Measuring employees' psychological capital using data mining approach

• Author: Donald Douglas Atsa'am,Uju Violet Alola
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2050

ACADEMIC PAPER

Measuring employees' psychological capital using data mining

approach

Uju Violet Alola

1,2

| Donald Douglas Atsa'am

3

1

Faculty of Economics, Administrative and

Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University,

Turkey

2

School of Economics and Management, South

Ural State University, Lenin prospect 76,

Chelyabinsk, 454080, Russian Federation

3

Department of Mathematics, Statistics and

Computer Science, University of Agriculture,

Makurdi, Nigeria

Correspondence

Alola Uju Violet, Faculty of Economics,

Administrative and Social Science, Istanbul

Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Email: uvalola@gelisim.edu.tr

In this research, the logistic regression model was employed to develop a classifier

that measures psychological capital of workers in organization. Psychological capital

(PsyCap) is the positive state of an individual, comprising of self-efficacy, optimism,

hope, and resilience. Employees with high psychological capital contribute positively

to objectives and business strategy of an organization. An experimental dataset com-

prising of the psychological capital information of 329 employees in an organization

was used to fit a data mining classification model. To ensure model accuracy,

220 observations were used as training set, whereas 109 were set aside to validate

the model. Various statistical tests for goodness of fit and predictive accuracy were

deployed to test model performance. The model has the ability to classify an individ-

ual's psychological capital into either high or low class with a predictive accuracy of

93%. The classification model is expected to serve as a tool in human resource man-

agement when measuring psychological capital of employees during recruitment

interviews and promotion appraisals.

1|INTRODUCTION

For decades, researchers have paid close scrutiny to the most impor-

tant factors affecting performance (Ottenbacher, 2007; Salam &

Tufail, 2014) and what provides the level of firms' competitiveness

(Cho & Pucik, 2005; Damanpour, Walker, & Avellaneda, 2009; Hult,

Ketchen, & Slater, 2005), growth, and enhanced profitability. Several

literature investigate the impact of human resource management

practices in diverse organizations and industry, either directly or indi-

rectly, as it affects organizational performance (Chang & Chuang,

2011; Beugelsdijk, 2008; Cabello-Medina, López-Cabrales, & Valle-

Cabrera, 2011; Chen & Huang, 2009) and strengthen organization.

The quest of whom to recruit by an employer is of utmost benefit to

the organization. During the recruitment process, organization looks

out for the best candidates to hire, in considerations of things like aca-

demic qualifications and years of experience, efficiency, and technical

know-how. Breaugh (2013) pointed out that the primary purpose of

recruitment is to bring an individual that is efficient and can remain in

the position for a satisfactory period of time. Therefore, human

resource managers are often faced with the task of recruiting the best

employee for an organization in a dynamic and competitive global

work environment. Organizations are affected by frequent employee

turnover; thus, recruiting and educating a new employee is costly

(Alola & Alola, 2018; Alola, Olugbade, Avci, & Öztüren, 2019).

Existing literature indicates that positive psychological capital can

produce positive result, self-development and improved individual

performance (Paterson, Luthans, & Jeung, 2014), financial perfor-

mance (McKenny, Short, & Payne, 2013), organizational commitment

(Luthans, Norman, Avolio, & Avey, 2008), job performance (Avey,

Reichard, Luthans, & Mhatre, 2011; Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio,

2007a, b), and subdue the desire to quit (Avey, Luthans, & Jensen,

2009). It is on this premise that human resource managers are in dire

need to find a better way for effective recruitment in different organi-

zational sectors. According to Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio (2015),

psychological capital is a four positive state of an individual that is

measurable. These include self-efficacy (efficacy), optimism, hope, and

resilience. Efficacy is the confidence to undertake a given task suc-

cessfully despite challenges, whereas optimism is the ability to make a

positive ascription towards success, both now and in the future. Hope,

on the other hand, is the ability to persevere until set goals are

achieved, whereas resilience is the ability to self-recover and bounce

Received: 10 September 2019 Revised: 12 October 2019 Accepted: 30 October 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2050

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