A real growth area in OB research is positive organizational scholarship. Researchers in this area say too much of OB research and management practice has been targeted toward identifying what’s wrong with organizations and their employees. In response, they try to study what’s good about them. Some key topics in positive OB research are engagement, hope, optimism, and resilience. Researchers hope to help practitioners create positive work environments for employees.

Positive organizational scholars have studied a concept called reflected best-self by asking employees to think about when they were at their personal best in order to understand how to exploit their strengths. The idea is that we all have things at which we are unusually good, yet we focus too often on addressing our limitations and rarely think about how to exploit our strengths. Organizational scholarship challenges researchers to look at OB through a new lens and pushes organizations to exploit employees’ strengths rather than dwell on their limitations. Organizations have begun to employ a culture officer to shape and preserve the company’s personality.