Flourishing of information technology professionals : Effects on individual and organisational outcomes

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between flourishing and individual and organisational outcomes, including job satisfaction, organisational commitment, organisational citizenship behaviour, turnover intention and counterproductive behaviour. A convenience sample (N = 205) was taken of employees in information technology organisations in South Africa. A biographical questionnaire, the Mental Health Continuum Short Form, Job Satisfaction Scale, Organisational Commitment Scale, Turnover Intention Scale, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Scale and a Counterproductive Behaviour Scale were administered. Flourishing affected job satisfaction, organisational commitment, organisational citizenship behaviour and organisational commitment directly and indirectly. Job satisfaction had strong direct effects on organisational commitment (positive) and turnover intention (negative), and a moderate negative effect on counterproductive work behaviour. Flourishing affected turnover intention indirectly and negatively via organisational commitment.


Introduction
Organisations worldwide are challenged by the task of attracting and retaining talented employees (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008).In the light of the serious skills deficit and the prediction of a possible shortage of 29 027 information technology (IT) professionals for South Africa in 2015, the attraction and retention of IT professionals is a big challenge.Not only is there a global shortage of qualified candidates (Lowry, Turner & Fisher, 2006;Turner & Lowry, 2000), but also a high turnover of IT professionals (Moore & Burke, 2002;Roodt & Paterson, 2008).Voluntary employee turnover caused by high levels of job dissatisfaction is extremely costly (Lambert, Hogan & Barton, 2001), and can amount to 70% to 200% of an employee's annual salary (Price, 2001).Therefore, the shortage of qualified information technology staff and retention of talented employees are probably the biggest challenges facing information technology organisations (Gaylard, Sutherland & Viedge, 2005).
The challenge of attracting and retaining quality IT professionals should be approached from a strategic human resource management perspective (Armstrong, 2006).High commitment-high involvement management is one specific approach aimed at eliciting and supporting behaviour that is primarily self-regulated rather than controlled by sanctions and pressures external to employees.In the high commitment-high involvement approach, constructs such as job satisfaction (Price, 2001), organisational commitment (Torrington, Hall & Taylor, 2008), organisational citizenship behaviour (Robbins, Judge, Odendaal & Roodt, 2009), turnover intention (Armstrong, 2006) and counterproductive behaviour (Spector & Fox, 2005) are relevant.These constructs could be affected by the level of subjective well-being of employees (Bowling, Eschleman & Wang, 2010;Sparks, Faragher & Cooper, 2001), as employee and organisational well-being are both influenced by employees' personal strengths, but also by their interaction with their work environments (Bergh & Theron, 2012).Therefore, a balanced managerial approach towards utilising employees' strengths, but also addressing personal adjustment problems and work dysfunctions is paramount in enhancing optimal well-being (Bergh & Theron, 2012).Diener, Kesebir and Lucas (2008) define subjective wellbeing in terms of the judgment an individual makes over his or her own life and its events in three domains, namely cognitive (life and domain-specific satisfaction), positive and negative affective experiences.In contrast, Keyes (2005) takes a broader view towards well-being and distinguishes between three dimensions of subjective wellbeing, namely emotional well-being (which indicates hedonic well-being or "feeling well"), psychological wellbeing and social well-being (which indicate eudaimonic well-being or "functioning well").Lyubomirsky, King and Diener (2005) studied the benefits of frequent positive affect (i.e. the emotional dimension of flourishing) for success in multiple life domains.They found that the positive affectsuccess link existed not only because success leads to positive affect, but also because positive affect engenders success.Concerning the work context, cross-sectional being under the following sub-categories: emotional wellbeing, psychological well-being and social well-being (see Table 1).On the opposite continuum is languishing which can be defined as the absence of mental health.According to Keyes (2007), flourishing people are completely mentally healthy and function better than people with moderate mental health as well as those who are languishing.Flourishing is associated with good health, constructive coping, and positive organisational outcomes.Languishing is associated with health limitations and poor psychosocial functioning (Keyes, 2007;Keyes & Annas, 2009).Various theories could be used to understand the effects of flourishing on individual and organisational outcomes, namely the Broaden-and-Build (B&B) theory (Fredrickson, 2001), spillover and expansionist theories (Hecht & Boies, 2009) and part-whole theory (Bowling et al., 2010).
The B&B theory (Fredrickson, 1998) postulates that people who experience positive emotions, will intensify their personal resources, which will lead to well-being (Ouwencel, LeBlanc & Schaufeli, 2011).Flourishing individuals possess a wide scope of cognitive, physical and social possibilities, which together culminate in empirical and actual successes of a flourishing life (Fredrickson, 1998).Thus, an individual who feels well is more likely to function well, both psychologically and socially, which means meeting the criterion for positive mental health as flourishing.
According to spillover theory, positive and negative spillovers are expected to contribute both independently of each other as well as with contradictory consequences to the prediction of outcomes (Hecht & Boies, 2009).Employees who flourish experience positive feeling and functioning which will spill over to their work (Hecht & Boies, 2009).Consequently, flourishing employees will exhibit positive individual and organisational outcomes such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment, organisational citizenship behaviour, and less turnover intention and counterproductive behaviour (Bakker, Demerouti & Schaufeli, 2003;Harter, Schmidt & Hayes, 2002;Ouwencel et al., 2011).The expansionist theory suggests that participation in one specific role can increase the resources that individuals have for other roles.Bowling et al. (2010) refer to the part-whole theory (job satisfaction is regarded as a sub-dimension of subjective well-being) to explain the causal relationship of job satisfaction with subjective well-being, whereas the dispositional approach states that subjective well-being has a causal relationship with job satisfaction.Individuals who are subjectively well, a requirement for mental health as flourishing, are said to exhibit more job satisfaction than those who are not.Sverke, Hellgren and Näswall (2002) group psychological outcome variables according to proximal variables, which refer to outcomes that are affected directly, and distal variables which are affected indirectly because they develop over time or because they are mediated by proximal variables (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2007).Distal outcome effects seem to be weaker compared to proximal factors.Variables can also be grouped as those that have direct consequences for the individual and indirect consequences for the organisation, and those that are primarily of organisational concern (De Cuyper & De Witte, 2007).

Proximal and individual: Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to employees' attitudes and feelings toward their work.Job satisfaction is indicative of positive and favourable attitudes toward the job, whereas negative and unfavourable attitudes toward the job indicate job dissatisfaction (Armstrong, 2006).An employee with positive affect and life satisfaction (which are criteria for the emotional component of flourishing) will exhibit more job satisfaction (Connolly & Viswesvaran, 2000;Le Pine, Erez & Johnson, 2002;Thoresen, Kaplan, Barsky, Warren & de Chermont, 2003).Bowling et al. (2010) found positive relationships between job satisfaction and life satisfaction on the one hand, and positive affect and the absence of negative affect (both dimensions of emotional well-being) on the other.Personal resources can be linked to positive selfevaluations which relate to resilient behaviour, environmental mastery, and to achieving goals (which relates to having a purpose in life, i.e. psychological wellbeing); all of which strongly relate to job satisfaction (Judge, Van Vianen & De Pater, 2004).In their longitudinal studies, it was suggested that there was a stronger causal relationship from subjective well-being to job satisfaction than from job satisfaction to subjective well-being (Bowling et al., 2010).Therefore, individuals who are emotionally, psychologically and socially well will experience more job satisfaction than individuals who are not subjectively well.

Proximal and organisation: Organisational commitment
Organisational commitment refers to attachment to the organisation, goal attainment, identifying with the organisation, loyalty and trustworthiness towards the organisation (Harrison & Hubbard, 1998).According to Meyer and Allen (1997), employees who show strong affective commitment want to stay with the organisation as they are related to and identify with the organisation which enhances their involvement in organisational activities.Trimble (2006) found that job satisfaction predicted affective organisational commitment.Cohen (2003) states that the importance of organisational commitment as a research topic can be related to the fact that it provides a clearer understanding of the nature of the psychological process through which individuals master their environments and find purpose in life (psychological wellbeing).

Distal and organisation: Turnover intention
In a longitudinal study done on organisational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover amongst psychiatric technicians, it was reported that organisational commitment discriminated better between stayers and leavers than did the various components of job-satisfaction (Porter, Steers, Mowday & Boulian, 1974).Trimble (2006) showed that low affective organisational commitment leads to turnover intention.Research shows that an individual's level of organisational commitment is a better predictor of turnover than job satisfaction, explaining 34% of the variance (Robbins et al., 2009).According to Thatcher, Stepina and Boyle (2002), organisational commitment is the primary indicator of turnover intention.Rhoades, Eisenberger and Armeli (2001) found that positive work conditions increase affective commitment which in turn leads to low employee turnover.

Distal and organisation: Organisational citizenship behaviour
Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is defined as employee behaviour that contributes more to an organisation than the job basically requires (Lambert, 2006).OCB comprises four dimensions: helping (altruism), loyalty, advocacy, functional participation and obedience.Helping is the extent to which the individual offers actions to others; loyalty refers to identifying with or loyalty to the organisation (defending the organisation, being co-operative and serving the interests of the organisation); advocacy is behaviour aimed at others within the organisation, maintaining high standards, challenging others, suggesting change; whilst functional participation has a more personal focus, although still contributing towards organisational effectiveness (Coyle-Shapiro, 2002;Van Dyne, Graham & Dienesch, 1994).
Humanistic psychological theory proposes that a prosocial or altruistic orientation is the major motivator for all mankind.People find meaning through their unselfish, philanthropic acts towards others (Morgan & Farsides, 2008).Already in earlier studies job satisfaction showed a direct predictive path to altruism (Smith, Organ & Near, 1983).Altruism relates strongly to the dimension of positive social functioning of flourishing behaviour.Moore and Love (2005) state that information technology professionals show significantly lower OCB (e.g., assisting other employees learn a new software system, acting as informal mentors to new employees) than professionals in non-IT areas, which they attribute to perceptions of unfairness with regard to work overload.Job satisfaction is a major determinant of OCB (Robbins et al., 2009).Manifestation of OCB arising from job satisfaction has its theoretical foundation in Blau's (1964) social exchange theory.Blau describes social exchange as an open-stream of resource transactions by developing and supporting employee relationships founded in trust (Rousseau, 1998).Robbins et al. (2009) state that satisfied employees would be more likely to talk positively about the organisation, assist others and generally do more than expected in the line of duty (social well-being).When employees perceive that they are empowered by the organisation, i.e. by receiving the necessary resources, they will put in extra effort or do more than what is expected from them within the work environment (Organ, 1988).Bateman and Organ (1983) in their study indicated that job satisfaction has a significant and positive relationship with OCB, ranging from 0,19 to 0,25.
In a study of educators in Turkey, it was found that organisational citizenship behaviour is related to organisational commitment (Yilmaz & Cokluk-Bokeoglu, 2008).Le Pine et al. (2002) indicate that whereas past researchers (such as Organ, 1988) proposed the relation between OCB and organisational commitment not beyond utilising factor analysis, they used meta-analysis to demonstrate the strong relation between OCB and organisational commitment.Based on the social exchange theory (Organ, 1988(Organ, , 1990)), employees exhibit citizenship behaviour to requite the treatment they received from the organisation.When this treatment is perceived as positive, employees are more inclined to perform citizenship behaviour, because they regard it as a role obligation towards the organisation rather than discretionary (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2002).Positive citizenship behaviour (psychological and social well-being) leads to greater affective commitment (emotional well-being) towards the organisation in general which result in flourishing behaviour.

Distal and organisation: Counterproductive behaviour
Counterproductive behaviour refers to acts that harm organisations or their people (Spector & Fox, 2005).Spector et al. (2006) distinguish between five types of counterproductive behaviour, namely abuse (harmful behaviours that affect other people); production-deviance (purposely doing one's job incorrectly or allowing errors to occur); sabotage (destroying organisational property); theft (wrongfully taking the personal goods or property of another); and withdrawal (avoiding work through being late or absent).Linked to the issue of ethical behaviour is the matter of internet abuse (that is the use of the internet for non-work-related purposes) which is regarded as a fundamental problem in organisations (Woon & Pee, 2004).Internet abuse can have dire consequences such as bandwidth waste, legal liability, and exposing the organisation to threats.According to Chang and Cheung (2001), positive affect and more specifically an inclination towards pleasure are important predictors of internet usage intention.Job dissatisfaction and disengagement at work have been linked to internet abuse (p<0,05), whilst social norms and perceived behavioural consequences also contribute significantly to internet abuse (Woon & Pee, 2004).It can be inferred that flourishing individuals who exhibit greater job satisfaction which relates positively to OCB, which relates positively to organisational commitment, which relates positively to turnover intention, will exhibit less counterproductive behaviour at work.

Hypotheses
Based on a review of the literature, it is expected that information technology professionals' flourishing will have direct effects on their job satisfaction, which in turn affects their organisational commitment, OCB and counterproductive work behaviour.It is also expected that IT professionals' level of flourishing will indirectly affect job satisfaction, organisational commitment, OCB and counterproductive work behaviour.
The research question for this study is as follows: Does flourishing affect individual outcomes, namely job satisfaction; and organisational outcomes (organisational commitment, OCB and counterproductive work behaviour)?Given the analytical strategy and based on the literature review, the following hypotheses were set for this study:

Research design
This study followed a descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative approach and a non-random field survey design utilising questionnaires was used to gather data regarding the flourishing of information technology professionals and its outcomes (Field, 2009).

Participants
Due to practical considerations it was decided to target 450 information technology professionals in 10 organisations specializing in the development and implementation of information technology software in the Gauteng Province in South Africa.The response rate was 46% (N=205).Table 2 shows that a total of 69,3% of the sample comprised males, while 30,7% were females.The ages of the participants varied from 25 years to 65 years.A majority of 67.3% of the participants spoke Afrikaans and the majority of the participants (84,9%) were white.Employment-related characteristics of the participants are reported in Table 3.The results in Table 3 show that more than 90% of the participants were employed on a permanent basis.A total of 66,8% worked more than 41 hours per week.Only 2,4% reported that they played internet games at work.

Measuring instruments
In this study, the following measuring instruments were used: the Mental Health Continuum Short Form, Organisational Commitment Scale, Turnover Intention Scale, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Scale and Job Satisfaction Scale.
The Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF; Keyes, 2009) was used to measure flourishing.The MHC-SF consists of 14 items measuring three dimensions, namely emotional well-being (three items, "During the past month, how often did you feel happy?"), social well-being (five items, "During the past month, how often did you feel that you had something important to contribute to society?"), and psychological well-being (six items, "During the past month, how often did you feel that you liked most parts of your personality?").Response options ranged from 1 (never) to 6 (every day).Nationally representative samples of US adults and college students confirmed the three factor structure of the long and short forms of the MHCemotional, psychological, and social well-being, and results have shown excellent internal consistency (> 0,80) in studies in the U.S., the Netherlands and in South Africa (Keyes, 2009;Keyes et al., 2008).
The Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS; Rothmann, 2010) was used to measure job satisfaction.Three items measured how satisfied individuals felt with their jobs (e.g., "I feel fairly satisfied with my present job"; and "I find real enjoyment in my work").Response options ranged from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree).The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the JSS was 0,84.
Organisational commitment was measured by the Organisational Commitment Scale (OCS; Rothmann, 2010).Six items measured attachment (loyalty; "I feel personally attached to my work organisation"), and pride (identification; "I feel proud to be an employee of this organisation").Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the OCS was 0,85.
The Turnover Intention Scale (TIS; Sjöberg & Sverke, 2000) was used to measure the intention to leave.The TIS consisted of three items and an example of an item is "If I was completely free to choose, I would leave this job".Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).The TIS reported a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0,83.
A measure of counterproductive work behaviour of information technology professionals was developed for the purposes of this study.A definition of counterproductive work behaviour was provided to line managers who were familiar with the specific jobs.Line managers were then asked to generate example behaviours relevant to the jobs in question that were consistent with counterproductive work behaviour.Three items were then developed to measure counterproductive work behaviour ("I use the internet more than I ought to", "My use of the internet sometimes seems beyond my control" and "People complain that I use the internet too much").Participants rated the items on a frequency scale varying from 1 (never) to 5 (every day).
The Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Scale (OCBS, Rothmann, 2010) was utilised to measure organisational citizenship behaviour.The OCBS consisted of six items, three which measured assistance to co-workers in the organisation ("I give up time to help co-workers who have work or non-work problems") and three which measured assistance to the organisation ("I take action to protect the organisation from potential problems").Response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).The Cronbach alpha coefficients for the two scales were 0,78 (assistance to co-workers) and 0,80 (assistance to the organisation).

Research procedure
The researchers administered a survey questionnaire to the participants electronically.The questionnaire was accompanied by a cover letter explaining the purpose and emphasising the confidentiality of the research project.Managers from various information technology organisations were contacted to introduce the research topic to them and to obtain permission from them to involve their employees in the project.Respondents were assured that their participation was anonymous and voluntary and that they could withdraw at any stage.From May 2011 until July 2011 questionnaires were made available online.The raw data was captured and converted to an SPSS dataset.

Statistical analyses
Structural equation modelling (SEM) methods as implemented in AMOS (Arbuckle, 2009) were used to test the measurement and structural models.The following indices produced by AMOS were used in this study: a) absolute fit indices, including the Chi-square statistic, which is the test of absolute fit of the model, the Standardized Root Mean Residual (SRMR) and the Root-Means-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), b) incremental fit indices, including the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the Comparative Fit Index (Hair, Black, Babin & Andersen, 2010).TLI and CFI values higher than 0,90 are considered acceptable.RMSEA values lower than 0,05 and a SRMR lower than 0,08 indicate a close fit between the model and the data.Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and Pearson correlations were computed using the SPSS19 program (SPSS, 2011).The level of statistical significance was set at p < 0,05.

Testing the measurement model
Structural equation modelling (SEM) methods, as implemented by AMOS (Arbuckle, 2009), were used to test the measurement model.Global assessments of model fit were based on several goodness-of-fit statistics (CFI, TLI, RMSEA and RMSR).

Hypothesised models
In the hypothesised models each of the observed variables loaded on only one latent factor.The observed variables in the model were treated as continuous variables.Errors of measurement associated with observed variables were uncorrelated while latent variables were allowed to correlate.
The following nested measurement models were tested: • Model 1: A three-factor model of flourishing consisting of three first-order latent factors, namely emotional well-being (three items), social well-being (five items) and psychological well-being (six items) with five further latent factors representing organisational and individual outcomes, including turnover intention (three items), organisational commitment (six items), counterproductive behaviour (three items), job satisfaction (three items) and organisational citizenship behaviour (four items).• Model 2: A one-factor model of flourishing (consisting of 14 observed variables) and five latent factors representing organisational and individual outcomes, including turnover intention (three items), organisational commitment (six items), counterproductive behaviour (three items), job satisfaction (three items) and organisational citizenship behaviour (four items).
• Model 3: A three-factor model of flourishing consisting of three first order latent factors, namely emotional well-being (three items), social well-being (five items) and psychological well-being (six items) with two latent factors representing organisational outcomes (turnover intention -three items; organisational commitment -six items and organisational citizenship behaviourfour items) and individual outcomes (counterproductive behaviour -three items and job satisfaction -three items).• Model 4: A one-factor model of flourishing (consisting of 14 observed variables) and two latent factors representing organisational outcomes (turnover intention -three items; organisational commitmentsix items and organisational citizenship behaviourfour items) and individual outcomes (counterproductive behaviour -three items and job satisfaction -three items).• Model 5: A one-factor model of flourishing including all variables, namely emotional well-being (three items), social well-being (five items), psychological well-being (six items), organisational and individual outcomes including turnover intention (three items), organisational commitment (six items), counterproductive behaviour (three items), job satisfaction (three items) and organisational citizenship behaviour (four items).In a cross-sectional survey a common method variance can be a problem as the multiple data in one questionnaire is very closely related.Therefore, the one-factor model was tested.The first model hypothesised that flourishing consists of three first-order latent factors, namely emotional well-being (3 items), social well-being (5 items) and psychological well-being (6 items), one latent second-order factor, namely flourishing and five first-order latent factors, namely turnover intention (three items), organisational commitment (six items), counterproductive behaviour (internet abusethree items), job satisfaction (three items) and organisational citizenship behaviour (four items).It was assumed that the errors of items are uncorrelated.The model was over-identified: It had 561 distinct sample moments, 84 distinct parameters to be estimated and 477 degrees of freedom.
The standardised regression coefficients were all statistically significant (p < 0,01).The weights for flourishing ranged from 0,72 to 0,99, whereas emotional well-being ranged from the lowest weight 0,78 to the highest of 0,90.Social well-being ranged from 0,60 to 0,80, whilst psychological well-being ranged from 0,55 to 0,82.The lowest weight for organisational commitment was 0,69 and the highest was 0,84; counterproductive behaviour (internet) reported the lowest weight of 0,64 ranging to 0,81.Weights for organisational citizenship behaviour varied from 0,57 to 0,82; job satisfaction varied from -0,63 to 0,93, whilst turnover intention ranged from the lowest weight being -0,55 to the highest weight of 0,87.Path analysis was used to examine the fit of these models to the data.Because the indirect effects model and the direct effects model are both hierarchically nested within the full model, differences in fit can be determined using the chisquare (i.e.Δχ 2 ) test described by Kline (2010).The fit statistics for the different models are reported in Table 6.The significant χ 2 difference tests indicate that the hypothesized model (Model 1) has a better overall fit to the data than the direct effects model (Δχ 2 = 85,47 , Δdf = 41 p < 0,01 ).However, the full model (Model 3) has a better overall fit than the indirect effects model (Model 1; Δχ 2 = 51,80, Δdf = 4, p < 0,01).This suggests that mediation as conceived in the original theoretical framework does not explain the covariation in the data better than a model allowing partial mediation (i.e.Model 3).When the direct path between flourishing and turnover intention is added to the framework, the relationship between organisational commitment and turnover intention becomes positive.The relations between flourishing on the one hand and organisational commitment and turnover intention on the other hand, are all statistically significant (p < 0,01).Table 6 reports the fit indices and path coefficients for Models 1, 2 and 3.

Revised model
Given that the full model fit the data better than the originally theorised model, it was decided to examine whether a revised model based on the original framework could improve its explanatory power and overall fit with the data.The paths which were not statistically significant in the revised model were deleted.The revised model showed acceptable fit: χ 2 = 818,14, df = 483, TLI = 0,90, CFI = 0,91, RMSEA = 0,06 and SRMR = 0,07.The nonsignificant chi-squared difference tests after these path deletions indicated that removal of these paths did not significantly affect the model's degree of overall fit (Δχ 2 = 5,73, Δdf = 3, p > 0,01).Compared with the hypothesized model, the revised model still showed a statistically significant improvement (Δχ 2 = 46,07, Δdf = 1, p < 0,01).The final model is given in Figure 2. To determine whether any relationships in the revised model were indeed mediated by job satisfaction and organisational commitment, the indirect effects of the independent variables via the proposed mediators were computed.The procedures were described by Hayes (2009) to determine whether the indirect effects were different from zero.
Bootstrapping was used to construct two-sided biascorrected confidence intervals so as to evaluate mediation effects (see Table 7).(Woon & Pee, 2004).Linking to the part-whole theory as well as the spillover and expansionist theories, is Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-andbuild theory that states that positive emotions in IT professionals will intensify their personal resources which in turn will predict their future well-being (Ouwencel et al., 2011).Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade (2005) propose that such resources enable individuals to thrive and succeed at work, in relationships and with health.An individual who feels well is more likely to function well, both psychologically and socially, which means meeting the criterion for positive mental health as flourishing.Thus, it was found that flourishing has an influence on all individual and organisational outcomes in this study, in that flourishing has a direct effect on the following aspects: on job satisfaction; on organisational commitment with job satisfaction as partial mediator; on counterproductive behaviour with job satisfaction fully mediating the relationship; on turnover intention; and OCB with organisational commitment partially mediating the relationship.

Ta sat
The results of this study showed that job satisfaction did not have a direct effect on OCB.However, it had a small effect on OCB through its relation with organisational commitment.Employees who were satisfied with their jobs, showed higher levels of organisational commitment, which in turn affected on their willingness to be helpful towards others in the organisation and generally do more than what the job requires.One would expect satisfied employees to reciprocate their positive experiences and from evidence in the psychological literature persons who experience positive affect tend to engage in prosocial behaviours (Clark & Isen, 1982).Several studies produced results suggesting that job satisfaction relates positively and significantly with OCB (Bateman & Organ, 1983;Puffer, 1987).However, Schnake, Cochran and Dumler (1995) found that job satisfaction accounted for the variance in only two of the five OCB dimensions.
The results indicated that flourishing individuals engaged in citizenship behaviour by doing things for the organisation and other individuals outside the parameters of their jobs.Languishing employees, those who do not function optimally on social, emotional and psychological dimensions, engage less in citizenship behaviour besides being dissatisfied with their jobs and lacking commitment towards the organisation.Employees engaging in citizenship behaviour do so because they probably believe that they could make a difference.This argument links perfectly with the part-whole theory (Bowling et al., 2010).An accumulation of emotional well-being (positive affect and satisfaction with life), psychological well-being (having a purpose in life and positive relations with others) and social well-being (exhibiting positive social functioning) (Keyes, 2007) seems to have a moderate direct effect on OCB.
It can be concluded that flourishing strongly affects job satisfaction, while job satisfaction affects organisational commitment and turnover intention.The findings emphasise the important relationship between flourishing and individual and organisational outcomes.Therefore, flourishing employees in the IT industry seem to be to the benefit of not only the individual's well-being, but also to the benefit of the organisation (Sparks et al., 2001).This study had various limitations.First, due to the crosssectional design used in the study, causal relationships cannot be ascertained.However, Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) and Bowling et al. (2010) present strong evidence that job satisfaction and positive organisational outcomes result because of well-being.Second, the sample size was relatively small compared to the number of variables used.Despite its size, however, the sample in this study is representative of a very important, distinguished and scarce category of information technology professionals.

Recommendations
This study showed that flourishing is positively associated with individual and organisational outcomes.Therefore, it is necessary to understand the nature and etiology of the strengths and competencies of flourishing people to promote their mental health (Keyes, 2002).Interventions should be implemented to promote flourishing of IT professionals.Not only emotional well-being, but also psychological and social well-being should be the focus of interventions.Cognitivebehavioural processes, interpersonal attachment, coping and meaning-making of individuals should be addressed to promote their flourishing (Keyes, 2005).The effective management and promotion of employee well-being which spills over into organisational health should form the cornerstones towards successful human resources and business practices.Policies about health-promotion programmes should not only be aimed at reducing IT employees' counterproductive behaviour at work, focusing on psychological disorders, but should primarily be set on enhancing and developing employees' well-being, strengths and positive emotions, as well as creating an appropriate environment conducive to positive interpersonal, group and organisational outcomes through including training programmes on, amongst others, growth group experiences (developing employees' self-actualisation); skills training for groups (including problem-solving, conflict management, communication and assertive behaviour); and team-building exercises that promote employee well-being through developing social networks amongst employees (Bergh & Theron, 2012).Future studies should employ longitudinal panel as well as experimental designs to study the causality of relationships between flourishing and individual and organisational outcomes.Interventions to promote flourishing should be developed and evaluated.Furthermore, objective measures should be developed to assess the flourishing of employees.

Table 4
presents fit statistics for the test of the various models.