Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 860-865
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.322 860
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL AND INNOVATION
BEHAVIOR OF EMPLOYEES IN HIGH-TECH ENTERPRISES
Yana Yuan*, Huaqi Chai
Abstract
Innovation is particularly important to high-tech enterprises. However, the innovation ability might be affected by the psychological capital of employees. This paper aims to identify the relationship between psychological capital and innovation behavior of employees in high-tech enterprises. First, the author summarized the related theories of psychological capital and innovation. Then, a questionnaire survey was carried out on five high-tech enterprises of different scales, and the survey results were analyzed in details. The results show that, in terms of psychological capital, employees performed better in work independence than decision-making; in terms of innovation, employees were not highly involved in innovation, despite the stress on innovation by high-teach enterprises; employees with high innovation ability generally performed well in self-recognition, working attitude and other aspects of psychological capital; employees with high psychological capital are closely involved in innovation activities. The research results provide a theoretical basis for employee training and the management of high-tech enterprises.
Key words: High-Tech Enterprise, Psychological Capital, Innovation Behavior, Employees. Received: 18-05-19 | Accepted: 12-08-19
INTRODUCTION
High-tech enterprises play a leading role in a country's development, and talents are the core competitiveness and internal momentum of high-tech enterprises. Employees of high-tech enterprises must have strong working ability. Psychological capital is one of the most important resources in the society, which can be used to measure the psychological state and work efficiency of employees (Sartori, Favretto, & Ceschi, 2013; Ziyae, Mobaraki, & Saeediyoun, 2015; Zhang, Zhang, Lin et al., 2017; Nawaz, Bhatti, Ahmad et al., 2018). Psychological capital not only affects the work efficiency of individuals, but also affects the performance of the whole enterprise. Psychological capital also has a certain impact on the work ability of employees (Sukoco & Lee, 2017; Lee, Hsiao, &
School of Management, Northwestern Polytechnical
University, Xi’an 710129, China. E-Mail: [email protected]
Chen, 2017; Raqshin & Nirjar, 2012). Therefore, psychological capital is of great significance to high-tech enterprises.
Innovation is not only the engine of the development of high-tech enterprises, but also the responsibility of the employees in high-tech enterprises. The innovation ability of employees is not only related to the development of the enterprise itself, but also the development of the society as well as the country. An important measure to improve the innovation ability of the whole country is to encourage innovation in high-tech enterprises. Innovation is not a simple process since it requires individual to have a detailed cognition of a problem, so as to generate certain inspirations (lari, Shekari, & Safizadeh, 2012; Kim, Karatepe, & Lee, 2018; Baer & Frese, 2003). With practice and other people's opinions and help, the original inspiration which may be weak at the beginning turns to be perfect, and finally becomes an innovation that can produce value.
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and combining with own research, the paper takes high-tech enterprise employees as the object of investigation, and explores the relationship between employees' psychological capital level and innovation ability. The results of this study can provide some suggestions for the development of high-tech enterprises in China.
RELATED THEORIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
CAPITAL AND INNOVATION
Psychological Capital
The concept of psychological capital can be regarded as a psychological concept, but it is not limited to psychology. The concept of psychological capital has its own significance in many fields such as sociology and economics.
Psychological capital is a kind of quality within an individual, which represents a person's tendency and viewpoint, as well as an individual's internal momentum and ability to resist crisis. Different from other kinds of capital, it is an inner and invisible capital which can play a significant role.
In recent years, the influence of psychological capital on an individual, an organization, an enterprise and even the whole society has attracted more and more public attention. Psychological capital is also a kind of positive psychological state. Perseverance, self-confidence and optimism are all important capital for individuals.
Psychological capital is generally divided into the following four dimensions:
(1) Self-judgment: an employee sets certain goals for himself / herself in his / her own work and makes self judgment on his / her own goal. This judgment is rational and well-grounded;
(2) Perseverance: it is impossible that everything goes right in one’s work. If employees can not be defeated in the face of difficulties, it means that their psychological capital level is high;
(3) Full of hope: employees always have the confidence to achieve their goals in the work, and can take reasonable measures to achieve the goals;
(4) Positive and optimistic: employees have a positive attitude and face adversity and difficulties optimistically.
Innovation Theory
In recent years, with the rapid development of computer technology and artificial
intelligence, many traditional industries are facing the risk of being replaced. However, as a special work, innovation is hard to be replaced. Therefore, it has become the core competitiveness of many high-tech enterprises. One of an important factors of an enterprise's innovation ability is its employees' innovation ability. Generally speaking, the innovation of employees in high-tech enterprises refers to the process of providing new ideas or producing new products for problems and difficulties encountered in the work by taking advantage of careful observation, knowledge and years of experience accumulated in the work.
Employees' knowledge, professional skills, work attitudes, psychological state and even their social relations will have a certain impact on their innovation ability. Compared with other factors, psychological state, especially the influence of psychological capital on innovation, has received little attention of researchers. Based on the investigation and research results of high-tech enterprise employees, this paper studies the relationship between psychological capital and innovation behavior.
RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
Research Sample
Figure 1
.
Relationship between number of
investigators and business size
The samples of this paper are mainly from five high-tech enterprises of different scales (according to the number of employees). The number of the interviewees is directly proportional to the scale of the enterprise. The relationship between the number of interviewees and the size of the enterprise is
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shown in Figure 1. There was a positive correlation between the size of the enterprises and the number of people attended. 100 people are selected in this survey.
The gender ratio of the survey is shown in Figure 2. There are 67 men and 33 women in the 100 employees. The difference in the proportion of men and women is due to the general difference in the proportion of male and female employees. The number of male employees is always more than that of female employees.
Figure 2
.
Male and female ratio in the survey
The age distribution of employees participating in this survey is shown in Figure 3. The age of the investigated employees is mainly 25-45 years old, since in high-tech enterprises,
the employees are mainly young and middle-aged.
Figure 3
.
Age distribution in the survey
Research Methods
The research method in this paper are composed of two parts, and different parts have different functions. The first part is shown in Table 1, which is used to investigate the psychological capital of employees; the second part is shown in Table 2, which is used to investigate the innovation level of employees.
Table 1.
Psychological capital questionnaire
Number Questions Answers
No Not sure or do not know Yes
1 Are you happy with yourself overall？ -1 0 1 2 Do you think your character is noble? -1 0 1 3 Can you do most things well? -1 0 1 4 Do you think you are a valuable person？ -1 0 1 5 Do you respect yourself？ -1 0 1 6 Are you positive about yourself? -1 0 1 7 Can you make decisions？ -1 0 1 8 Are you good at solving problems？ -1 0 1
9 Are you confident？ -1 0 1
10 Do you contribute to your business？ -1 0 1 11 Do you have a certain presentation ability？ -1 0 1 12 Do you communicate well with your customers？ -1 0 1
13 Are you strong？ -1 0 1
14 Are you full of energy？ -1 0 1 15 Do you have specific goals in your work？ -1 0 1 16 Can you recover quickly when you encounter problems at work? -1 0 1 17 Are you independent at work? -1 0 1 18 Can you cope with the stress of work? -1 0 1 19 Do you think you have a future? -1 0 1 20 Are you optimistic? -1 0 1
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Table 2.
Innovation level questionnaire
Number Questions Answers
No Not sure or do not know Yes
1 Does your business have a specialized research institute? -1 0 1 2 Does your company undertake various research projects? -1 0 1 3 Does your business have many patents? -1 0 1 4 Does your business value innovation? -1 0 1 5 Do you think innovation is important for companies? -1 0 1 6 Do you know about innovation? -1 0 1 7 Are you interested in innovation? -1 0 1 8 Have you been involved in innovation? -1 0 1 9 Would you like to participate in innovation? -1 0 1 10 Are you an observant person in your life？ -1 0 1 11 Is your sense of innovation strong? -1 0 1 12 Do you think innovation is useful to you？ -1 0 1
Table 1 consists of 20 questions, each of which is answered in three ways: "Yes", "Not sure or do not know" and "No". If the answer given by the respondents is "Yes", one point will be added; if the answer given is "Not sure or do not know", no point will be added; if the answer given by the respondents is "No", one point will be reduced. Finally, the average score is calculated for each question.
Table 1 consists of 12 questions, each of which can be answered in three ways: "Yes", "Not sure or do not know" and "No". Similarly, if the answer given by the respondents is "Yes", one score will be added; if the answer given by the respondents is "Not sure or do not know", no score will be added; if the answer given by the respondents is "No", one score will be reduced, and finally an average score will be calculated for each question.
Results Analysis
Figure 4
.
Results of the survey of
psychological capital
The results of psychological capital survey of 100 employees are shown in Figure 4. The average score of most questions is greater than 0, which means answer "yes" is predominant, that is to say, most of the employees have a good level of psychological capital.
In addition, the average score of the problems varies from 0.3 to 0.7, indicating that the psychological capital of employees in high-tech enterprises is also different in different aspects. Among them, the question with the worst performance is "Can you make decisions？ ", which may be due to the fact that most of the employees participating in the survey are ordinary employees, who have less opportunity to make decisions in the work. The question with the best outcome is "Are you independent at work?", which may be due to the strong independence of employees in high-tech enterprises.
Figure 5
.
Results of the survey of innovation
level
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The results of the level of innovation survey of 100 employees are shown in Figure 5. The average score of the questions is greater than 0, indicating most of the employees answered "Yes", that is to say, most of the employees have good innovation ability and innovation level.
In addition, the average score of questions varies from 0.4 to 0.7, indicating that the innovation level of employees in high-tech enterprises is different in different aspects. Among them, the question with the worst outcome is "Have you been involved in innovation?", which shows that even in high-tech enterprises, employees' participation in innovation activities is still not enough. The question with best performance is "Does your business have a specialized research institute? ". This shows that most high-tech enterprises attach great importance to innovation and scientific research.
Relationship between Psychological Capital and Innovation Behavior of Enterprises
Figure 6
.
Results of the correlation analysis
In addition, this paper also studies the correlation between the results of psychological capital survey and innovation level survey. The results are shown in Figure 6. In Figure 6, the square on the right and number in the square represent the question in Table 1, while the left square and the number in it represent the question in Table 2. The solid line represents a significant correlation at the level of 0.05, the dotted line represents a significant correlation at the level of 0.1, and all the correlations are positive. Among them, 6 groups are significantly correlated at the level of 0.05 level while 4 groups significantly related with each other at 0.01 level. To summarize, we can get the following conclusions: employees with high level of innovation generally optimistic, have noble characters, believe in self-value, think that they can make contribution to the enterprise, and believe that they are strong enough to work independently; employees with high level of psychological capital generally attach great importance to innovation and can actively participate in innovation and generally undertake many scientific research projects. It can be seen that employees with higher innovation level generally have a higher degree of self-recognition and are more positive in face of difficulties or setbacks; while employees with higher psychological capital level are mostly distributed in units that attach more importance to innovation and scientific research, and they are also willing to participate in innovation. Such employees take exercise in practice and thus improve their psychological capital level.
CONCLUSION
Based on the investigation and analysis of the psychological capital level and innovation level of employees in different high-tech enterprises, this paper draws the following conclusions:
(1) the level of psychological capital of employees in high-tech enterprises is good as a whole, especially in the independence of work;
(2) the innovation level of employees in high-tech enterprises and the innovation level of the whole enterprise are relatively high. Enterprises generally attach great importance to innovation behavior, while the participation of employees in innovation needs to be improved;
(3) there is a correlation between psychological capital and innovation level. Employees with high level of innovation 1
2
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11
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14
15
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19
20
1
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3
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7
8
9
10
11
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generally recognize their own value, are full of hope for the future, and are optimistic in the face of setbacks; in enterprises attaching great importance to innovation, employees' psychological capital level is relatively high, while employees' participation in innovation also improves their psychological capital level.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by The Social Science Fund of Shaanxi Province (NO. 2019S025) and The High-end Scientific and Technological Innovation Think Tank Youth Project of China Association for Science and Innovation Strategy Research Institute (NO. CXY-ZKQN-2019-028).
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