Groups of scholars interested in a variety of research topics gather regularly for discussion and support. The Center for Positive Organizations hosts profile pages for several of these research microcommunities associated with Positive Organizational Scholarship. We encourage all research microcommunities to share information that makes it easier to spark connections and collaborations across our growing field of inquiry.

Each of the research microcommunities listed below has a specialized focus and its own forms of engagement with members. The Center for Positive Organizations does not formally run or mandate these research communities. We invite you to visit the profile pages to learn more about each research microcommunity and to connect directly with its members. 

If you would like to feature your research microcommunity as part of our community profiles, please complete and submit this Research Microcommunity Application.

Meaning at Work

The Meaning microcommunity was born in December 2003 at a POS Conference in a working session on meaning, when several scholars interested in meaning in work and organizations came together and decided to meet up again to talk about their research. In May 2004 the first May Meaning Meeting was held at the University of Michigan, and a meeting has been held each year since then. Faculty and doctoral students from across the country gather to share their research and gain a better understanding of how employees experience meaning in and at work. The group has yielded new collaborations and exchanges of ideas among an ever-growing set of active researchers.

Meaning at Work profile

Positive Relationships at Work

The Positive Relationships at Work (PRW) microcommunity is a community of scholars dedicated to the research, practice, and teaching of positive relationships in the workplace. The PRW microcommunity builds on the work assembled in "Exploring Positive Relationships at Work" (Dutton and Ragins, 2007). This edited volume brought together a select group of leading organizational scholars for the purpose of developing a foundation-setting book on positive relationships at work. This volume builds a solid foundation for this promising area of scholarly inquiry and offers a multidisciplinary exploration of how relationships at work become a source of growth, vitality, learning and generative states of human and collective flourishing. Members of the PRW microcommunity are interested in:

  1. Studying how relationships at work can be a source of individual and collective growth, learning, and flourishing.
  2. Identifying the conditions, contexts, and behaviors that enable the creation and maintenance of human connections in the workplace.
  3. Building mutually supportive, positive relationships with others in the academic community.

Positive Relationships at Work profile