Purpose

This paper aims to explore the antecedents and consequences of thriving at work, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework, which encapsulates potential pathways for future research on thriving.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper follows a rigorous review of the extant literature on thriving mainly based on journal articles published between 2005 and 2020.

Findings

The paper proposes a feasible conceptual framework highlighting the antecedents and outcomes of thriving. Specifically, the review illustrates how contextual factors, represented by transformational leadership and organisational virtuousness (OV), act as antecedents of thriving and then proposes potential research direction where thriving is associated with psychological empowerment, psychological capital and innovative work behaviour.

Practical implications

Understanding how and when contextual factors such as transformational leadership and OV promote thriving is important for organisations and leaders who wish to know how and when they can shape resources and organisational features to enable thriving.

Originality/value

This unique review is one of a few studies adding to the growing research on positive psychology at the workplace. The proposed framework and future research directions have the potential to help unpack the unique relationship between work-related contextual factors and thriving.