ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on applying insights from positive organizational scholarship (POS) to better understand work-family relationships. POS highlights positive deviance within organizational studies (Spreitzer and Sonenshein, 2004). It provides a focus on the generative (that is, life-building, capability-enhancing, capacity-creating) dynamics in organizations that contribute to human strengths and virtues, resilience and healing, vitality and thriving, and the cultivation of extraordinary states in individuals, groups and organizations (Dutton and Glynn, 2007). While in recent years, we have seen a more positive approach to understanding work-family relationships — reframing from a focus on work-family conflict to a focus on work-family enrichment or facilitation (Keeney and Ilies, 2011) – this chapter provides a more comprehensive approach to applying a positive lens to work-family relationships. My hope is that by applying a POS lens we can respond to Kossek, Baltes and Mathews' (2011) contention that “work-family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted”.
