Four well-being-performance patterns: personal and organizational antecedents and age as moderator

From its inception, the main goal of I/O psychology has been the promotion of well-being and performance, having as a main model the happy-productive worker thesis. Although, scholars have identified that people with high levels of well-being have stronger immune systems, are more altruistic, are better decision makers, have better interpersonal relationships, and are less likely to suffer coronary heart diseases (Boehm, Peterson, Kivimaki, & Kubzansky, 2011; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005; Staw & Barsade, 1993), organizational researchers have obtained rather disappointing results when linking well-being with performance. Meta-analytical studies have shown weak (around .17), moderate (around .30) and even spurious associations (Bowling, 2007; Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985; Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001). This has motivated and challenged researchers to revisit this thesis (e.g., Wright & Cropanzano, 2007; Zelenski, Murphy, & Jenkins, 2008). However, despite all the efforts, the happy-productive conundrum remains unsolved, setting important challenges. In this thesis, we approach to the study of those outcome variables from an integrative, heuristic, and expansive perspective. First, we understand well-being as a concept encompassing hedonic and eudaimonic constructs (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Second, we study job performance adopting a heuristic framework, and therefore, this might include task, contextual, adaptive/creative, or counterproductive performance (Koopmans et al., 2011). Third, we expand the boundaries of the classical happy-productive worker thesis, to study synergistic (happy-productive and unhappy-unproductive) and antagonistic patterns (happy-unproductive and unhappy-productive). Finally, we study well-being and job performance not in isolation, but embedded in a context where different elements related with the job, the person, the person-organization relation, and the organization, take place. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis is: to provide empirical evidence of four well-being-performance patterns i.e., happy-productive, unhappy-unproductive, happy-unproductive, and unhappy-productive, by attending some of the most enduring conceptualizations of well-being and performance, and to identify some of their antecedents and moderators. Specifically, we proposed 2 general research objectives, one related with the identification of the four patterns conceptualizing well-being and performance in sundry ways, and the second, to study some possible antecedents and moderator of such patterns. Three empirical studies that respond to them. The three empirical studies of this thesis provided empirical evidence of the four well-being-performance patterns, considering important conceptualizations of well-being and performance. Antagonistic patterns represented 15%, 36%, and 72% of the samples (Study 1, Study2, and Study 3, respectively. On the other hand, the three studies of this thesis identified some of the antecedents of the four well-being-performance patterns, considering aspects of the job (e.g., overqualification), the person (e.g., personal initiative or self-efficacy), the person-organization relation (e.g., the psychological contract fulfilment) and the organization (e.g., HR practices), an age as moderator.