Positive Organizational Study: A Comparison between Private and Government University Teacher

The study conducted explored the relation between Psychological Capital, General Health and Organizational Citizenship Behavior and its variation between the teachers of private and government universities of Karachi, Pakistan. Based on existing literature, following hypotheses were formulated; (1) Difference would be observed in psychological capital of private and government university teachers, (2) Difference would be observed in efficacy levels of private and government university teachers, (3) Individuals with good health will have high psychological capital, (4) Individuals with high OCB will have high psychological capital. Through convenient sampling, 261 teachers teaching at graduate-level were taken as participants. Psychological Capital Questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Checklist were employed. All the hypotheses were proved when results were analyzed through SPSS. In conclusion, people having high psychological capital live healthier life and are more likely to indulge in pro-social activities and organizational citizenship behavior.


Introduction
Positive psychology has its roots from psychologist Martin Seligman, who proposed to concentrate more on the good sides of people than on the problems. According to Seligman, too often people get wedged on the negative sides of themselves and their personal history (Seligman, 1998). Drawing from literature, positive psychology has brought an uplifting and novel view pertaining to human nature and other interrelated characteristics, which had somehow been neglected (Luthans, 2002;Bright et al., 2006). The concept of psychological capital is central in positive psychology. Psychological capital is distinct from traditional economic capital, human capital and social capital. Traditional economic capital includes typically finance and tangible assets; human capital includes experiences, education, skills, knowledge, and ideas; social capital stresses relationships, network of contacts, and friends; and positive psychological capital stresses on optimism, confidence, resilience, and hope (Luthans et al., 2004). Psychological capital is concerned about 'who you are?' and more importantly, on 'who you are becoming?'. Psychological capital is defined here as; An individual's positive psychological state of development that is characterized by: 1) having confidence (selfefficacy) to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks, 2) making a positive attribution (optimism) about succeeding now and in the future, 3) persevering toward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals (hope) in order to succeed, and 4) when surrounded by problems and adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond (resiliency) to attain success Luthans et al. (2007).
Studies suggest that psychological capital has an impact on individual and organizational outputs and performance in work environment. Examples of such positive impacts include increased satisfaction, performance and commitment (Goldsmith et al., 1997;Luthans et al., 2008).
According to World Health Organization, health is defined as 'a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity' (World Health Organization, 1948). Wellbeing has been found to be related to both work and personal life outcomes. There is considerable research on the relationship between psychological wellbeing and performance at work (Cropanzano and Wright, 1999;Wright and Cropanzano, 2000) and successful relationships (Diener and Seligman, 2002). Also, superior mental and physical health and longevity have been found to co vary with happiness and positivity levels (Danner et al., 2001;Roysamb et al., 2003;Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2004). This in turn draws inferences about the relation of psychological capital and an individual's health. A more recent focus has been to recognize and demonstrate the important role that positivity may play in well-being. In a meta-analysis, the results clearly indicated that positive, happy people had better physical and mental health outcomes and behavior (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005) and in another study, Lyubomirsky (2008) concluded that happier, more positive people are more resilient toward problems, have stronger immune systems, and are physically healthier. Psychological capital has been linked to several other workplace outcomes including organizational commitment, Larson and Luthans (2006) decreases in stress and turnover, Avey et al. (2009) reduced absenteeism (Avey et al., 2006) and organizational citizenship behaviors (Gooty et al., 2009).
Research shows that the four components (self-efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism) of Psychological Capital have positive relationships with performance, happiness, well-being, and satisfaction of workers. Self-efficacy has been found to have a positive impact on performance (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998;Legal and Meyer, 2009). Employees' optimism is related to their performance, satisfaction, and happiness . Hope is related to employees' performance, satisfaction, happiness, and retention . Resilience has a positive relationship with employee performance and happiness and satisfaction . Moreover, researches indicate a difference in the psychological capital, level of performance and efficacy between private and government sector workers-bank employees (Singh and Khan, 2013).
The third construct in question is Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). Individual behaviors carried out to promote effective functioning of an organization, by contributing to its social and psychological environment are categorized under Organizational Citizenship Behavior. These are voluntary behaviors that do not form part of the employee's job description. Such behaviors include helping another employee finish a project, providing helpful advice or suggestions, and offering positive feedback on work tasks (Podsakoff et al., 1993;Organ and Ryan, 1995). OCB is also referred to as 'contextual performance' or 'pro-social organizational behavior' (Borman and Motowidlo, 1997). Studies indicate that, individuals in a positive mood are more likely to help others than those in a negative or neutral mood (Isen and Baron, 1991). Avey et al. (2008) found that psychological capital was related to attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors (organizational citizenship) in a study on 132 employees from a broad cross-section of organizations. Wen-Yu (2004) also found that self-efficacy is correlated with organizational citizenship behavior. Learned optimism, confrontation and pro-action also have a significant influence on organizational citizenship behavior (Niranjana and Biswajeet, 2005).
The present study aims to investigate the relationship between Psychological Capital, General Health and Organization Citizenship Behavior of graduate-level teachers (Figure 1).

Figure-1. Happy Employee
Considering the above literature, the formulated hypotheses are:  A difference would be seen in the mean score of psychological capital of teachers in the private and the government sector.  A difference would be seen in the mean score of efficacy of teachers in the private and the government sector.  Teachers with good health (a low score on GHQ) will have a high psychological capital. (Implying a negative correlation between the scores of GHQ and PsyCap).  Teachers with high organizational citizenship behavior will have high psychological capital. (Implying a positive correlation between the scores of OCB and PsyCap).

Sample
The participants were 261 teachers, 140 from private sector and 121 from government sector, from different departments of several universities and colleges. The sample was selected through convenience sampling. Teachers teaching at Graduate and Post-Graduate level with a minimum Master degree were approached for this study.

Measures 2.2.1. Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12)
PsyCap was measured using the PCQ-12 made by Luthans et al. (2007). PsyCap is a 12-item construct, consisting of four subscales which include efficacy (3 items), hope (4 items), resilience (3items), and optimism (2 items). All items were measured using a 6-point Likert scale of agreement, with response options ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree. The sum of the averages of the four subscales of PsyCap is the psychological capital of an individual.

General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)
General Health Questionnaire by Goldberg (1972) is a commonly accepted measure of mental health/wellbeing that measures aspects of affect, general health and psychological distress. Respondents rate themselves on a four-point Likert scale of 12 items, according to how they have recently experienced each GHQ item, ranging from 'better than usual', 'same as usual', 'worse than usual' to 'much worse than usual.' A total score is computed by adding the scores of each individual item.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior Checklist (OCB-C)
The Organizational Citizenship Behavior Checklist (OCB-C) is a 10-item scale designed by Spector et al. (2010) to assess the frequency of citizenship behaviors in the workplace. Items ask respondents to indicate how often each behavior is performed by themselves or others (e.g., coworkers or subordinates). The OCB-C uses a 5-point rating scale ranging from 1 = Never to 5 = Every day. A total score is the sum of responses to all items.

Procedure
The data collection procedure that was followed was approaching graduate-level teachers and requesting them to fill the questionnaire within 3 days. The formatted questionnaire had consent form, demographic sheet, University's permission letter followed by PsyCap-12, OCB-C and GHQ-10 measures. After collecting data from the sample, SPSS was applied to analyze the results.

Results
The results were analyzed using Independent Samples t-test and Pearson's Product Moment Correlation. There was a significant mean difference between the psychological capital of private and government university teachers, such that government sector teachers had higher psychological capital as compared to the teachers of private sector universities (Table 1). On GHQ questionnaire, teachers from private universities scored significantly higher as compared to teachers from government universities (Table 1). A higher score on GHQ as indicates poor health; it can be inferred that government universities teachers are in comparatively healthier state. Mean difference for subscales of PsyCap was also calculated. Significant difference emerged on two out of the four subscales. A Table 2 shows, there was a significant difference between the efficacy & optimism level of private and government university teachers such that government teachers had higher efficacy and optimism score on average as compared to private teachers.
Correlation results show a significant, negative correlation (r = -0.171, p < 0.01) between the score of GHQ and that of PsyCap, implying that healthier individuals (low score on GHQ) will have high psychological capital (high score on PsyCap). Each of the four dimensions contribute to the psychological capital of an individual. Furthermore, a positive, moderate correlation (r ~ + 0.4, p < 0.01) was found between Psychological Capital and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Luthans et al. (2004) advocated that the dimensions of psychological capital are 'state' and not trait dispositions and therefore could be developed in the organizations by careful planning. Hence, different organizations might differ in terms of how much effort is put in by the organizations or employees to develop the psychological capital. The present study examined the relation between Psychological Capital, Health and Organizational Citizenship Behavior and its variation in the government and private sector teachers.

Discussion
One of the findings of the present study denotes that a difference was found between the psychological capital of private and government university teachers which is in accordance to the formulated hypothesis. Government sector teachers had a higher psychological capital as compared to the teachers of private sector universities. Other research, on the contrary, indicates that private sector bank employees have a higher psychological capital and level of happiness (Singh and Khan, 2013). This might be due to difference of the domain of job in question as well as the policies involved.
Another finding, as was hypothesized, indicated a significant difference between the efficacy of private and government university teachers. This finding is substantiated by the results of the study conducted by Sharma (1977) where he found significant difference in the level of efficacy of government and private secondary school teachers. Degrees of efficacy vary in accordance with the exposure given to the teachers as well as the environment given to them (Sharma, 1977).
We found reason to believe that healthier individuals are linked to having a high psychological capital. Each of the four dimensions separately contributes to the psychological capital of an individual. Findings suggest that selfefficacy beliefs have been found related to clinical problems such as phobias (Bandura, 1983) addiction (Marlatt et al., 1995 depression (Davis and Yates, 1982) social skills (Moe and Zeiss, 1982) assertiveness (Lee, 1983;1984) to stress in a variety of contexts (Jerusalem and Mittag, 1995) to smoking behavior (Garcia et al., 1990) to pain control (Manning and Wright, 1983) and to health (O'Leary, 1985). Optimistic people report a higher quality of life and have lower risks of all-cause death (Powers and Dawn, 2004) and are less likely to develop physical ill health or suicidal tendencies when they face major stressful life events than individuals with a pessimistic style (Carr and Alan, 2004).
There was also a link between Psychological Capital and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Prior researches indicate employees' hope, optimism, self-efficacy and resiliency separately had positive impacts on their organizational citizenship behavior. In a recent update, it was indicated that the employees' psychological capital (a combined construct of hope, optimism, self-efficacy and resiliency) had positive impacts on their job performance, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior (Zhong, 2007). Studies indicate that hope predicts resilience (Worrell and Hale, 2001) academic success (Snyder, 2002) and persistence (Snyder, 2002). Within positive psychology, hope is positively correlated with self-esteem, optimism, and positive affect (Snyder, 2002) which are related to citizenship behavior (Walumbwa et al., 2011).
The study also found that Positive Psychological Capital and its separate four dimensions contribute to both General Health and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Higher psychological capital amplifies health and prosocial behavior within an employee, leading to better organizational development. Furthermore, a significant difference was seen in the psychological capital and level of efficacy between the teachers of private and government universities, implying that environmental, managerial and other related factors may have a significant role in enhancing or reducing psychological capital and self-efficacy of an individual.
Further research in this domain is recommended, along with added variables such as personality traits, work motivation, past academic success and gender differences.

Conclusion
It is incredibly important for organizations of today to focus on psychological capital of their employees. Here the employees in question are teachers. Positive grooming may result in healthier and committed teachers.
It is important to remember, that personality of teachers and their work, impacts leaders of tomorrow that is their students. By concentrating on building the psychological capital of teachers, organizations will not only ensure their own success but also make significant positive contribution to the future.

Geolocation Information
This study was conducted in Universities located in Karachi, Pakistan.