Positive psychological capital is defined as the positive developmental state of an individual as characterized by high self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resiliency.
Introduction For decades psychology has been dealt mainly with the treatment of mental illness, although other areas of research and application have existed since its origins. Towards the end of the twentieth century a new approach in psychology gained popularity: positive psychology. Positive psychology, the study of optimal human functioning, is an attempt to respond to the systematic bias inherent in psychology's historical emphasis on mental illness rather than on mental wellness (Seligman, 2002), mainly by focusing on two, forgotten but classical psychological goals:
Help ordinary people to live a more productive and meaningful life. A full realization of the potential that exists in the human being. Since Martin Seligman, a former head of American Psychological Association, chose positive psychology as the theme of his presidency term, more empirical research and theoretic development emerged in this field. Two new branches of positive psychology are being implemented into the industrial-organizational world.
Positive organizational scholarship- originated by Kim Cameron and colleagues is a research field that emphasizes the positive characteristics of the organization that facilitates its ability to function during periods of crisis. Positive organizational behavior (POB) – research by Luthans focuses on valid measures of positive- psychological states that are open to development and have impact on desired employee attitudes, behaviors, and performance. Drawing from positive psychology constructs and empirical research, four psychological resources were determined to best meet the POB scientific inclusion criteria: Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism and were termed by Luthans and colleagues as psychological Capital or PsyCap Positive In combination, the four constructs making up PsyCap were empirically determined to be a second-order, core construct that had a stronger relationship with satisfaction and performance than each of the components by itself. The four components are defined as follows:
Hope – Is defined as a positive motivational state where two basic elements - successful feeling of agency (or goal oriented determination) and pathways (or proactively planning to achieve those goals) interact. Efficacy – Is defined as people's confidence in their ability to achieve a specific goal in a specific situation. Resilience – Is defined in Positive Psychology as a positive way of coping with adversity or distress. In organizational aspect, it is defined as an ability to recuperate from stress, conflict, failure, change or increase in responsibility. Optimism – was defined by Seligman by Attribution theory (Fritz Heider, 1958). An Optimistic person is defined as one that makes "Internal" or "dispositional", fixed and global attributions for positive events and "External" or "situational", not fixed and specific attributions to negative events. Optimism in Psycap is thought as a realistic construct that regards what an employee can or cannot do, as such, optimism reinforces efficacy and hope Luthans (2014) refers to these four criteria-meeting positive psychological resources which comprise psychological capital as the "HERO Within".
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