offered a roundtable (variation) 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Strengths-Based Climates In Health-Care Teams: Effects On Psychological Empowerment, Proactivity, And Customer Orientation (#370)

Christina Meyers 1
  1. Tilburg University, Tilburg, THE NETHERLANDS, Netherlands

Strengths-based climates refer to employee perceptions of being appreciated for and supported in the use of their strengths at work. Existing studies have shown that strengths-based climates are positively related to individual-level outcomes such as well-being and performance (van Woerkom & Meyers, 2015). However, we currently know little about how strengths-based climates relate to team-based constructs such as team psychological empowerment, team proactivity, and team customer orientation. I expect that teams who feel supported in the use of their strengths will feel a greater sense of meaning, competence, impact, and self-determination at work (i.e., psychological empowerment). Psychological empowerment, in turn, has been proposed as a strong predictor of positive, work-related attitudes (e.g., proactivity and customer orientation), in particular in the health care domain (Wagner et al., 2010). Two-wave, longitudinal data has been collected among n = 281 employees nested in n = 46 teams of one Dutch healthcare institution. Preliminary results support a positive effect of strengths-based climate on both psychological empowerment and customer orientation (measured six months later), but not on proactivity. A third wave of data is currently being collected to consolidate findings and to be able to test for mediation effects.