This contribution deals with the concept of healthy organizations and starts with a definition of healthy organizations and healthy business. In healthy organizations, culture, climate, and practices ...create an environment conducive to employee health and safety as well as organizational effectiveness (Lowe, 2010). A healthy organization thus leads to a healthy and successful business (De Smet et al., 2007; Grawitch and Ballard, 2016), underlining the strong link between organizational profitability and workers' well-being. Starting from a positive perspective focused on success and excellence, the contribution describes how positive organizational health psychology evolved from occupational health psychology to positive occupational health psychology stressing the importance of a primary preventive approach. The focus is not on deficiency and failure but on a positive organizational attitude that proposes interventions at different levels: individual, group, organization, and inter-organization. Healthy organizations need to find the right balance between their particular situation, sector, and culture, highlighting the importance of well-being and sustainability. This contribution discusses also the sustainability of work-life projects and the meaning of work in healthy organizations, stressing the importance of recognizing, respecting, and using the meaning of work as a key for growth and success. Finally, the contribution discusses new research and intervention opportunities for healthy organizations.
This study uses individualisation theory to explore identity transition in substance misuse recovery. Identity narratives gained over 4 years from co-produced video/audio interview and video diary ...accounts were co-productively collected and analysed using framework analysis. Results indicate a trend towards individualistic and agentic identity as recovery trajectories progress over time. Within-case analysis demonstrates agentic growth for most participants, from early-stage gratitude and reliance on support groups to self-determination and independent decision-making. This early work exploring longer-term recovery adds to the current recovery and social identity discussion and provides evidence of identity growth in longer-term stages of recovery.
Abstract
Background
Emerging evidence indicates that holding particular stress mindsets has favorable implications for peoples’ health and performance under stress.
Purpose
The aim of the current ...study was to examine the processes by which implicit and explicit stress mindsets relate to health- and performance-related outcomes. Specifically, we propose a stress beliefs model in which somatic responses to stress and coping behaviors mediate the effect of stress mindsets on outcomes.
Methods
Undergraduate university students (N = 218, n = 144 females) aged 17– 25 years completed measures of stress mindset, physical and psychological wellbeing, perceived stress, perceived somatic responses to stress, proactive behaviors under stress, and an implicit association test assessing an implicit stress mindset. At the end of the semester, students’ academic performance was collected from university records.
Results
Path analysis indicated significant indirect effects of stress mindset on psychological wellbeing and perceived stress through proactive coping behaviors and perceived somatic symptoms. Stress mindset directly predicted perceived stress and physical wellbeing, and physical wellbeing and academic performance were predicted by stress mindset through perceived somatic symptoms. Implicit stress mindset did not predict proactive behavior as anticipated.
Conclusions
Current findings indicate that behaviors with the goal of proactively meeting demands under stress and perceived somatic symptoms are important mediators of the effect of stress mindset on health- and performance-related outcomes. The findings from this study provide formative data that can inform the development of future interventions aiming to encourage more adaptive responses to stress.
Students who held a mindset that stress can be enhancing engaged in more proactive coping behaviors when under stress and experienced lower levels of perceived somatic symptoms which, in turn, led to more positive health- and performance-related outcomes.