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Happy managers make better performers: book

According to a Press release, the book provides fresh insights into the age-old conundrum in management if happy managers do indeed perform better.

The book, Happy-Performing Managers: The Impact of Effective Wellbeing and Intrinsic Job Satisfaction in the Workplace, has been co-written by lead author Dr. Peter Hosie, Associate Professor at UOWD, with Peter Sevastos of Curtin University of Technology, Australia, and Cary Cooper of Lancaster University Management School, UK.

The book cites an Australian study of 19 organisations providing strong evidence to support the existence of a clear relationship between managers’ job-related psychological well-being, intrinsic job satisfaction and performance.

Middle-level managers were surveyed across a variety of public agencies, and private and multinational companies in Western Australia. “Clearly, we were able to show that a positive psychological disposition and intrinsic job satisfaction with a job is a great motivator for people to perform,” says Prof. Hosie.

“I wrote the book after working for and observing many happy and miserable managers. Happy managers seemed to be more effective compared to their miserable compatriots, especially at motivating employees.

“Since the main role of managers is to achieve organisation objectives through people, this is an important issue for all organisations to address. My research provides rigorous and specific data to support the proposition that happy managers perform better,” said Prof. Hosie.

The book prescribes how managers’ jobs might be changed to enhance or avoid a decline in happiness because their performance impacts organisational productivity and the economic prosperity of nation-states.

The book places an emphasis on the emerging movement of Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS), as a means of using the research to discover ways organisations can improve people’s psychological wellbeing and in particular offers advice on how changes in affective wellbeing and job satisfaction can assist in identifying what can be done to promote a healthier and more productive work environment for managers.

Hosie believes the time has come to move away from the negative forms of psychology and affirm managers’ future by embracing the ‘happy-performing managers’ proposition.

He intends to replicate the Happy-Performing Managers study internationally, with particular emphasis on the Middle East.

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