Exploring Flourishing in a Multicultural Work Context: Proposed Constructs for Interventions

Abstract

Flourishing, an indicator of well-being is a growing area of work. Multitude of positive psychology constructs and a plethora of factors in multicultural organizations add to the complexity of studying employee flourishing. Therefore, a gap in knowledge exists pertaining to understanding which interventions directed towards attainment of flourishing are best suited to employees working in multicultural environments. To that end, the current chapter presents gratitude, contribution to community, work engagement and social connectedness as crucial elements in attainment of flourishing for employees. It is thus postulated that positive psychology interventions addressing these four elements would enable flourishing among employees. These constructs have been proposed on the basis of previous literature, well-being theories and specific characteristics of multicultural societies such as India. Furthermore, gratitude and work engagement garner support from a large-scale quantitative study, while support for contribution to community and social connectedness is provided through the findings of a qualitative study. Possible influences of different languages, religion, family systems, social stratification, and traditions have been discussed with insights from a multicultural context. The chapter will provide a description of these four elements, and how they are experienced in multicultural contexts with focus on specific cases from the qualitative study. While the chapter does not propose an entirely novel intervention, it recommends directions for future interventions within the organizational setup for practitioners and researchers. This is expected to contribute to the well-being of employees, which can further build positive organizations; and consequently positive communities, which is the larger goal of positive psychology.