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A Finer Grained Approach to Psychological Capital and Work Performance

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Abstract

Purpose

Psychological capital is a set of personal resources comprised by hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience, which previous research has supported as being valuable for general work performance. However, in today’s organizations, a multidimensional approach is required to understanding work performance, thus, we aimed to determine whether psychological capital improves proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity, and also whether hope, efficiency, resilience, and optimism have a differential contribution to the same outcomes. Analyzing the temporal meaning of each psychological capital dimension, this paper theorizes the relative weights of psychological capital dimensions on proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity, proposing also that higher relative weight dimensions are helpful to cope with job demands and perform well.

Methodology

Two survey studies, the first based on cross-sectional data and the second on two waves of data, were conducted with employees from diverse organizations, who provided measures of their psychological capital, work performance, and job demands. Data was modeled with regression analysis together with relative weights analysis.

Findings

Relative weights for dimensions of psychological capital were supported as having remarkable unique contributions for proficient, adaptive, and proactive behavior, particularly when job demands were high.

Originality/Value

We concluded that organizations facing high job demands should implement actions to enhance psychological capital dimensions; however, those actions should focus on the specific criterion of performance of interest.

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Notes

  1. Absolute values above 3.00 indicate violation of normality assumption.

  2. The p value for this simple slope was non-significant [.05 < p < .10]; yet, this likely represents an issue of statistical power for this slope.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avenida Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, 7820436, Santiago, Chile

    Hector P. Madrid

  2. Centre for Organizational Health & Development, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Maria T. Diaz & Stavroula Leka

  3. Departamento de Administración, Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile

    Pedro I. Leiva

  4. School of Business, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile

    Eduardo Barros

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  1. Hector P. Madrid
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  2. Maria T. Diaz
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  4. Pedro I. Leiva
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Correspondence to Hector P. Madrid.

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Madrid, H.P., Diaz, M.T., Leka, S. et al. A Finer Grained Approach to Psychological Capital and Work Performance. J Bus Psychol 33, 461–477 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-017-9503-z

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