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Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to test a model of the influence of coworker-resources (coworker-support and coworker-exchange) on employee performance with psychological flourishing as mediator and employee race as moderator.

Using a sample of 321 employees from a mid-western US organization, the authors conducted a field study and used regression analysis to test the hypotheses. The authors ran the basic mediation as well as moderated-mediation models with non-parametric bootstrapping procedures.

Coworker-support and coworker-exchange were positively associated with psychological flourishing, which, in turn, was positively associated with employee performance. The authors found support for psychological flourishing as a mediator of coworker influence–employee performance relationships. The authors also found evidence supporting race as a boundary condition that moderated coworker influence–performance relationships, which were stronger for minorities as opposed to whites.

To ensure employee well-being and superior employee performance, especially for racial minorities, managers must create work environments replete with coworker-support and healthy coworker-exchange.

The study undertakes a simultaneous examination of two different forms of coworker influences on employee performance and clarifies the role of underlying psychological mechanisms that pave the way for coworker influence on performance. The findings provide clarity regarding the employee–coworker relationship research; in addition, they establish race as an important boundary condition when considering coworker influences and employee performance.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between a positive leadership style [i.e. authentic leadership (AL)] and nurses’ psychological health (i.e. nurses’ flourishing and satisfaction with work–family balance), including psychological capital (PsyCap) as a mediational variable.

A cross-sectional study was conducted with a self-report questionnaire including 1,076 nurses from public and private hospitals in France.

Structural equation modeling results revealed that AL is related to nurses’ flourishing and satisfaction with work–family balance and that PsyCap acted as a partial mediator between this leadership style and positive outcomes.

This research indicated that hospitals can enhance nurses’ psychological health not only in their work but also in their lives in general by improving leaders’ authentic management style and developing PsyCap (e.g. staffing, training and development).

An original feature of this paper concerns its focus on the mediating role of PsyCap in the relationship between AL and these positive outcomes. Moreover, this study underlined the influence of leadership style on nurses’ psychological health beyond occupational health. The research makes a valuable contribution to the existing AL literature by establishing a new explanatory model of AL and nurses’ psychological health in the French context. It also highlights the interest in developing this leadership style in health-care settings.

In hypercompetitive markets, retail brands should fuel their sales employees’ to responsively serve customers. In connection, the study aims to unpack the direct and indirect, via psychological flourishing, the role of inclusive leadership in paving the path for retail salesperson adaptive selling behaviour. Additionally, the study also empirically investigates the moderating role of work centrality to offer critical insights for effective managerial interventions.

Drawing upon conservation of resource theory to test the nexuses of the model, time-lagged survey data were collected from 313 retail salespersons from the leading retail brands. Data were analyzed using the bootstrapping method.

Results revealed the direct positive association between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling behaviour and indirect association via psychological flourishing. Furthermore, the direct association between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling becomes more pronounced for employees high on work centrality.

Findings can help retail brands to enhance adaptive selling behaviour, which enables them to provide efficient solutions and gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The study offers several important contributions to the sales literature by establishing the direct and indirect link between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling via psychological flourishing. Moreover, the result of the interaction effect highlights the critical aspects of work centrality in the retail sales context.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between migrants’ psychological well-being and the extent to which they keep in touch with people in their country of origin.

An online survey completed by 1,328 Australian migrants from 4 cultural groups (Anglo, Southern Asian, Confucian Asian and other European) assessed 2 facets of well-being, namely, flourishing and psychological distress and the use of 3 modes of online communication, namely, social media, messaging services and phone/video services.

Overall, keeping in touch with family and friends in their country of origin was associated with more flourishing and less distress amongst migrants. Nonetheless, the preferred modes of communication and how those usages relate with well-being varied considerably across cultural groups. In the Anglo group, communicating through messaging and phone/video services was associated with lower distress and communicating in all modes was associated with higher flourishing. Furthermore, the latter link was accounted for by having a meaningful conversation.

These findings suggest that the psychological well-being of migrant populations may be supported by an understanding of the distinct roles played by specific communication modes that are used to stay in touch with family and friends back home.

Unwanted intrusive thoughts (UITs) are a major public health concern (Nock et al., 2008; Bentum et al., 2017), and they are key to the development of a variety of dysregulated behaviours (Jungmann et al., 2016; Bergen et al., 2012). Thus, this study aims to investigate reductive mechanisms for unwanted intrusive thoughts by analysing aspects of affectivity in clinical and non-clinical samples.

Quantitative means of data collection and analysis were used to explore UITs and affectivity. In total, 530 adults took part in this study (236 males, 253 females and 15 transgenders). Participants consisted of clinical (N = 168) and non-clinical samples (N = 336) who completed the Midlife in the United States sense of control scale (Lachman and Weaver, 1998), 20-item neuroticism scale (Goldberg, 1999), self-compassion scale (Neff, 2003a), flourishing scale (Diener et al., 2009), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Negative Scale (Watson et al., 1988), generalised anxiety disorder seven-item (Spitzer et al., 2006) and repetitive thinking questionnaire-10 (McEvoy et al., 2010).

Participants who experienced high levels of psychological flourishing, emotional stability, self-compassion, perceived control and affective well-being were prone to experience minimal UITs. Anxiety was positively related to UITs. These findings suggest that these aspects of affectivity may aid the reduction or management of clinical and non-clinical unwanted intrusive thoughts.

This study has addressed gaps in knowledge and the literature on UITs by demonstrating that psychological flourishing, emotional stability, self-compassion, perceived control and affective well-being as aspects of affectivity can be implemented as a reductive mechanism for UITs, and such implementation may have a high probability of effective reduction or management of clinical and non-clinical unwanted intrusive thoughts.

This paper aims to demonstrate early psychological concomitants of the Covid-19 pandemic in England on a sample of younger and older people.

A cross-sectional quantitative questionnaire (n = 1608) was conducted on the Prolific website. Participants completed the PERMA Scale (Flourishing), the four Office of National Statistics (ONS4) Well-being Questions, the Clinical Outcomes Measure in Routine Evaluation (CORE-10) and the short University of California Los Angeles Brief Loneliness Scale.

Data were gathered on March 18, 2020, near the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study looks at the effects of the developing pandemic on younger participants (18 to 25 years, n = 391) and older participants (60 to 80 years, n = 104). Flourishing levels for older participants were significantly higher (M = 107.96) than for younger participants (M = 97.80). Younger participants scored significantly higher on the ONS4 for anxiety and lower than the older participants for happiness, life satisfaction and having a worthwhile life. Levels of psychological distress (CORE-10) were also significantly lower for older participants (M = 9.06) than for younger participants (M = 14.61). Finally, younger participants scored significantly higher on the Brief UCLA Loneliness Scale (M = 6.05) than older participants (M = 4.64).

From these findings, the Covid-19 pandemic was having a significantly greater effect on younger people in England, less than one week before the UK went into “lockdown”. Scores for both the Younger and Older groups on all the study measures were worse than normative comparisons. The study had no specific measure of Covid-19 anxiety, but nor was one available at the time of the survey.

This study suggests that younger people (18 to 25) may be a more vulnerable group during the Covid-19 pandemic than many may have realized.

As a recent British Psychological Society report concluded, there is a lot of untapped wisdom amongst older groups in society.

This is one of the earliest studies to look at psychological distress before England went into “lockdown.”

This article provides deeper insights into the measurement of servant leadership within the Chinese culture. Servant leadership is viewed as a responsible leadership style that is beneficial to organizations by awaking, engaging and developing employees and working from a sense of service and stewardship for the world with a long-term perspective.

The paper consists of a survey study that examines the relationships between 5 servant leadership measures translated into Chinese and outcome measures using a sample of 463 participants.

The authors' results show that the five measures are very comparable. Although some differences exist, the combined conclusions from internal consistency, intercorrelations and correlations to outcome variables and factor analysis confirmed their overall commonality. A core group of 11 items is introduced as a potential scale to represent the underlying variance of all 55 items.

This study validates how the five instruments are grounded in the core aspects of servant leadership described by Robert Greenleaf, the service aspect of choosing to become a leader and the importance for a leader to give attention to the followers' personal growth, meaningful work and well-being.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intentions.

To test the proposed research model, the authors collected field data from seven telecommunication companies located in the Islamabad Capital Territory of Pakistan. Through a two-wave data collection design, a total of 411 participants reported their perceptions about psychological empowerment and psychological capital at Time 1 and their job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention at Time 2.

Results supported the hypothesized relationships, showing that psychological capital fully mediates the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

This study relied on cross-sectional data, which does not fully satisfy the conditions of establishing causality.

Results of this study will help organizations and practitioners to understand the importance of psychological empowerment and psychological capital and how they positively influence organizational performance, including employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

Drawing upon the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (2000), this study contributes to organizational behaviour literature by proposing and testing psychological capital as an underlying mechanism that can explain the impact of psychological empowerment on employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a group of service users with mental health problems with a community comparison group of gym attenders.

Cross-sectional questionnaire surveys were conducted at a large gym (n = 181) and two community mental health facilities (n = 127) in the Greater Manchester area using a convenience sample approach. All participants completed the PERMA Scale, a measure of flourishing.

Gym attenders scored significantly higher on the five elements of PERMA. Their physical health ratings were almost double. They also had significantly lower levels of negative emotions and loneliness and higher levels of overall happiness.

This study only considered levels of flourishing. Previous studies of quality of life have shown similar disparities between people with mental health problems and others.

Professor Seligman has claimed that improving levels of flourishing is the main aim of positive psychology. The present study suggests this may be especially challenging for people with mental health problems.

The concept of flourishing could provide a more positive non-medical focus for mental health services, in the development of what some have called positive psychiatry. This complements the current recovery model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to compare flourishing levels between individuals with mental health problems and a community comparison group using the PERMA Scale.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and elaborate on the construct of flourishing in schools as understood through the stories and explanations provided by a small group of public school principals. Framed within a positive organizational perspective, the specific objectives of this study are: to identify how school leaders understand and experience flourishing in their roles and in their schools; to explore the conditions, catalysts and/or galvanizing forces of flourishing in schools.

The researchers used an electronic Delphi survey to gain a qualitative description of the understandings and impressions of the construct of flourishing from the perspective of practicing school administrators in one school district in central British Columbia. Delphi responses were aggregated after each round and thematically analysed to determine patterns and trends for further examination through progressive iterations of the survey administered via e-mail. The final set of data were then analysed for patterns, trends and themes that were compared and contrasted against research findings in the literature underpinning the theoretical framework for this study.

While there was no single definition of what it means to flourish in the work of school leadership, shared descriptions from these principals indicated that they feel a sense of flourishing when they are working together with teachers from a sense of purpose and passion and in a spirit of play to cultivate learning climates that reflect a shared ownership for improving educational experiences for students. These initial findings provoke thinking about the potentials and benefits of shifting the focus of research and practice in educational leadership towards more positive, strengths-based perspectives.

The sample size was small, and so generalizing findings beyond this study is unreasonable. Further, because the researchers separated participant information from responses in order to safeguard anonymity and to aggregate the responses to provide these back to participants for their further elaboration and reflections, they were unable to determine whether particular responses were connected to context (elementary or secondary, size of school, years of experience as an administrator), gender or other demographic factors. However, the use of the electronic Delphi instrument provided insights on engaging school principals in thoughtful inquiry as participants, while respecting the busy workload and time constraints associated with the work of school principals.

Attending to well-being in the work of leading schools is an under-researched area of educational leadership. This study is an example of how researching educational leadership from a positive, strengths-based, human development perspective may provide useful insights for supporting principals and other educators to notice, nurture and sustain a sense of flourishing in their work and across the school. While further research is needed to examine the construct of flourishing across a diverse range of school organizations, the findings from this study provoke thinking about the benefits of studying what goes well, what brings vitality and a more full sense of humanity in the work of leading school organizations.

The researchers use a new perspective for examining and explaining the phenomenon of flourishing in schools, a positive organizational research orientation. The use of this strengths-based, positive, human development approach to examining the construct of flourishing from the perspective of school principals can offer new insights and strategies for attending to well-being as an integral part of the work of leading schools.