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Positive psychology meets real estate : The positive built workplace environment
Corporate Real Estate Journal,
8
(2),
136-153
(2018)
Abstract
This paper explores the complex relationship between the workplace environment and the organisation’s and individual’s experience through the lens of positive psychology. Drawing on positive psychology concepts and research conducted at International Towers in Sydney, the paper introduces the concept of the positive built workplace environment (PBWE). This is defined as a built environment that is designed and operated in a way that provides the optimal physical and psychological conditions and resources to enable employees to consistently deliver high performance and maintain personal and organisational well-being. A PBWE is one that promotes sustainable high performance and thus promotes both high performance and employee well-being. The current authors believe that the PBWE can provide the solutions to many of the problems facing those in the commercial real estate industry. Such problems include those associated with increased pace of change and complexity in the world of work, and the fact that organisations and employees are demanding more from their workplace environments. In addition, the increased use of activity-based flexible offices and coworking spaces demands a new style of relationship between corporate property managers and their individual and corporate tenants. Drawing on Maslow’s Hierarchy and Self-Determination Theory, the paper presents several models and measurement tools that can be freely used to help commercial real estate agents, property managers and developers utilise the principles of the PBWE and help create better developed positive workplace environments — environments that will support future organisational and individual growth and development in a humanistic, sustainable fashion.
Keywords: positive psychology; workplace well-being; positive leadership; built environment; flourishing; positive organisational scholarship
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Sean A. O’Connor is a practitioner, researcher and academic within the fields of organisational development, positive psychology and leadership coaching. Sean brings an evidence-based analytical, collaborative and solution-focused approach to helping others to develop. Sean has worked with senior executives and leadership teams to better deal with complexity in the workplace and to shift the climate through organisational change projects. Sean teaches as part of the Masters of Coaching Psychology at the University of Sydney and supervises research into coaching, leadership and organisational change. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and written a number of book chapters on coaching, change and positive psychology. Sean’s PhD research used social network analysis to examine the systemic impact of leadership coaching on the broader organisation winning numerous awards.
Anthony M. Grant is globally recognised as a key pioneer of coaching psychology and evidencebased approaches to coaching. In January 2000, Anthony established the world’s first Coaching Psychology Unit at Sydney University, where he is the unit’s director and a professor of coaching psychology. He has over 100 coaching-related publications. He is a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University and Henley Business School and an associate fellow at the Säid School of Business, Oxford University. In 2007, Anthony was awarded the British Psychological Society Award for outstanding professional and scientific contribution to coaching psychology. In 2009, he was awarded the ‘Vision of Excellence Award’ from the Institute of Coaching at Harvard for his pioneering work in helping develop a scientific foundation to coaching. He was a 2014 scientist in residence for the ABC — the Australian national broadcaster, and in 2016 was awarded the Australian Psychological Society ‘Workplace Excellence Award for Coaching and Leadership’. In 2017 he was awarded the Henley Business School Award for his contribution to coaching.
