The Effects of Co-Workers´ Psychological Capital in Knowledge Management Processes

Abstract

In 2002, Luthans suggested that organizational behavior’s center of attention would be Positive Organizational Behavior (POB). Adopting the positive emotions as object of study, hope, resilience, Self-efficacy/trust and optimism were presented as POB’ states that could represent a high superior order of configuration called Psychological Capital (PsyCap) (Avey et al., 2010). The application of positively oriented psychological and human resources skills leads to an increase in the co-workers´ performance (Luthans et al., 2007a), however, the relationship between Psychological Capital and Knowledge Management (KM) processes is still unknown. In this research thesis, we studied the effects of co-workers´ PsyCap in KM processes in organizations and verified if any of the Psychological Capital dimensions moderates Knowledge Management processes. In order to do it, it was performed a descriptive and correlational analysis, a multiple regression analysis, a multiple multivariate regression analysis and a moderation analysis. The sample is made up of 1132 participants, of both genders, who have a bond of at least one year to an organization, in Portugal. The short form of the Knowledge Management Questionnaire (KMQ–SF, Pais, 2014) and the PsyCap questionnaire of Luthans et al. (2007) translated in Machado (2008) were used as measures. It was also realized that the factors of Psychological Capital influence the processes of Knowledge Management in the organization, since the analysis are significant and that there are three moderations effects between Hope, Self-efficacy and the Knowledge Management global scale; between Hope, Optimism and Knowledge-centered-culture and also between Hope, Self-efficacy and Formal-KM-practices.