MBA2002: Positive Psychology for Business

This course provides a foundation in positive psychology and explores the science and practice of authentic happiness theory and well-being theory. Positive psychology is the scientific exploration of human strength and virtue as opposed to human weakness and suffering; it includes an examination of people’s desire for a happy and meaningful life. We will explore what well-being is, what gets in the way of well-being, what we can do to increase and nurture it in our own lives and organizational settings. The focus will be on cultivating greater positive emotion, enhancing resilience skills, and examining the strengths and virtues that underpin well-being, such as gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, social and emotional intelligence, humor, courage, and integrity. The course encourages acquisition of knowledge, development of skills, as well as meaningful changes in students’ personal and professional lives. This course prepares students to understand and manage the relationship of individual well-being to well-being in organizational settings and to apply leadership and management strategies to enhance organizational performance and sustainability, enhance motivation and commitment, and combat dysfunctional conflict and stress. Students will learn about emerging applications of positive psychology in organizations, as well as technology and systems that have been shown to increase organizational effectiveness by enhancing employee engagement and well-being.