When a happy worker is a productive worker: A preliminary examination of three models

The happy/productive worker thesis has long fascinated organizational scientists and practitioners alike. According to this thesis, happy employees exhibit higher levels of job-related performance behaviours than do unhappy employees. However, despite decades of study, support for this hypothesis remains equivocal. We propose that these inconsistent findings may be a consequence of the disparate manner in which happiness has been operationalized. To that end, the present two-year longitudinal field study provides the first opportunity to simultaneously examine the contributions of psychological well-being, job satisfaction and dispositional affect to job performance. While psychological well-being predicted job performance, the results failed to establish relations between job satisfaction and dispositional affect as predictors of job performance.