Impact on Psychological Capital and Adaptive Performance During Pandemic: A Study of Malaysia Young Professionals in Malaysia Service Sectors Context

Abstract

Adaptive Performance Behaviour, the focus of this study, has received much attention as new workplace demands require flexible employees who are tolerant of uncertainties and can successfully perform in dynamic, competitive environments. This study examines the significance of psychological capital on adaptive performance behaviour in the context of young professionals in the Malaysian service sector. PsyCap has continually been a critical factor for optimum organization performance. This study was conducted to determine whether the same elements that impacted PsyCap were still relevant during the pandemic. With the majority of employees being requested to work from home, it is important to determine what factors still affected PsyCap. The study was conducted among young professionals in Malaysia Service Sectors. A total of 173 respondents responded to the questionnaire and data was analysed using PLS. Interestingly, hope was found statistically not a significant factor affecting adaptive performance behaviour. Introduction Performance is the behaviour of employees that be able to be observed in their jobs in relevance to the goals of the organization (Tyler et al., 2017). In the organizational context, performance is the most crucial concept and it could be measured through four components, namely, task, interpersonal, dedicative, and adaptive performance behaviour (Wang et al., 2018). The focus of this study is on adaptive performance behaviour as it reflects the need to clearly focus on employees’ adaptability to the changes in work environment (Abukhait et al., 2019). Currently at the global level there is volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, where technology and strategies are changing rapidly (Giones et al., 2019). At the individual stage, adaptive performance behaviour can simplify encouraging consequences such as enhanced performance capability and career success (Supriyadi et al., 2020). This would lead to organizational outcomes such as organizational learning and coping with changing customer expectations (Kasim et al., 2018). Existing studies ((Alessandri et al., 2018; Choi et al., 2019; Tüzün et al., 2018), believes that there is a strong correlation between Psychological Capital (Psycap) and job performance of International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 2 , No. 1, 2022, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2022 HRMARS 1659 employees in organization. Moreover, the constant evolving of socioeconomic and technological environment highlighted the need for organizations to constantly adapt. Organizational change transforms the organization from a recent situation to another situation in the efforts to achieve greater effectiveness. PsyCap represents a positive psychological state where hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience are designed to improve individual and organizational performance (Georgiou et al., 2019). The concept of PsyCap is established to be a management concept that provides to individual achievement of high level of performance within an organization. The PsyCap concept is a product of growing interests in the studies of organizational behavior based on positive psychology (Tang et al., 2019), which consist of positive elements of hope, optimism, selfefficacy, and resilience which acts as motivational factors. According to Pandey et al (2020), employees with high PsyCap portray high confidence and belief in their ability; hence, they will engage themselves completely into their work, which can support them to satisfy situational requirements which includes internal and external changes. Conversely, all employees have a certain level of PsyCap which helps them to perform at a certain level. In other words, higher PsyCap leads to higher performance (Anglin et al., 2018). Adaptive performance behaviour is extremely relevant in firms where the business models and management are volatile due to technological or market evolution and environmental changes. In fact, Antilla (2019), defines the term ‘organisational change’ as the beginning of new work practices and technologies alongside restructuring and reorganisation arising in the workplace particularly when the world has experienced multiple changes throughout the last 50 years (Toffler, 2008). Toffler also added that majority of these changes are rooted in the industrial-based and knowledge-based economies. Along with these new changes, new challenges, and threats such as global-terrorism, strains on the financial system and threats from several pandemics (the latest being, COVID-19) exist. Literature Review The term “employee performance” refers to results in the sense of work achievement of exerted efforts under requisite of the job (Pradhan & Jena, 2017). Performance evaluation is often the focus when the discussion of performance management is at play. However, the whole process of performance management develops onto more complex structures such as organizational policies, practices, and design features that are interdependently creating employees with good performance scores (Turner, 2020). Trofimova (2018), pointed out that the factors suggested by research of adaptive performance behaviour can be easily integrated as subfactors into an eight-component taxonomy, forming a hierarchical description of the latent structure of performance adaptive behaviour. Park & Park (2019)has also stated that an important adaptive performance behaviour component for individuals adapt to new conditions or job requirements. Adaptive Performance Behaviour for Job-Relevant Changes Due to the multi-faceted nature of the construct of performance, it has been recommended that studies address dimensions identified by (Reijseger et al., 2016) one of which is adaptive performance behaviour. Adaptive performance behaviour is a subset of ‘work role performance’ that revolves around preserving or enhancing performance in times of experiencing or anticipating job-relevant International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 2 , No. 1, 2022, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2022 HRMARS 1660 changes through reaching and revising job-relevant knowledge, skills and strategies (Carpini et al., 2017)). Yusof et al., (2018), defined adaptive performance behaviour as behaviour that describes the capability of the individual to adapt to change and transfer learning from one task to another within the change paradigm. Change is the only continual and an ever-present reality in modern organizations where adaptation is vital (Gil-Garcia et al., 2019). Various forces within the era of globalisation have contributed to the pressure that calls for adaptive change from the organizations and their employees. The most impactful contributor to this pressure is undeniably technological change, as might be seen from the dependency upon computers in almost every current working environment. This dependence demonstrates a significant requirement of adaptive behaviour particularly from a generation growing up without the presence of computers. Over the years, there has been a number of pandemics faced by countries throughout the globe and the most current pandemic faced on a global scale would be COVID-19 (Abodunrin & Oloye, 2020). The on-going pandemic has forced millions to confine themselves in their homes and restrict general movement in public localities. A massive number of businesses are forced to close, and many individuals are not able to work remotely due to the natures of their jobs (Brynjolfsson et al., 2019). Advantages of Adaptive Performance Behaviour Fifteen years of research has led to unanimity with regards to the core of adaptive performance behaviour which is coping with change at all levels (individual, team and organizational). Despite the unanimity in the definition of the construct, the conceptualization and quantification (measurement methods), still remain an unresolved issue (Stasielowicz, 2019). The amount of period spent at work has come to a point that an individual’s worklife has considerably affected their personal well-being. PsyCap theory presented by Luthans has provided a pleasant perspective in analysing employees’ career success (K. W. Luthans et al., 2019). In a study by Nguyen & Ngo (2020) PsyCap was found to have an incremental impact on job satisfaction and organizational commitment in contrast to human and social capital. Psychological capital (PsyCap) is portrayed as a positive psychological state of development (Luthans et al., 2019). Conceptualised as a higher-order construct, PsyCap represents the collective variance of four constructs: hope, efficacy, resilience, and (Luthans et al., 2019). PsyCap is more complex compared to human and social capital despite the latter being much more widely accepted and well-researched. PsyCap gains competitive advantage through progress or investment of present and future in terms of positive development (Alessandri et al., 2018). Furthermore, PsyCap provides benefits on both individual and organizational scale. On an individual scale, PsyCap could speed up growth while on an organizational scale, it could provide nourished competitive advantage, leverage, and return on investments through improved performance. The latter shows similar pattern to human and social capital (Luthans et al., 2019). The development of service industry though changes are taking place in all sectors of the economy, the services industry has demonstrated itself to be one of the main economic builders in today’s competitive and dynamic environment (Carrese, 2020). Urbanization, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 2 , No. 1, 2022, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2022 HRMARS 1661 privatization and increasing demand for intermediate and final consumer service has managed to the growth of the service industry. Due to this, the services industry has evolved to be one of the main key drivers for the development of the global economy. From the A