The Performativity of Positivity in Organisations: A Qualitative Investigation

Positivity is widely promoted and associated with beneficial outcomes such as wellbeing and performance, yet research so far has prioritised its outcomes and feeling- and display-rule framings over how positivity is enacted as an organisational norm. Using a performativity lens, this study examines what organisational positivity utterances say, how they work, and what uptake they elicit. Guided by sensitising performativity concepts and abductive approach, we iteratively analyse positivity utterances in data from 19 semi-structured interviews incorporating vignette discussions with employees, managers, and HR and Communications informants in UK and US organisations, alongside 27 organisational documents. We develop a typology of organisational positivity utterances and find that positivity in organisations is typically constatively thin and display-oriented, yet performatively effective due to the recognisability and omnipresence of its forms rather than definitional clarity or consistent strategic intent. Positivity achieves formative efficacy through polymodal iterative recurrence of recognisable forms, and authority sources, generating ambient uptake characterised by pragmatic, display-oriented enactment without internalisation, sometimes intensifying into defensive non-negativity. In parallel, individuals engage in constructive resignification, articulating “genuine” positivity grounded in personally salient practices and role-model behaviours, which enriches the norm’s constative content while remaining largely unrecognised organisationally. Our study contributes to performativity research, extends research on sociocultural norms in organisations, and reorients positivity scholarship towards the mechanisms through which positivity is normalised, reproduced, and variably inhabited.