Kim Cameron has dedicated over 45 years of work to research, teaching, and practice that energizes organizations to achieve extraordinarily positive performance. Kim is renowned for research that demonstrates the power of virtuous actions – including forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and compassion – and their profound impact on an organization’s success.
As the William Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education at the University of Michigan, Kim is also a co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the Michigan Ross School of Business. Kim’s leadership in the domain of Positive Organizational Scholarship has played a central role in the growth of the field and his tireless dedication to teaching, writing, and supporting transformative business practice has been essential to the success of Positive Organizational Scholarship as a recognized global focus for both scholarship and practice in management and organizations.
“We are honored to name this award for outstanding research in Positive Organizational Scholarship after someone who has been central in establishing and growing this field of inquiry. Many of the scholars and global business leaders who use ideas from Positive Organizational Scholarship on a daily basis have learned those ideas from Kim Cameron.” – Monica Worline, Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations
The impact of Kim’s research stretches from examining the power of organizational virtuousness to issues of downsizing and key factors in organizational effectiveness, culture, and leadership excellence. Kim has published more than 130 academic articles and 16 scholarly books. He was recognized as among the top 10 organizational sciences scholars whose work has been most frequently downloaded from Google.
“I am particularly glad to accept the honor of this award given in my name,” says Kim, “because I believe so deeply in the need for continued research exploring central questions about how organizations accomplish excellent outcomes while simultaneously creating human well-being. There is more to learn, and I hope this award will inspire researchers to continue to ask and answer these questions.”
The Kim Cameron Award for Outstanding Research in Positive Organizational Scholarship will be presented at the 2025 Positive Organizational Scholarship Research Conference, hosted by the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business on May 15-16, 2025.
If you have ever been touched and inspired by Kim’s work, we invite you to join us in honoring his impact by becoming part of this legacy award given in his name. Donations will directly support the development and administration of this prestigious award.
We invite organizational researchers to nominate outstanding research that they believe warrants consideration for this award. Nominations will be accepted between November 15, 2024, and January 15, 2025.
The article suggests an unstated belief that fear makes you money is likely the biggest driver of cutthroat cultures. To dispel this notion, the article highlights research by Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) co-founder Kim S. Cameron and Positive Links Speaker Series guest Emma Seppälä that shows pressure and stress don’t drive financial success. In fact, they can be costly in terms of health care expenses, disengagement, and high turnover.
“Research shows that workplace stress leads to an increase of almost 50 percent in voluntary turnover,” Cameron and Seppälä note.
Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education at the University of Michigan.
Seppälä is Science Director at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University.
A recent book by Ross School of Business Professor Emeritus Kim Cameron summarizes his many years of research into the power of positive energy, particularly in the business world.
Positively Energizing Leadership: Virtuous Actions and Relationships that Create High Performance examines how individuals are attracted to and flourish in the presence of positive energy. Grounded in data and real-life experiences, the book explores how leaders’ virtuous behaviors can generate extraordinary performance in their organization as well as improve the lives of those who work there.
“Empirical evidence confirms that exposing people to positive energy, helping employees flourish personally, and fostering a sense of value and meaningfulness at work almost always pay off in higher levels of productivity and effectiveness,” Cameron noted in a recent interview with Forbes.
Organizations that apply the lessons from the book can experience greater innovation, higher profits, increased employee engagement and retention, and improved customer loyalty. Specific points addressed in the book include:
What is meant by positive energy and why all humans have an inherent inclination toward it
The importance of positively energizing leadership in organizations and individuals
The key attributes of positive energizers
Practical behaviors and practices that foster positive energy and outcomes
How organizations have capitalized on positive energy and what they did to achieve outstanding performance
Methods for measuring positive energy in leaders
Practices that foster positive energy and create meaningful and lasting transformation
This article was originally published by Michigan Ross.
Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) co-founder Kim S. Cameron discusses the power of positive, virtuous leadership in a pair of interviews with Forbes.
“Empirical evidence confirms that exposing people to positive energy, helping employees flourish personally, and fostering a sense of value and meaningfulness at work almost always pay off in higher levels of productivity and effectiveness,” Cameron says. “… Rather than denigrating and crushing initiative and opportunities for personal growth, the goal of positive leadership is to help people dream more, learn more, do more, and become more. It is the opposite of manipulation.”
Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education at the University of Michigan.
Each ‘Learn More’ link below is an individual interview.
“People who are positively energizing in terms of relationships help other people flourish,” Cameron says. “They are life-giving to people. They help other people feel valued, uplifted. They help unleash potential and talent in other people. As opposed to being selfish, being in control, wanting to make sure I get my way, making sure people follow me, and so on, which is so typical of normal leadership.”
In a related interview with the Leadership Freak blog, Cameron discusses how the virtuousness that underpins positively energizing leadership can be used to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion. He also offers actions to help build positive workplace cultures.
Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education at the University of Michigan.
Positively Energizing Leadership: Virtuous Actions and Relationships That Create High Performance
With Kim Cameron
All individuals are inherently attracted to and flourish in the presence of positive energy, a principle known in biology as heliotropism. How can we use this evidence-backed science in our organizations, and furthermore, how can leaders achieve extraordinary results through the positive energy generated by virtuous interactions with employees?
We’ll learn how generosity, compassion, gratitude, trustworthiness, forgiveness, and kindness are tightly linked to extraordinary organizational outcomes like greater innovation, higher profits, and increased engagement and retention.
If you’re ready to learn how to become a more successful leader and see the impact that positive energy has on your team, then you don’t want to miss this webinar!
Positive organizational scholarship (POS) is the study of that which is positive, flourishing, and life-giving in organizations. It considers the processes and dynamics that occur in and through organizations, in contrast to a focus on individual attitudes and emotions. Positive organizational scholarship has rarely been investigated in institutions of higher education, and this chapter provides two case studies that illustrate its relevance in that setting. The chapter first provides a discussion of the unique characteristics of POS compared to, for example, positive psychology and other approaches to the positive, and it highlights the importance of positive organizational dynamics in accounting for high levels of performance in organizations. The chapter describes how these dynamics have been successfully applied within two institutions of higher education to benefit not only traditional markers of success such as student achievement and wellbeing, but also the collective performance of the overall institution. The specific practices that led to extraordinarily successful outcomes are discussed, and they provide evidence that, in addition to the effects of positive psychology on individuals—especially students—the outcomes of entire institutions can be substantially affected in positive directions by adopting positive practices.
This practical guide, the first to show how leaders can achieve extraordinary results through the positive energy generated by virtuous interactions with employees, is written by one of the giants in the study of positive leadership.
This book reveals one of the most important but frequently ignored factors that lead to spectacular performance in organizations. Kim Cameron, a true pioneer in the study of positive leadership, offers validated scientific evidence that all individuals are inherently attracted to and flourish in the presence of positive energy, a principle known in biology as heliotropism. Further, he shows that the positive relational energy generated by leaders’ virtuous behaviors—such as generosity, compassion, gratitude, trustworthiness, forgiveness, and kindness—is tightly linked to extraordinary organizational outcomes like greater innovation, higher profits, and increased engagement and retention.
Cameron has not written a feel-good tome about the power of positive thinking, “happiology,” or unbridled optimism. This research-based explanation shows how to achieve performance that exceeds expectations. He provides practical suggestions, assessments, and exercises showing how leaders can improve their own positive energy and increase positive relational energy in their organizations. Positively Energizing Leadership is a major contribution to the theory and practice of leadership.
Kim Cameron
Co-Founder and Core Faculty, Center for Positive Organizations
William Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration; Professor Emeritus of Higher Education, University of Michigan
About the Session
It is not unusual for executives, managers, or people who are facing difficult challenges to dismiss positive practices as soft and lacking credibility. When conditions are stressful, when the pressure is on, when anxiety is high, just thinking happy thoughts or emphasizing the bright side is seen as disingenuous and a deflection from real-world concerns—a feel-good side-trip.
In this webinar, Professor Kim Cameron will provide empirical evidence that positively energizing leadership and positive practices produce extraordinarily successful bottom-line performance in organizations. The presentation references a new book, Positively Energizing Leadership (August 2021), which highlights the practices that energize employees and produce extraordinarily positive results.
About Cameron
Kim Cameron became interested in Positive Organizational Scholarship as a result of a decade of studying the consequences of organizational downsizing. Organizations characterized by virtuous practices—for example, forgiveness, compassion, integrity, trust, optimism, kindness—tended to avoid the declining performance associated with downsizing.
Observing this effect led to a variety of empirical studies on the effects of positive leadership and organizational virtuousness on organizational performance.
Cameron’s research has been identified as among the top 10 social science scholars in the world in being downloaded from Google. Reports of the work have appeared in 15 scholarly books and more than 140 academic articles. The latest books include Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship (Oxford University Press), Positive Leadership (Berrett Koehler), and Practicing Positive Leadership (Berrett Koehler).
Interested in attending this webinar and not yet a Consortium member? Contact us to learn more at cpo-consortium@umich.edu.
This Research Handbook identifies how resilience has evolved as a critical theoretical concept in the organizational sciences. International resilience scholars conceptualize and explore the various ways resilience can be embedded in theory and practice, offering new and updated perspectives on the importance of resilience in multiple contexts.
Sections cover the nature of resilience at employee, team and organizational levels; the processes and dynamics of resilience in different contexts; and the antecedents and outcomes of these forms of resilience. Chapters provide case studies and theoretical frameworks to bring clarity, covering stress and coping, diversity and resilience, crisis management, employee behaviour, continuity and development.
Organizational studies scholars interested in advancing theory and practice of resilience will find this Research Handbook includes a range of important considerations for the field. With application of several different levels of analysis, chapters discussing stress and coping will also appeal to those from a social psychology background.
Editors:
Edward H. Powley, Graduate School of Defense Management, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California
Brianna Barker Caza, Bryan School of Business and Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, US
Arran Caza, Bryan School of Business and Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, US
Contributors:
Elena Antonacopoulou, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Scott Baker, BetterUp, United States
Mehri E. Baloochi, University of Manitoba, Canada
Michelle A. Barton, Bentley University, United States
Thomas E. Becker, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, United States
Thomas W. Britt, Clemson University, United States
Why leadership approaches rooted in service, inclusion, and authenticity will replace command-and-control models
Strategies to dismantle, disrupt, decolonize (and rebuild!) obsolete organizations and structures
How to build better relationships and create stronger teams
How to care for yourself and your team to build resilience and encourage innovation
What it means to be a leader who serves, unifies, and empowers others
Each session includes a leadership exercise, practice or technique, and practical tools you can start using immediately
Learn groundbreaking new leadership models that will lead to unparalleled results
Get practical tools and exercises to shift perceptions and build support in your organization
Develop skills to build resilience, adapt to change, and cultivate innovation and growth
Maximize your impact with approaches that create alignment and awaken purpose in your team
Discover actionable, proven strategies to build inclusive, just, and equitable organizations
Learn from Kim Cameron, Robert Quinn, Ken and Margie Blanchard, Sonya Renee Taylor, Tami Simon, Mary-Frances Winters, Otto Scharmer, Edgar Villanueva, and more…
During hard times, it’s easy to focus on negative thoughts or bad news. Highlighting what we’re grateful for helps us not only weather challenges, but thrive. Kim Cameron, the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations, shares evidence of gratitude’s positive impact on students and employees.
This video is part of a series produced for the Thrive in Trying Times Teach-Out. Learn more about the teach-out and watch other videos here.
