Author(s)

Joshua Hollis, Mark Cogburn

Student Counseling Center, LSU Health Shreveport, Shreveport, USA.

Many organizational development perspectives and discussions adopt a medical or diagnostic viewpoint of organizational dysfunction, focusing heavily on the numerous deficiencies, mistakes, and other negative aspects of struggling organizations. While any organization has a fair share of problems to address, such an overarching focus on everything that is wrong with an organization can create a harmful cycle of pessimism, depression, and low energy that can be difficult to overcome. Positive Organization Scholarship (POS) practitioners, much like the skilled therapist, help organizations shift from a negative, limiting mindset into a positive, open mindset in order to facilitate positive change. This paper explores how cognitive reappraisal strategies common in psychotherapy could be used by POS practitioners to facilitate change and growth in the organizations they serve.

Organizational Development, Positive Organizational Scholarship, Psychotherapy, Reframing, Reappraisal, Stoic Philosophy

Hollis, J. and Cogburn, M. (2023) Positive Organizational Scholarship from a Psychotherapeutic Perspective. Open Journal of Psychiatry, 13, 67-72. doi: 10.4236/ojpsych.2023.132008.