INTRODUCTION
Psychology research and practice have been primarily dedicated to identifying and fixing weaknesses rather than identifying and building on individuals' strengths ( Seligman, 1998). This perspective has given much more attention to mental illness, abnormal psychology, trauma, suffering, treatments, and pain ( Westerhof & Keyes, 2010), with little research on human strengths and positive features ( Wehmeyer, 2013). This perspective has also influenced organizational psychology research ( Luthans, 2002a; Page & Donohue, 2017).
However, since the turn of this century, the focus on psychology has shifted to include a greater emphasis on positive human features and strengths ( Wehmeyer, 2013). This change has been led by positive psychology theorists and researchers ( Reichard et al., 2014). Positive psychology provides comprehensive and balanced scientific knowledge to build and enhance individuals, families, and organizations ( Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Seligman et al., 2005). Hence, what is good with individuals (areas of strength) and what is wrong with them (areas of deficit) deserve equal research consideration.
1.1 Positivity in the workplace
Since 2002, organizational psychology has included positive psychology contributions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives to improve employees' working conditions. From a theoretical perspective, a growing body of literature on positive psychology has been introduced into organizational psychology to enhance work outcomes, such as job performance, engagement, employee selfefficacy, and psychological wellbeing ( Alessandri et al., 2015; Ramirez-Perez, 2022; Williams et al., 2017). From a practical standpoint, the positive organizational psychology perspective has an excellent result in improving leadership effectiveness and employee performance and enhancing their psychological well-being ( Luthans, 2002a; Luthans & Youssef, 2004).
Positive organizational psychology has been primarily developed under two theoretical paradigms: positive organizational scholarship (POS) and positive organizational behavior (POB). POS and POB share the same origin in the positive psychology movement and highlight the importance of rigorous scientific processes in developing their practices ( Donaldson & Ko, 2010). These approaches are parallel and complementary, but they have distinct purposes and objectives with theoretical and methodological differences ( Youssef & Luthans, 2007). The concepts, differences, and convergent points of POS and POB are presented in Figure 1.
POS is the "movement in organizational science that focuses on the dynamics leading to exceptional individual and organizational performance such as developing human strength, producing resilience and restoration, and fostering vitality" ( Cameron & Caza, 2004, p. 731). POS research is concerned with positive organizational phenomena at a macro level ( Luthans & Avolio, 2009), representing a desire to understand the processes that produce positive states in organizations ( Roberts, 2006). In particular, POS focuses on positive organizational outcomes and the process that provides them ( Cameron & Caza, 2004). For example, POS deals with concepts such as virtuousness and compassion that may or may not be open to development and/or related to job performance impact ( Luthans et al., 2007a).
Organizational theorists and practitioners have recognized the potential of sciencebased POS research. Theoretically, POS has helped to better understand positive organizational outcomes, including organizational process, excellence, thriving, flourishing, abundance, resilience, and virtuousness ( Cameron et al., 2003). In addition, POS practitioners are committed to documenting, measuring, and explaining their activities to contribute a verifiable body of knowledge about positive organizational features ( Cameron & Caza, 2004). Thus, POS contributions are valuable to a better understanding of positive organizational attributes, with robust scientific support.
On the other hand, the emphasis of POB research is on employees' positive psychological resources that have a significant impact on organizational outcomes ( Avey et al., 2010; Donaldson & Ko, 2010). POB research emerged from positive psychology to address human strengths and resources at the individual level of study and improve an employee's performance within the organizational context ( Luthans, 2002b). To distinguish POB from other positively oriented paradigms (e.g., positive psychology and POS), Luthans (2002a) stated five definitional criteria. These require a psychological capacity to be: 1) grounded in theory and practical research; 2) have valid measurement; 3) be relatively unique to organizational behavior research; 4) be related to work-related outcomes (e.g., performance), and 5) be statelike and therefore open to development.
Since the introduction of POB, several positive psychological resources have been studied and empirically tested for inclusion in POB research ( Luthans et al., 2006). The positive psychological resources assessed as best meeting the POB criteria are hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism ( Luthans et al., 2007a). Substantially extensive research has focused on the highercore construct compromising synergically these positive psychological resources, known as psychological capital or PsyCap ( Luthans et al., 2007a). PsyCap is "an individual's positive psychological state of development, characterized by self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience" ( Luthans et al., 2007a, p. 3).
There is a growing number of international studies that have rigorously tested the core constructs of POS and POB (e.g., Brunetto et al., 2016; Brunetto et al., 2013; Cassidy et al., 2014; Donaldson et al., 2020; Luthans & Youssef-Morgan, 2017). However, according to van Zyl and Rothmann (2019), the majority of the positive organizational psychology research has been developed in the United States and Europe. Cultural background is a relevant factor to consider in POS and POB research ( Luthans & Youssef-Morgan, 2017). Therefore, the challenge is to develop POS and POB research across nations and cultures to have a wide knowledge of positive resources and their implications ( Avey, 2014; Donaldson et al., 2020). Therefore, considering this challenge, it is relevant to explore how positive organizational psychology research based on POS and POB has been developed in Chile.
This study focuses on Chile because, according to the World Economic Outlook Database (2022), it is a country at the forefront of Latin America and is considered one of the most advanced and friendly economies. Chile has become the first South American country to be part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and is the country with the lowest percentage of the population considered poor compared to other South American countries (Bitran et al., 2010). Moreover, in 2024, Chile ranked fifth in the SCImago Iber Ranking, indexing 90,164 publications between 2018 and 2022 (www.scimagoiber.com).
The most suitable method to explore published research on positive organizational psychology in Chile was to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR). A SLR has many attractive features to help elucidate the aim of this research. First, SLRs help to clarify information in the existing literature ( Petticrew & Roberts, 2005). Moreover, SLRs have methodological and execution benefits, including systematization and robust procedures ( Moher et al., 2015). Finally, SLRs allow the collection and synthesis of all relevant research to examine the situation and address a specific research question ( Linnenluecke et al., 2020).
Notwithstanding these benefits, SLRs are still in their infancy in organizational research and require more academic efforts ( Linnenluecke et al., 2020). The key challenge for organizational researchers is that they have not developed consensual protocols to conduct SLRs ( Combs et al., 2019). To overcome this issue, this SLR was conducted using the preferred reporting items for systematic literature review and meta-analysis protocols, the PRISMA-P protocol ( Higgins et al., 2019), to ensure its quality and reduce bias. Thus, given the benefits of an SLR, this research will represent an advance in organizational psychology research, building more comprehensive knowledge about What has been published on positive organizational psychology research in Chile.
METHOD
The literature has suggested following sequential stages to ensure research quality and bias when conducting an SLR ( Liu et al., 2019). Ten of the twelve suggested stages were followed to conduct this research: definition of a research question; inclusion and exclusion criteria; search strategy; searching databases; title and abstract screening; full-text screening; data extraction and quality assessment; qualitative analysis; data checking; and paper writing (Higgings et al., 2019). Stages two and six (preliminary research and protocol registration) were not considered in this SLR, due to these stages are exclusively related to studies about health, treatment, or its consequences.
2.1 Procedure and search strategy
An electronic literature search was conducted using the major relevant database search engines: (1)PsycINFO, (2)Scopus, and (3)Web of Science. These databases are usually selected in management and social sciences research and offer a rich collection of scholarly articles found in the most globally dominant journals ( Piccarozzi et al., 2018). Additionally, the scientific electronic library online SciELO was selected. SciELO is a bibliographic and cooperative electronic publishing database created to address the scientific needs of developing nations such as Chile ( Packer, 2000). Based on previous research ( Avey et al., 2011; Luthans, 2002a, 2002b), the keywords and booleans operators used were: flourishing AND positive emotions AND positivism AND positive psychology AND psychological capital OR PsyCap AND psychological capabilities. Furthermore, the keywords organizational OR organizational OR workplace AND Chile OR Chilean were added to focus the search in the Chilean organizational context. The search was conducted between August and October 2022. The second search to update the information was conducted between December 2022 and April 2023. A third search was taken between September and October 2023 and a final update was taken on June 2024.
2.2. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The inclusion criteria to select articles for this SLR were: 1) empirical studies from peerreviewed journals concerning organizations placed in Chile; 2) studies reporting quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods design; 3) studies published in both Spanish and English languages; and 4) studies that included Chilean organizations sample in their studies. Editorials, abstracts, grey literature, individual case studies, historical and theoretical contributions, research reporting positive variables in different settings than labor organizations and studies conducted in a country other than Chile were excluded. There were no restrictions on the date of publication of the studies. The eligibility criteria were applied to ensure that only studies relevant to the research aims were included and no studies were excluded without thorough evaluation.
2.3. Data extraction and data análisis
Identified research titles were exported to Endnote bibliographic software, and duplicates were removed. Then, titles and abstracts were read and screened for relevance according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies meeting the inclusion criteria were read by the authors. Next, a full-text review was conducted for each article selected. Finally, relevant information was extracted into a summary (Table 2), which included authors, participants, objectives, methodology, and variables. Data were qualitatively analyzed using guidance on the conduct of narrative synthesis in systematic reviews ( Popay et al., 2006).
RESULTS
As shown in Figure 2, 316 records were identified from the initial search of the selected databases. After removing 33 duplicates, 283 potential studies remained. The 283 studies were screened by title and abstracts against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eightytwo studies satisfied the inclusion criteria. The full texts of the 82 studies were then reviewed, resulting in 21 studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Hence, 61 studies were excluded in the eligibility stage (see Table 1).
The 21 studies meeting the inclusion criteria were read and critically appraised based on the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) to ensure research quality and avoid bias ( Hong et al., 2018). MMAT is a guide that allows researchers to concomitantly assess the methodological quality of quantitative, qualitative, or mixedmethod studies for an SLR ( Queiroga et al., 2015). MMAT has four domains to assess the quality of research: 1)research question, 2)methodology, 3)data analysis, and 4)response rate ( Pace et al., 2012). As a result, 19 out of 21 included studies meet 100% of the quality criteria using MMAT. Thus, the final data analysis was conducted on 19 studies. It is relevant to mention that during the process of the review, two reviewers independently assessed studies for inclusion in the review to minimize the risk of selection bias.
DISCUSSION
The immediate finding from this SLR is that little empirical research has been published about the state of the art in positive organizational psychology research in Chile. Nineteen articles matched the inclusion criteria, suggesting that Chilean organizational psychology research needs to consider the theoretical framework of POB and POS to include related positive variables. Based on the findings, a detailed analysis is presented.
4.1 POS Research
Based on the POS framework (see Figure 1), we could identify five studies that have considered POS-studied variables. The first one ( Erdogan et al., 2022) described a positive association between family-supportive supervisor behaviors and subordinate work performance. This means that when supervisors are concerned and positively involved with their subordinates' family issues may facilitate positive subordinate outcomes such as work performance. An external and significant figure (supervisor) has a deep impact on employees' performance, based on the consideration that the supervisors give them to conciliate the family-work interface.
The second study ( Madrid et al., 2020) reported that workers' self-regulation of emotions is significantly related to job satisfaction. This means workers who usually employ affect-improving emotion regulation techniques report positive feelings at work, including joy and inspiration, which increases their propensity to voice suggestions for adjustments and improvements. This study provided evidence to prove that speaking out in organizations is not limited to negative emotions, as previous research has proposed (see Morrison, 2014).
A third study ( Peña-González et al., 2021) found that organizational identification has a significant mediation effect on explaining the relationship between internally perceived employability and its predictor variables, perceived organizational prestige and organizational social capital. The authors proposed that promoting a positive image of the organization and its social capital, strengthened by organizational identification, may have a positive effect on commitment, intention to leave, and organizational results.
The Fourth study ( Unanue et al., 2021a) described how gratitude at work prospectively predicted further lower workplace materialism. Individuals with higher average gratitude are more likely to show lower-than-average materialism scores. Following the POS theoretical framework, the authors explained that gratitude may decrease materialism prospectively.
The fifth study ( Unanue et al., 2021b) reported that organizational citizenship behavior is a prospective positive predictor of three models of happiness: hedonic, eudaimonic, and flourishing. The authors suggested the three models of happiness also prospectively predict organizational citizenship behavior. As a theoretical contribution, it is proposed that organizational citizenship behavior fosters a broad range of happiness facets, which in turn fosters back the emergence of more organizational citizenship behavior, leading to a virtuous circle of prosociality and well-being in the workplace. This positive cycle benefits both employee quality of life and organizations' productivity and sustainability.
| Exclusion reasons | N° Articles | Total % |
|---|---|---|
| It has not considered a worker sample | 19 | 31.14 |
| it has not included positive constructs as variables | 8 | 13.11 |
| It has not included a Chilean sample | 31 | 50.81 |
| Editorial or grey literature contributions | 2 | 4.91 |
| Total | 61 | 100 |
| Authors (year) | Sample | Objective | Methodology | Variables |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acuna-Hormazabal et al. (2021) | 408 Chilean employees. | Analize burnout, engagement, and the perception of management practices in support workers in the COVID-19 context and its relationship. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Burnout syndrome, engagement, positive organisational support. |
| Bargsted et al. (2019) | 353 Chilean employees | nvestigate the mediating role of work design features in the relationship between professional self-efficacy and job satisfaction | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Self-efficacy, work design, job satisfaction. |
| Erdogan et al. (2022) | 196 subordinates and 75 supervisors | Investigate the relationship between supervisors’ family motivation and family-supportive supervisor behaviours, and its mediator role in the association between supervisors’ family motivation and subordinates’ work performance. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Supervisor’s work-family balance, supervisor’s family motivation, family-supportive supervisor behaviour, subordinate’s work performance |
| Gonzalez-Suhr et al. (2019) | 411 employees. | Exploring the relationship between visual aesthetics workplace and proactive behaviours of job crafting. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Online self-reported | Visual aesthetics of workplace, affective organisational commitment, job crafting |
| Juyumaya (2022) | 196 employees. | Exploring the mediating role of work engagement in positive effect of psychological empowerment on task performance. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Psychological empowerment, work engagement, task performance |
| Madrid (2020) | 125 employees (MBA part-time students) | Testing the relationship between speaking out ideas at work and employee emotion regulation and positive affect. | Quantitative daily diary study. Self-reported surveys | Voice behaviour, positive affect, emotion regulation, extraversion, neuroticism |
| Madrid et al. (2020 | 55 employees (MBA part-time students) | Explore the relationship between emotion regulation behaviour, affect and job satisfaction. | Quantitative daily diary study. Self-reported surveys | Emotion regulation behaviour, job satisfaction, trait affec |
| Madrid and Patterson (2020) | 126 employees. | Examine how and for whom the job resource of time control is related to the implementation of novel ideas in the workplace. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Time control, problem-solving demands, positive affect, innovation |
| Madrid, Totterdell and Niven (2016) | 78 workers. | Testing if the team leader's affective presence would influence team members’ communication of creative ideas | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Leaders' affective presence, creative idea generation, silent behaviour, leader’s positive and negative affect |
| Madrid, Totterdell, Niven, et al. (2016) | Study 1: 350 workers. Study 2: 734 workers | Study 1: Examining the relationship between leader affective presence, team information-sharing and innovation.Study 2: Examining the incremental effect of leader affective presence. | Study 1 and 2: Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys | Study 1: leader positive affective presence, leader negative affective presence, team information-sharing.Study 2: leader positive affective presence, leader negative affective presence, team information-sharing, leadership behaviour, leader relational transparency. |
| Madrid et al. (2018) | 899 team members, 99 leaders | Exploring team members’ perceptions of leader interpersonal emotion regulation as a process that explains how leader affective presence is related to team member behaviour | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Leader affective presence, team members’ perception of leader emotion regulation, perceived teamness, team members’ affect, team member-leader interaction, team-level interpersonal citizenship behaviour, leaders’ personality traits. |
| Peña-González et al. (2021) | 283 workers | Testing the relation between work history, organisational social capital, perceived organisational prestige, perceived employability and career satisfaction. | Cross-sectional with a non-probabilistic sample. Self-reported surveys. | Perceived employability, organisational social capital, organisational prestige, career satisfaction, organisational identification |
| Pradenas et al. (2021) | 75 managers | Exploring the relationship between personal well-being work satisfaction, and family satisfaction. | Mixed method methodology. | Personal well-being, job satisfaction, family satisfaction |
| Saracini et al. (2022) | 18 workers. | Testing physical exercise as a tool to improve positive individual outcomes, and reduce negative individual outcomes. | Experimental design with a within-subjects pre- and post-treatment structure, and pre-post measurements | Experimental design with a within-subjects pre- and post-treatment structure, and pre-post measurements |
| Unanue et al. (2021a) | Workers divided into 3 waves: T1=1,841; T2=979; T3=700 | Testing the prospective negative relationship between the dispositional gratitude of workers and materialism | A three-wave longitudinal design | Materialism at Work, Gratitude at Work |
| Unanue et al. (2021b) | Workers divided into 3 waves: T1=735; T2=282; T3=288 | Exploring the relationship between organisational citizenship behaviours and three models of happiness | A three-wave longitudinal design | A three-wave longitudinal design |
| Unanue et al. (2017) | Workers divided into 3 studies and three waves.Study 1: T1=636; T2=268; T3=187Study 2: T1=725; T2=275; T3=274Study 3: T1=703; T2=263; T3=258. | Testing the relationship between job and life satisfaction | Longitudinal design | Study 1: Job, life satisfaction.Study 2: Job, life, need satisfaction. Study 3: Job, life, need life satisfaction. |
| Veloso-Besio et al. (2019a) | 92 workers from health public service. 15 supervisors and 77 employees. | Test the effectiveness of positive psychology and social skills-based intervention. | A quasi-experimental design with control group | Life and job satisfaction |
| Veloso-Besio et al. (2019b) | 92 workers from health public service. 15 supervisors and 77 employees | Test the effectiveness of positive psychology and social skills-based intervention | A quasi-experimental design with control group | Work Motivation, organizational climate. |
4.2. POB Research
Based on the POB framework (see Figure 1), we identified just one study ( Bargsted et al., 2019) that informed a mediational relationship between self-efficacy and job satisfaction through task and social characteristics as job design characteristics. The authors reported that self-efficacy is positively related to work design characteristics and job satisfaction. When job design characteristics are considered, self-efficacy is not related to job satisfaction significantly. This demonstrates that task and social characteristics fully mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and job satisfaction ( Bargsted et al., 2019).
4.3. Positive Organizational Research
This SLR classified six out of 19 articles according to the POS (five articles) and POB (one article) criteria, as mentioned before. The thirteen remaining articles did not meet the POS and POB theoretical criteria; however, they were included in the analysis because positive organizational and individual resources were incorporated somehow as study variables.
Thereby, two studies have considered organizational outcomes as antecedent variables for positive individual outcomes. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Acuna-Hormazabal et al. (2021) reported that organizational support has a significant and positive relationship with engagement. Therefore, organizational support may have protective support for employees, even in uncertain cotexts such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Another study conducted by Pradenas et al. (2021) reported that job satisfaction, both extrinsic and intrinsic, is a significant predictor of employee well-being. Furthermore, family conditions, including the family's ability to cope with stress and the family's ability to share positive experiences, are significant predictors of employee well-being. Hierarchically, the predictors for employee well-being are family conditions and external and internal job satisfaction.
In addition, seven studies have considered the relationship between organizational outcomes and individual outcomes. Unanue et al. (2017) reported that job satisfaction predicts an increase in life satisfaction, which in turn predicts an increase in job satisfaction. The authors explain that both variables create a virtuous circle between the organizational and individual variables. However, the association between job and life satisfaction may be spurious, the basic needs satisfaction variables could have an effect as a third variable. When this variable is included, the relationship between job and life satisfaction becomes non-significant. Thus, the need for satisfaction plays a key role in this process. On another hand, Veloso-Besio et al. (2019a) reported that leadership influences job and life satisfaction. Employees whose supervisors received an intervention program based on social skills and positive psychology have higher levels of job and life satisfaction rather than employees whose supervisors did not participate in this intervention program. Furthermore, Veloso-Besio et al. (2019b) described similar results: employees whose supervisors received an intervention program based on social skills and positive psychology have better indicators to face the effects of resistance to organizational change on work motivation and organizational climate in comparison to employees whose supervisors did not participate in this intervention program. These two studies have proved the efficiency of social skills and positive psychology-based programs to enhance the selected dependent variables.
Additionally, Madrid et al. (2016) described that the leader's affective presence is relevant to explaining creative communication ideas in work teams. Higher levels of leader positive affective presence are associated with the likelihood of team members sharing creative ideas, over and above the influence of leaders' affect. On the contrary, lower levels of leader positive affective presence are associated with a high likelihood of team members withholding creative ideas. In the same research vein, Madrid et al. (2016) reported that the leader's affective presence is positively related to innovation-related behavior in teams. Thus, the leader's affective presence has an impact on information sharing. Furthermore, Madrid et al. (2018) proposed that the leader's emotional presence is related to team members' perceptions of their use of interpersonal emotional regulation, which is related to team members' interpersonal civic behavior. In other words, a leader's positive emotional presence is positively related to the leader's use of emotion-enhancing interpersonal affect regulation and, thus, to greater civic behavior within the team. Another study ( Madrid & Patterson, 2020) reported that positive affect mediates the positive association of autonomy to schedule employees' work with implementing novel ideas. This mediation depends on the degree of job problem-solving demands; thus, the positive relationship between time control and positive affect is stronger for employees dealing with and solving complex problems in their jobs. The authors explain that time control is a job resource that reminds employees that options to satisfy their autonomy are available.
Two studies considered exploring individual outcomes as antecedent variables. Juyumaya (2022) reported a positive impact of employee psychological empowerment on task performance, which is partially mediated by work engagement. Age is a significant moderator of the mediation effect. Following the job demands-resources theory, the study results proved that psychological empowerment is a personal resource that can benefit the integration of psychological empowerment and work engagement. On the other hand, Madrid (2020) proposed that employees who use emotion-regulation strategies to improve their emotions increase their experience of positive impacts at work, whereas behaviors designed to exacerbate their emotions have the same consequences and negative consequences. Positive affect increases the likelihood of promotive voice behavior. Emotional regulation is an individual factor involved in constructing positive emotional experiences.
Finally, two studies from different fields of research have proposed interesting conclusions. From the field of visual research in management, Gonzalez-Suhr et al. (2019) proposed that the visual aesthetics of the workplace are positively related to job crafting and affective organizational commitment. This study has proposed an interesting relationship in which employees who have a higher pleasant tend to have sensory experience regarding physical labor settings, proactive working behaviors, and affective organizational commitment. On another hand, from the field of physical exercise and psychology, Saracini et al. (2022) suggested that physical exercise is an effective strategy to enhance positive emotions, such as excitement and happiness, and reduce negative ones, such as anxiety for employees suffering non-communicable chronic disease. The authors proposed that the application of a short physical exercise program could have positive effects on employee psychological well-being and reduce psychosocial occupational risk.
4.4. Study design
Most of the identified studies were cross-sectional surveybased studies (10 studies). This finding is consistent with previous international meta-analyses and literature reviews, which have gathered information and synthesized all relevant research to examine positively oriented organizational research ( Chan, 2019; Loghman et al., 2023). These designs are useful to examine a wide range of variables within a sizeable number of participants ( Jackson, 2012), and they can be used across large populations and explore differences between them ( Mayers, 2013), as the studies that we have identified. Additionally, a mixed-method design study ( Pradenas et al., 2021) was identified. The benefits of this method are leveraging the strengths of one method to deal with the weakness of another set of methods ( McCrudden et al., 2021), which provides a broader perspective than monomethod designs ( Molina Azorín & Cameron, 2010). Furthermore, two quasi-experimental designs ( Veloso-Besio et al., 2019a; Veloso-Besio et al., 2019b) were identified. These designs can facilitate causal inferences while maintaining internal and external validity without disrupting daily life through invasive interventions ( Grant & Wall, 2009).
Besides the methodological features of these three types of designs (cross-sectional, mixed method, and quasi-experimental), we proposed that conducting longitudinal and experimental research designs for positive organizational research is even more crucial considering the state of the art of positive organizational research in Chile. As such, five identified studies used a longitudinal design ( Madrid, 2020; Madrid et al., 2020; Unanue et al., 2021a; Unanue et al., 2021b; Unanue et al., 2017). According to Avey et al. (2008), these designs may provide advantages to developing positive organizational research, including allowing the researcher to model time as an independent variable, distinguish variables in which researchers may expect more (or less) within-individual variance over time, examining the order of change in response patterns, and monitoring interventions to determine length effects. Finally, one experimental design ( Saracini et al., 2022) was identified. These designs are useful to continue developing positive organizational research because they allow researchers to infer causality and determine patterns between variables ( Avey et al., 2008). However, according to Podsakoff and Podsakoff (2019), despite the advantages of experimental designs in organizational research, these designs are still relatively underutilized.
4.5. Conclusion and Future Implications
Positive organizational psychology was developed two decades ago under two central theoretical paradigms (POB and POS). However, local research focusing on positive individual outcomes related to the labor context and positive organizational outcomes has gained limited attention compared to international research. As such, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive SLR of the current state of the art of positive organizational psychology research in Chile and to guide future research in the field.
This review showed that most of the studies had researched positively related variables to organizational research, with fewer studies exploring POS variables and just one study exploring POB variables. Moreover, the focus of the studies was mostly on exploring positive variable outcomes and the relationship between them, which are similar to previous international results. However, this SLR also demonstrated that much fewer studies were focused on exploring the antecedents and moderators of these positive variables. As such, there is a significant opportunity for future studies to focus more on the antecedents and outcomes of positive organizational or individual variables, as well as the moderators of such relationships.
The results of this SLR showed that most of the local positive organizational psychology research has followed a cross-sectional design, which is particularly useful for conducting exploratory research and providing initial evidence about a topic of interest that deserves attention. However, these designs cannot draw causal relationships between predictor and criterion variables due to the lack of temporal elements in the research design. This lack of longitudinal or experimental studies might not be an exclusive local issue due to this methodological tendency that has been reported in previous international reviews (see Chan, 2019). Thus, we identify the need for conducting future longitudinal research to address causality in the reported relations within local populations.
The results of this SLR also demonstrated variables such as leadership, job performance, and labor satisfaction, concentrating great research attention on the Chilean positive organizational psychology research. This leads to interesting conclusions and possibilities to continue developing these lines of research. However, most of the POB and POS variables are mostly not considered by the local research. Furthermore, their relationship with related labor variables is scarce. Future research must consider the POB and POS variables, such as PsyCap and flourishing, respectively, and their relationship with desirable organizational outcomes, such as employee psychological well-being.
It is relevant to point out that some studies reported in this SLR may be considered "salami slicing phenomena", which refers to the splitting of data derived from a single research idea into multiple smaller publishable studies or slices ( Karlsson & Beaufils, 2013). This practice is admissible when large research is so extensive that it involves several research groups; as a result, multiple publications are justified to convey the overall impact of the research ( Sasaki & Tan, 2018). This practice has ethical considerations and needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis, as such, blanket recommendations are difficult to deliver ( Menon & Muraleedharan, 2016). Therefore, researchers may need to bear in mind this ethical issue for further research.
Finally, this research has revealed that the SLR methodology is uncommon in organizational research and lacks methodological protocols. We focused on this gap by developing the research using essential sequential stages and following the PRISMA-P guideline. Additionally, explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria and a transparent approach to collecting the data were considered to avoid bias by selecting inappropriate studies. Lastly, the MMAT was used to appraise the research selected critically. This SLR was built on a reliable methodological technique. Given the advantage of SLRs with a reliable protocol, we propose that conducting more of these studies in organizational research is essential to building strong academic knowledge. Therefore, we proposed future research about the state of the art of positive organizational psychology research in different Latin American countries or even more by considering Latin America as a whole might be interesting for local researchers.
4.6. Limitations
This SLR aimed to collect and synthesize all relevant peer-reviewed research examining the state of the art of positive organizational psychology research in Chile. However, applications of the exclusion and inclusion criteria led to some limitations of the study. The following limitations should be considered when interpreting the results of this SLR. First, the relatively limited number of records meeting inclusion criteria and the studies' methodological differences restricted any possibility of comparing the findings or developing a meta-analysis. Second, the review was limited to published peer-revie‐wed articles, excluding grey literature. Grey literature refers to informally published articles not indexed by major academic databases usually attributed to governments and industries ( Osayande & Ukpebor, 2012). Future reviews could be enhanced by selectively including grey literature, using new keywords, and searching different databases to expand the range of the evidence examined.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
FUNDING
The authors declare no funding sources