The POS Research Conference is an opportunity to share and advance empirical and theoretical research in the field of Positive Organizational Scholarship. This biennial gathering of scholars promotes research that inspires and enables leaders to build high-performing organizations that bring out the best in people.

Join us at the 2025 Positive Organizational Scholarship Research Conference, designed to promote research and teaching that inspires and advances the multidisciplinary field of POS. Convening a community of scholars that is engaged in inquiring and seeing through a positive lens on organizational scholarship, conference sessions will focus generally on new ways of seeing generative or positive processes in organizations, promoting human flourishing or thriving in organizational contexts, and cultivating life-giving or ennobling conditions for people, organizations, institutions, and societies. Given its broad, multidisciplinary, and multi-method foundations, we invite papers, presentations, roundtable discussions, and posters that focus on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods empirical research, theory building, intervention testing, pedagogical innovation, and engaged scholarship that addresses pressing issues in society.

A PDF version of the event program

Abstracts are welcome within a broad umbrella of ideas that may include, but are not limited to:

  • Generative, resourceful, or life-giving processes in organizations 
  • Holistic or healthy and health-promoting work-life interfaces
  • Growth and practices or processes of positive career or work development
  • Strengths, virtues, virtue ethics in organizations
  • Diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and equality in organizations
  • High-quality connections and positive relationships at work
  • Meaning and meaningfulness in work and organizations
  • Compassion, empathy, suffering, and resilience 
  • Positive identities and identity work
  • Generative perspectives on organizational and social change 
  • Energy, emotions, and promoting human thriving or flourishing
  • Ethics in organizations
  • Positive leadership

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

All scholars working in the broadly defined field of Positive Organizational Scholarship as defined above are invited to submit a 1-2 page, single-spaced abstract summarizing a paper or project and the intended contribution to this conference. (Submissions can exceed the 1-2 page length with references, tables, and figures. The page limit is just for text.) Abstracts should specify a desired contribution in one of these forms:

  • Empirical or theoretical research projects 
  • Important pedagogical approaches or teaching-related innovations grounded in the field of POS
  • Roundtable discussion topics that could be facilitated by a scholar, grounded in the field of POS and likely to foster connection and collaboration on specific subject areas
  • Poster presentations of early or emerging work

All abstracts will undergo review by a planning committee representing a multidisciplinary approach to the field. Reviewers will assist the planning committee in identifying and recommending abstracts for presentation in symposium-style sessions, breakout sessions, poster sessions, or roundtable discussion sessions at the conference. Accepted authors will be notified of reviewers’ recommendations and consulted to ensure the proper fit of their work within the conference format. Our aim is to enable a community-based approach to conference design that ensures a broad and rigorous base of work to be presented as well as robust spaces of engagement among participants to foster connection and collaboration.

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