Ratio Working Paper no 251: Understanding Psychological Competencies: Conceptualization and Measurement of Psychological Capital at Various Levels

This study addresses the longstanding concern of how to identify and evaluate individuals’ psychological strengths. While much research has concerned itself with identifying psychological weaknesses of organizational employees, an emergent stream of literature in the human resource management literature has begun to pay attention to the psychological capital of human resources. Psychological capital and other competing views righteously build on positive psychology to address the developmental strengths of individuals. We elaborate further on the concept of psychological capital by conceptually proposing an alternative view. Our view is more elaborate and suggests a three dimensional approach to psychological strengths, taking into consideration the approach-belief subsystem of individuals, the monitoring-creating-executing subsystem, and the self-regulating subsystem. We confirm these three dimensions, which together contain 16 psychological competencies through a survey instrument in a Scandinavian manufacturing firm in China. The results are discussed and implications for future research are proposed.