The healthy organization construct: A review and research agenda

Work plays an important role in one's life for many reasons. It provides us with economic, social, and personal satisfaction and accounts for a substantial percentage of our waking hours. But in today's knowledge-driven economy, organization of work has been changing at a warp speed as a consequence of economic, social and technological aspects of changes brought down by globalization and liberalization worldwide. While this situation has eliminated some risks of the earlier industrial era, it is introducing others. In such a dynamic business environment, where can business leaders and managers find competitive advantage? It lies in balancing people and performance goals. This is the line of approach for healthy organization research that examines organizational context with regard to: People, work organization, management practices, employee wellbeing and performance. The healthy organization concept proposes that along with the profits, employee's well being should also be an important goal for organizations. In this paper, the researcher undertakes an extensive review of literature in the mainstream business literature and establishes the agenda for healthy organization research among other research paradigms.