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Purpose

Utilising employee strengths contributes to humanising organisations. However, the current concept of strengths has evolved from the domain of social work, advanced by personality and positive psychologists and adopted in management. The trait-like conceptualisation of strengths conceptualised by psychologists is of lesser relevance to organisations as it discounts the significance of contextual factors for manifesting employee strengths. This study traces the evolution of strengths conceptualisation, identifies gaps in its relevance to organisations, employs the concept relation method for developing a conceptualisation of employee strengths at work and proposes a framework for management development that predicts improved employee engagement and performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The study utilises the Cochrane method for carrying out a systematic conceptual review and shortlists 19 articles from an initial selection of 430 articles. Drawing insights from the 19 reviewed studies, the study deploys the concept relation method to conceptualise the concept of employees’ strengths at work (ESAW) that has a higher relevance for management and organisational behaviour. Thereafter, utilising ESAW, the study proposes a conceptual framework that has huge implications for improving employee engagement and performance by carrying out effective management development. The conceptual framework additionally serves as a springboard for future empirical research.

Findings

The conceptualisation of human strengths in extant literature favours a trait-based conceptualisation advanced by personality psychologists. Concepts borrowed from other domains have lesser relevance than those indigenously developed in the field of management. Incorporating the recent empirical evidence highlighting the importance of factoring in key contextual attributes for the strengths to manifest at work, this study develops a new higher-order construct of ESAW that factors in personal as well as situational variables. Thereafter, the study suggests a conceptual framework for effectively carrying out management development by utilizing the new construct of ESAW.

Practical implications

Deployment of ESAW will contribute to humanise organisations, improve employee engagement and performance. The construct of ESAW is relevant to practice as it has evolved from the domain of organisation science, unlike the earlier trait-based conceptualisation of strength that emerged in personality psychology. The conceptual framework proposed in the study can be utilised by practitioners for carrying out effective management development.

Social implications

Any contribution to increasing employee engagement predicts increasing social capital. If employees are happy at work, their productivity increases. Furthermore, higher engagement and productivity at work creates a spiral of positivity that transcends the working life of an employee. Hence, the study has huge social implications at times when the social fabric is stretched due to multiple demands on an employee.

Originality/value

Constructs developed in other fields and adopted in management have less relevance than those evolved indigenously in the domain of management. The systematic conceptual review of the concept of human strengths reveals a gap in its relevance to organisations. The study develops a new concept of ESAW that has higher relevance for organisational behaviour and holds the promise of humanising organisations. The next originality of the study lies in proposing a conceptual framework for carrying out effective management development that predicts higher employee engagement and performance. The methodological originality lies in utilising the systematic conceptual review for developing a new concept.