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Positive Psychology in Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility , pages 123–142
Copyright © 2005 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
LEADING THROUGH
POSITIVE DEVIANCE
A Developmental Action Learning
Perspective on Institutional Change
Pacey C. Foster and William R. Torbert
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, scholars have begun to recognize that more is known about
individual, group and organizational dysfunction than about individual,
group and organizational health and flourishing. As it did for psycholo-
gists, after Martin Seligman’s (1998) introduction of the subfield of posi-
tive psychology, this insight has given rise to a new subfield in
organizational research called positive organizational scholarship (POS)
(Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003). Like research in positive psychology,
this new research program seeks to replace a long-standing negative bias in
organizational research with a more balanced approach that investigates
positive deviance in organizational contexts.
Positive deviance refers to “intentional behaviors that depart from the
norms of a referent group in honorable ways” (Spreitzer & Sonenshein,
CHAPTER 6
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