarchic and the stability of organizations toward
greater order and predictability. The essential
humanism and self-realization of positive
scholarship are, therefore, compromised by
such endeavors, however well-meaning the application.
Selecting out “nonpositive” people
simply reinforces the managerial grip on the
kind of positiveness and fun deemed acceptable,
a form of emotional eugenics. The middle
ground for fun programs is likely to be characterized
by a mixture of reactions: compliance,
discomfort, and feeling used on the one hand,
and temporary light-heartedness and relief from
repetitive work on the other.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Major Themes
The major themes of this paper can be summarized
as follows.
1. Positive scholarship’s moral and empirical
shift to the best in human endeavor is rather
more problematic than it initially appears. The
“best” in virtues and values is now much contested
terrain. Interposing a normative moral
agenda has an evangelical quality, undercutting
the “inquiring” role of positive scholarship

2006 Fineman
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and preempting a nuanced, dynamic portrait of
the kind of “goods” that define and circumscribe
enacted ethics in organizations. In contrast, exploring
personal and social constructions of
“good,” “right” moments in organizational life
can illuminate the value/virtue landscape and
its contingencies, free from the investigator’s a
priori assumptions. It also allows us to test the
ways in which apparently positive attributes
feature, if at all, in organizationally desirable
outcomes. However, inquiries should go beyond
positive scholars’ commitment to mainstream
measurement, to embrace a broader spectrum of
methodologies, especially intensive, qualitative
forms of research.
2. The separation of positive from negative
experiences and emotions is one of positive
scholars’ bedrock principles. It is a shaky one.
There is more to lose than gain by this divorce—
one that is at odds with the evidence that our
positive and negative feelings are formed interdependently
and are mutually connected. A
mark of individual maturity and strength is the
capacity to hold these in constructive tension.
Experientially, we may expect any positive feeling
to partly reflect its negative counterpart. For
instance, joy, love, and excitement are sharpened
in intensity and meaning by the anxieties,
fears, and apprehensions that may simultaneously
be felt or anticipated. Moreover, negative
emotions can constructively modulate individual
expectations and performance to
positively enhance outcomes. Positive scholars’
quest for positive change and learning is likely
to be a truncated, single-loop mission if the
stress, anxiety, anger, pessimism, and unhappiness
of life and work are silenced or marginalized.
3. Positiveness, as currently described, is culturally
restrictive. Its valuation of emotional expressiveness
is tied broadly to North American
cultural norms, where individualism, optimism,
and self-confidence are celebrated. Its platform
would be strengthened by incorporating both
intercultural and intracultural differences in the
way positiveness is meant and valued. Such
analyses would need to confront conditions
where subdued or “negative” emotions have social
and organizational currency. Particularly
intriguing is what happens when different national
cultural conditions collide or blend, such
as the export of Americanized positiveness to
emotionally restrained or guarded cultures and
organizations.
4. Relatedly, there is an unarticulated dark
side to positiveness. Promoting a social orthodoxy
of positiveness focuses on a particular constellation
of desirable states and traits but, in so
doing, can stigmatize those who fail to fit the
template. Programs that aim to raise the positive
in organizations, such as empowerment, EI,
and fun, have a mixed or uncertain record, and
some can produce the very opposite of the selfactualization
and liberation they seek. Moreover,
the programs that appear to succeed can
contrive a “happy” workforce in conditions that
tend to reinforce subordination and control.
Such programs are unlikely to succeed on the
basis of universalistic psychological prescriptions,
or when they are motivated by interests
that can be seen as manipulative or dishonest.
Where management interests prevail, employee
suspicion can be hard to alleviate unless the
broader, structural inequalities of the organization
are addressed.
Toward a More Critical Positive Scholarship?
Taking stock of positiveness raises questions
about the extent to which it has been unduly
constrained by its own rhetoric and conceptual
lens. In tune with some of the criticisms raised
so far, how might positive scholars engage with
critical organizational thinking to refine their
assumptions and expectations? Critical theory,
while by no means a unified discourse in organizational
studies (e.g., see Alvesson & Deetz,
2000; Cooper, 1990; Hassard, 1994; Knights, 1990;
Steffy & Grimes, 1986), links with positiveness in
some important ways. Critical theorists profess
a desire to humanize and emancipate organizations,
to foster inherently meaningful and dignified
work, and to create avenues of personal
development and empowerment (Nord, 1978;
Sloan, 2000). Yet they depart from positive scholars
in their points of leverage. In contrast to a
focus on the individual agent, critical theorists
turn to the social, political, and, especially,
power processes that shape the subjectivities,
identities, and degrees of freedom of organizational
members (Voronov & Coleman, 2003).
For critical theorists, the roots of the dehumanized
organization lie in the largely invisible
ways that power is institutionalized and deployed
in and around organizations. For exam-

282 Academy of Management Review
April
ple, a major strand of critical theory holds that
organizations are dominated by taken-forgranted
social orders that privilege managers
and men and disadvantage or oppress lower
echelons and women. These predilections, in
turn, reflect wider circuits of power in society
that favor certain groups and belief systems
(Clegg & Hardy, 1996; Reed, 1998; Thompson &
McHugh, 2002). Management, it follows, is socially
intrusive, enacting distorted power structures
that “produce” the people who, in turn,
produce the goods and services (Alvesson &
Willmott, 1992; Reynolds, 1998). The goal of the
critical project is to expose, challenge, and
change such inequalities. Positive HRM initiatives,
such as empowerment, typically take
place, critical theorists posit, at management’s
behest and in terms of management’s rules of
the game, thus obscuring rather than dissolving
power imbalances (Barker, 1993; Clegg & Hardy,
1996; Collins, 1998). Employees who say they feel
better, good, or positive following such interventions
are, theorists claim, unknowingly enacting
the preconfigured biases in the system; they are
complicit in their own subjugation, relatively
powerless to effect significant changes in their
work or workplace (Jacques, 1996; Reich, 1987;
Voronov & Coleman, 2003). Genuine empowerment
requires an overt democratization of decision
making and resources within an organization.
Critical theorists have also taken postmodernism
on board, especially feminist critiques of
how sex and gender practices are differentially
constructed or ignored in modern organizations
(Alvesson & Billing, 1992; Calas & Smircich,
1992). These analyses stress the way that linguistic
devices, such as particular images, metaphors,
stories, and narratives, carry the structures
that enable, disable, or dupe others in
specific ways (Boje & Rosile, 2001; Deetz &
Mumby, 1985, 1990; Foucault, 1977; Gergen &
Thatchenkery, 2004). Boje and Dennehy (1993), for
instance, note deception when “turning in a suggestion”
is presented by management as empowerment.
Similarly, Parker and Slaughter
(1988) see blatant image manipulation when
delegation is relabeled empowerment. Critical
postmodernists assert that embedded narratives
such as these must be exposed and silenced
ones freed up—given voice. But this, of
course, also highlights critical theory’s own particular
paradox: seeking to right the wrongs of
subjugating structures by imposing, in the name
of emancipation, yet another elite discourse (Casey,
2004; Taylor, 1995). As Voronov and Coleman
note, “Emancipation may result in a profound
confusion, general distrust, and depression. Organizations
may lose efficiency—at least temporarily—as
individuals refuse to perform the
duties that they used to perform. These individuals
may in turn be penalized” (2003: 176).
Positive but not positivist. Critical theory’s ontology
follows the traditions of interpretive social
inquiry (Boje, 1991; Mahler, 1988; Van
Maanen, 1979). “Facts” are value laden, broadly
preconfigured in historical social processes, but
“socially sustained through day-to-day organizational
existence” (Steffy & Grimes, 1986: 324).
Critical theorists’ research methodologies aim
to enable participants to get “inside” and “behind”
such facts, as expressed in their experiences,
world views, and assumptions. The goal
of critical inquiry, in exposing political values
and asymmetrical power relations, is to assist
participants, who wish to, to negotiate more equitable,
more meaningful, and more emancipatory
ways of working (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000;
Habermas, 1973; Myers & Young, 1997; Stoeker,
1989; Thompson & McHugh, 2002). For critical
theorists, any inquiry process is itself value
laden and contains the seeds of domination and
control over those it works with or on. It therefore
behooves the investigator to be reflexive, collaborative,
and aware of his or her values.
The positive critical quest thus becomes one
of balancing the privileged position of the researcher
with the grounded realities of those
who are participating in a critical inquiry. One
approach is outlined by Comstock (1982; see also
Johnson, 1997). This approach first begins by
identifying groups who feel unable to express
their interests or purposes in the dominating
social order they inhabit. Second, through interpretive
interviews, each participant’s values
and meanings are appraised. Third, the macro
social conditions and structures in which participants’
actions and understandings are embedded
are studied. Fourth, models are constructed
that link the various social conditions with intersubjective
interpretations, identifying where
current actions are locked into “ideologically
frozen” understandings. Finally, an educational
program is offered to participants to promote
new ways of seeing their situations, together
with an action program to change social condi-

2006 Fineman
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tions. The dialogic processes involved in such
styles of inquiry are strongly stressed. Lather
(1991), for instance, speaks of the mutually educative
process in guiding participants toward
new understandings and cultural transformation,
as well as attending to participants’ reactions
to the researcher’s account of the world.
“Critical”challengesforpositiveorganizational
scholarship. How might positive scholars incorporate
such insights into their research programs?
There is a need to balance an individualistic,
universalistic perspective on human needs (e.g.,
self-realization, self-actualization, self-esteem)
with a recognition that these also represent culturally
embedded vocabularies—ways of explaining
and valuing one’s own or others’ actions
or aspirations. Different social circles and
cultures differentially prioritize the motives and
desires they consider relevant, good, or bad, and
those they choose to suppress, celebrate, or liberate.
In organizations, the power of various parties
(e.g., managers, shareholders, trade unionists,
employees) to determine what constitutes
“good” motives and outcomes is likely to underlie
any such valuation process, raising the question
of whose positiveness is really being
served, and to what ends. A reflective, critical
practice of positiveness calls attention to where
positiveness discourses are emanating from
and how different perspectives may, or may not,
be honored.
Within this process, the standing of managerial
prerogative is core to what organizational
positiveness means and how it is to be
achieved. The strongest versions of criticality
place the power of managers and the consequent
disempowerment of workers as fundamental
structural impediments to positive employee
outcomes. Major shifts toward egalitarian
means of ownership and control within organizations
are, therefore, necessary solutions (Lawrence
& Phillips, 1998; Thompson & McHugh, 2002).
Positive organizational scholarship, however,
tends to be driven by a psychologically reified,
relatively depoliticized picture of the individual at
work and of change, where the managerial prerogative
is rarely problematized and the structural/economic
conditions of the competitive workplace
are taken for granted. Sitting between these
two perspectives—the structural and the individualistic—is
critical postmodernism. Critical postmodernists
embrace emancipation through prob-
lematizing the managerial voice, but reflectively,
alongside other individuals’ subjectivities and
constructions of reality. Relational power (between
managers and employees) is taken as mutable
and negotiable and part of a social transformation
process. Here the picture of robust
configurations of power, requiring major upheavals
to shift, gives way to a more tangible, enacted
environment perspective (Deetz & Mumby, 1990;
Voronov & Coleman, 2003; Weick, 1995). The structures
are transformed, over time, by significant
micro changes in behavior and valuations.
Against this background, prescribed, normative
programs, such as of empowerment, commitment,
and fun, are somewhat hit-and-miss
instruments of affective liberation and positive
experience. Held principally within the purview
of management, they can sustain oppressive
power imbalances and, as has been discussed,
resituate or recolor employee grievances. A critical
perspective knocks hard at management’s
door, asking how such programs are in keeping
with the ideals of corporate governance and democracy.
In workplace consultations, fixed
meanings would be viewed with suspicion, and
there would be attention to the dynamics of systems
that socialize people to behave in “disempowering”
ways (e.g., see Boje & Rosile, 2001).
The air of constructive doubt that pervades
critical inquiry raises questions about the wisdom
of positive scholarship’s predefined categories.
In dividing the positive terrain into prefigured
individual attributes, values, and scaled
affective outcomes, scholars’ attention is not on
participants’ “free” expressions of their workday
feelings and meanings. A nuanced theory of
positivity should expose the subtle dilemmas,
ambivalences, and contradictions of work life,
out of which textures of felt positivity and negativity
arise. In this sense, happiness, satisfaction,
pleasure, self-esteem, and the like are less
discrete positive “outcomes” and more processural
moments or waves. Moreover, they are
tied, more or less, to particular socializing effects,
such as those associated with gender, age,
ethnicity, organizational role, and status (Casey,
2000; Fineman, 1994; Harre, 1986; Stearns &
Stearns, 1988). Consequently, the critical ear
(and eye) is attuned to ways that people report
certain work moments as negative or oppressive
(e.g., “It’s just the way we women are treated in
this organization”; “I’ve never thought my voice
would be heard by management”; “Well, what

284 Academy of Management Review
April
can you expect when you’re at the bottom of the
ladder here?”). Such sentiments are social diagnostics
for the critical researcher, keen to explore
what in, and beyond, the organization explains
such narratives of powerlessness and
how they might be challenged or “undone”—
should participants so desire.
Finally, there are methodological challenges.
Critical writers are suspicious about a research
methodology that claims a monopoly on the
truth and that sets the knower apart from the
knowledge gleaned (e.g., see Alvesson & Willmott,
1992, and Charia & Nuzzo, 1996). In this
respect, positive psychology’s objectivist vision
of exclusive, rigorous application of scientific
empirical research (i.e., measurement focused
and laboratory tested) is restrictive, appearing
unreflexive and value naive (Peterson, 1999). Indeed,
some of positive psychology’s strongest
critics regard positive psychology as elitist—
blind to the moral and political implications of
its science (Klaassen, 2001). In response, critical
theorists offer a complementary array of finegrained,
interpretative inquiries that (1) limit the
power of any single world view (e.g., the investigator’s
or the manager’s), (2) incorporate a reflexive
stance on participants’ own values and
positioning, and (3) are also inquiries about
change (Steffy & Grimes, 1986; Thompson &
McHugh, 2002).
Core to such inquiries is a provisionality
about possible changes concerning positivity,
depending, as they do, on what emerges from
the reflections and practical discourses of participants.
Following discursive approaches to organizational
analysis (e.g., Boyce, 1996; Gabriel,
2000; Phillips & Hardy, 2002; Sarbin, 1989;
Thomas, 1993; Wodak & Meyer, 2001), the researcher’s
role involves accessing and interpreting
participants’ stories, narratives, and reported
feelings about episodes in their
organizational life that appear harsh, oppressive,
restrictive, or unfair, alongside those that
may have been liberating and pleasurable. The
analysis then goes beyond the immediate narratives
to identify hidden agendas, assumptions,
centers of power, and privilege. The researcher
works collaboratively, and reflectively,
with participants to explore how such understandings
offer new insights into their own predicaments.
Finally, actions are discussed that
address the political, social, and material con-
straints on participants’ positive aspirations
and change.
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Stephen Fineman (S.Fineman@bath.ac.uk) is professor of organizational behavior in
the School of Management, University of Bath. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at
the University of Sheffield. His current research interests focus on emotion in organizations,
embracing critical and applied perspectives.