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What makes a team brilliant? An experiential exploration of positivity within healthcare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2018

Emeritus Liz Fulop
Affiliation:
Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
Louise Kippist*
Affiliation:
School of Business, Western Sydney University, Parramatta, NSW, Australia
Ann Dadich
Affiliation:
School of Business, Western Sydney University, Parramatta, NSW, Australia
Kate Hayes
Affiliation:
Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
Leila Karimi
Affiliation:
School of Psychology and Public Health, College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Anne Symth
Affiliation:
Organisational Consulting, Melbourne, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

Following its positive outcomes in a state-wide survey, co-managers of the Queensland Cancer Control Analysis Team commissioned discovery interviews to explore these results. Eleven interviews were analysed by positive organisational scholars who drew on depreciating and appreciating organisational dynamics to make sense of Queensland Cancer Control Analysis Team’s high performance. An initial framework was devised, including appreciative, depreciative, and hybrid dynamics, with the latter representing an extension to an existing taxonomy. Findings revealed mainly appreciative and hybrid dynamics. To further understand these, the framework was expanded by reframing the dynamics as positive institutional work. This extension offers an experiential understanding of positive institutional patterns by incorporating the troika of experiential surfacing, agency as inquiry, and inclusion. The value of this framework is threefold, for it can be used as an analytic, a diagnostic, and an intervention tool to enable scholars and practitioners to operationalise positive organisational scholarship to examine, understand, and promote positive organisational experiences.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2018 

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