The concept of psychological capital: a comprehensive review

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive view on the concept of psychological capital (PsyCap) and develop an agenda for future research. PsyCap describes an individual’s psychological capacity that can be measured, developed, and managed for performance improvement. The higher-order construct comprises the psychological resources self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience, and has been linked with a range of desirable work attitudes, behaviors, and other outcomes. By analyzing and structuring the existing literature on PsyCap, we identified several research gaps that require further analysis. In particular, we encourage researchers to expand the research on the effects of PsyCap to other workplace-related domains, especially the field of strategic decision-making, we call for researchers to further study the relationship between emotions and PsyCap, and we suggest to analyze the effects of PsyCap in the context of strategic human resources management. Also, future studies should establish transparency on the interaction between organizational change processes and PsyCap as well as the relative importance of the four components of PsyCap. We close by discussing the implications of our findings for corporate practice, such as employee selection and development.