Psychological Capital and Work Performance

Luthans et al. (2007b) define psychological capital as a positive psychological state comprised by the personal resources of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. Specifically, hope refers to a cognitive process driven by a sense of success in fulfilling individual goals (Snyder, 1995). Efficacy denotes confidence linked to one’s own conviction about having the abilities to effectively execute a task (Bandura, 1997). Resilience refers to positive adaptation in the context of significant adversity (Bonanno, 2004; Rutter, 1987; Masten & Reed, 2002). Finally, optimism denotes a positive expectation that individuals’ goals can be achieved in future (Scheier & Carver, 1992; Peterson, 2000). Drawing on the theoretical integration underlying these personal resources (Luthans et al., 2007a, b), most of research has adopted a higher order factor comprising hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism (Avey et al., 2011; Luthans et al., 2007a, b). This approach is valuable and appropriate when the aim is to understand broader outcomes entailing wide-ranging information about the phenomenon of interest, such as general work performance. But, when the interest is to have a more detailed understanding of the outcome studied, for instance a multidimensional approach to performance, paying attention to the specific characteristics of the psychological capital dimensions is required. This follows the discussion on the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma (Judge and Kammeyer-Muller, 2012), which stresses the importance of the construct correspondence principle when developing theory, namely, predictors and criteria should correspond in terms of generality-specificity. In other words, theoretically and empirically broader criteria favor broader predictors, while narrower criteria favor specific predictors. Here, we adopt the multidimensional framework of work performance developed by Griffin et al. (2007), which highlights that proficient, adaptive and proactive behaviors are needed for most of today’s organizations. Proficiency represents the actions oriented to the accomplishment of the job minimum requirements and expectations through implementing formally established procedures. Adaptivity involves coping with, responding to, and supporting changes unfolding in the organizational environment, such as changes in strategy, technology, or job design. Adaptivity is a highly reactive behavioral process, because individuals act in an adaptive fashion in order to fit with changes rather than provoking them. In turn, proactivity is described as the employee Bself-initiated and future-envisioned^ actions oriented to transform the work environment.