The Happy/Productive Worker Thesis Revisited

Abstract

For decades, since at least the famous Hawthorne studies, the happy/productive worker thesis has forcefully captured the imagination of management scholars and human resource professionals alike. According to this “Holy Grail” of management research, workers who are happy on the job will have higher job performance, and possibly higher job retention, than those who are less happy. But what is happiness? Most typically, happiness has been measured in the management sciences as jobsatisfaction. This viewpoint is unnecessarily limiting. Building upon alittle remembered body of research from the 1920s, we suggest a twofold, expanded view of this thesis. First, we suggest the consideration of worker happiness as psychological well-being (PWB). Second, incorporating Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build model ofpositive emotions as the theoretical base, we suggest that the job satisfaction to job performance and job satisfaction to employee retentionrelationships may be better explained by controlling for the moderating effect of PWB. Future research directions for human resource professionals are introduced.