Psychological capital is a relatively new term, it comprises other four different terms that will be explained further along. The researcher simply use the term psychological capital here to represent individual motivational propensities that accrue through positive psychological constructs such as efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007). These psychological constructs can be observed and analyzed in various types of jobs. They are complex and sometimes hard to perceive, but they are without a doubt, of vital importance to people when it comes to their jobs. It contains several components of the inner life of workers. By inner life the researcher refers to a person’s true inner self, not who they pretend to be or pretend they care about. When experiences, components, and capital are added up it makes of the value. In the case of psychological capital, the “components” are optimism, efficacy, resilience, and hope.
Csikszentmihalyi (2014) noted that such psychological capital is developed through a pattern of investment of psychic resources that results in obtaining experiential rewards from the present moment while also increasing the likelihood of future benefit. Meaning that, in many cases psychological capital is developed through past and current experiences. Both theory-building and prior research on hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy supports that they are developable (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007). As well as other psychological aspects, these four components can be developed positively or negatively. People with normal jobs work at least eight hours in a day, meaning that 1/3 of their days are spent trying to accomplish goals established by the company they work for.
There is prior evidence suggesting that whenever these four constructs are mixed together into one higher-order construct it may be developable because this can almost be
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considered as state of mind (Luthans, Avery, & Patera, 2008). This could mean that if these four constructs are not developed correctly people could go through emotional distress.
Self-Efficacy
Self- efficacy is “the employee’s conviction or confidence about his or her abilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources or courses of action needed to successfully execute a specific task within a given context” (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Every employee has their own limitations, but sometimes having the confidence to overcome these limitations can make the difference between being a good or bad employee. A comprehensive meta-analysis demonstrated that self-efficacy is firmly related to work performance (Bandura &
Locke, 2003). Having the ability to perform a task is a key factor for a task to be accomplished successfully an efficiently. Evidence suggests that an optimistic sense of personal efficacy, accomplishments, and a positive well-being are vital factors for people who can solve problems in order to achieve success (Bandura, 1998).
Bandura (1998) formally defined perceived self-efficacy as personal judgments of one’s capabilities to organize and execute courses of action to attain designated goals.
Consequently, if teachers are not able to attain the desired goal, their motivation level will go down. If they try to achieve their goals by working excessively they will probably suffer from the burnout syndrome.
There is a construct closely related to self-efficacy, it´s called perceived control. It refers to the general expectancy about whether one´s behavior or external forces control the outcome of a certain activity. When a school´s only guide to reaching its desired goals is setting standards, teachers lose their ability to control their classrooms. Leading to a lower level of psychological capital.
Hope
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According to Webster´s Third New International Dictionary, in general people use the word “hope” on a daily base to “(1) trust or reliance; (2) desire accompanied with expectation of obtaining what is desired or belief that it is obtainable” (Gove, 1971). This is the common definition of hope, but when it comes to Psychological Capital, hope is a “positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (a) agency (goal directed energy) and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals).” As a psychological concept, hope incorporates three important conceptual foundations: agency, pathways, and goals (Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991).
Snyder (2000) said that researchers focusing on empirical studies found that people who have high levels of hope get sick with less frequency because the try to avoid getting sick, they analyze ways on how they can get sick and avoid it, while people with less hope don´t care about their health as much. If having hope and suffering from burnout it could be stated that people with high hope will probably find ways to avoid suffering from burnout. Thus, being healthier professionals, so if teachers with high hope found ways to avoid it they would probably do it.
Goals are constantly set through a year so that they can be reached by employees in a certain amount of time, employees set their minds in certain ways to achieve these goals, they usually “hope” they can achieve it. Hope and efficacy are both considered states, hope also includes finding ways to reach goals and sub goals. Hope also involves the motivational energy to pursue said goals (Snyder, 2000). Hope constitutes several things, but putting it simply hope includes the capacity to identify, clarify and pursue the way to succeed. It could be said that to have hope, people have to organize their thoughts in a way as to achieve this goal, and hope is a key component for this. Without this organizational patter hope cannot exist, or at least it won´t be the kind of hope recognized in Psychological Capital.
But how can teachers have high levels of hope if the driving assumptions of school reform are grounded in a punishing rather than a positive psychology, a view fixated on
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weaknesses and deficits rather than on learning and growing (Bullough , 2011). This is why some teachers have low levels of hope, if you are set to fail, and your supervisors and the system are focused only on your deficits rather than the things you are doing well it makes it relentlessly hard for teachers to have high levels of hope. These low levels of hope affect the psychological capital that in term can have emotional impact and can enhance the level of burnout felt.
Optimism
Scheier and Carver (1985) defined optimism as a generalized expectancy that one will experience good outcomes in life. They did not make a distinction regarding the way these good outcomes would occur. They did not mention if it was through the individual´s efforts, the efforts of others, or outside forces. It is simply having a positive mindset that things will go in the way people think they will. Optimists as those who make internal, stable, and global attributions regarding positive events (e.g., task accomplishment) and those who attribute external, unstable, and specific reasons for negative events (e.g., a missed deadline) (Seligman, 2002).
Optimism is a facet of Psychological Capital that is associated with a positive outcome outlook or attribution of events, which includes positive emotions and motivation and has the caveat of being realistic (Luthans, 2002). Being realistic is strictly related with optimism.
Optimism is not just an unchecked process without realistic evaluation (Schneider, 2001).
Realistic optimism includes an evaluation of what one can and cannot accomplish in a particular situation and hence adds to one’s efficacy and hope (Luthans & Youssef, 2007).
When it comes to teachers they have to be realistic optimists, they have to know their limitations and set their goals according to this. What people are able to do in times of adversity and what they achieve through times is also an important part of optimism (Scheier & Carver, 1992). Therefore, even if new standards are imposed on the teachers they try to find a way to
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cope with this new information and methods. Therefore making them work harder with the expectation that they will be more efficient. When people believe that their goals are attainable, they experience positive affect, ranging from pride to gratitude to simple relief, depending upon the reason underlying the favorable expectancy (Carver & Scheier, 1990)
A number of studies have also considered the possibility that optimism may be beneficial to physical well-being (Scheier & Carver, 1985). As stated before burnout can affect the health of the person suffering from it. Nevertheless, if you have teacher with high levels of optimisms, they are probably going to be happier in their jobs while at the same time performing better because they psychological capital is on a good level.
Resilience
In positive psychology, resilience is characterized by positive coping and adaptation in the face of significant risk or adversity (Masten & Reed, 2002). So basically, resilience is the ability of people to adapt to risky or adverse situations, in such a way that the outcome is successful. But, applied to the workplace, resilience is defined as the “positive psychological capacity to rebound, to ‘bounce back’ from adversity, uncertainty, conflict, failure, or even positive change, progress and increased responsibility” (Luthans, 2002).
Resilience is often characterized by positive coping and adaptation in the face of significant adversity or risk .Therefore, resilience can be characterized by coping responses not only to adverse events, but also to extreme positive events as well. Clinical psychologists also note that resilience can increase and even grow when the individual returns to levels above homeostasis after an adverse event (Richardson, 2002).
Luthans, Vogelgesang and Lester (2006) proposed that hope, optimism, and confidence act as paths to resilience. For example, people who a very hopeful, optimistic, and confident are more likely to spring back from and adverse experience than those people who are not. In the area of education it is important to be resilient if you want a high psychological capital
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level, this way even if you are working hard and fill burnt out you will be able to recover successfully in less time than those people who have a low level of psychological capital.
This is why psychological capital is such an important factor when it comes to any job.
The researcher hope to find out how psychological capital will affect the relationship between job standardization and job burnout. This study will also try to measure the levels of optimism, hope, self-efficacy, and resilience hoping to find out which is the most affected.
H2: Psychological capital will weaken the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout: (a) emotional exhaustion (b) depersonalization (c) reduced personal accomplishment.
Workload
Workload is a term that has been around for many years. There is still not a set definition of what workload really is, however this study will try to create a clearer idea in this section.
Gopher and Donchin (1986) said that workload is a multifaceted concept that is hard to define clearly. The term workload can be utilized to describe aspects of employees and their assigned tasks. Workload also includes the expectations of performance is the task, and sometimes the task is beyond the person´s capacities. Spector and Jex (1998) simplified the concept by saying that workload represents in the pure volume of effort that is required from an employee. This entails since the moment they wake up to go to work, like having to wake up early in the morning, until the time the stop working at night. There is certain concern with the day to day issues, these issues have been well-established in some research of workload and multiple task performance (Gopher & Donchin, 1986). Workload is different among different professions, a doctor does not have the same psychological and physiological workload of a human resource specialist. However, Spector and Jex (1998) suggested that workload can somehow be measured in numbers of hours at work, is can be measure depending on the level of production,
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and it can even include the psychological demands of the work that is being performed by the person. Ippolito, Hines, Mahmood and Cordova (2010) agreed with some aspects of these definitions by proposing that work-overload resulted from some work requirements that exceeded the persons boundaries, this person had to do a vast amount of work in a set period, or working many hours that may cause the body and mind not to be able to bear with the load.
Chen, Lee and Chang (2010) tried to divide workload in another way, the first division is quantitative workload, which is an excessive amount of work and qualitative workload that is how the employee perceived his or her ability being insufficient for completing a task at work.
Many of these definitions take into consideration the time frame in which a task has to be completed. For teachers this time frame is usually divided into their weekly workload, and semester workload.
The United States Air Force divided workload in three parts. The first part is time load, this is when a person perceived stress because of the speed they have to work at (frequency), this speed can sometimes be slowed down, however in some cases the task may be more urgent.
The second part is spirit investment, this means that the person has to work hard both mentally and physically in order to achieve a preset performance. The third and final part is mental stress, this refers to the investment the person has to make in mental or perceptual activities. This includes decision-making, calculation, attention, memory, and attention. (Virtanen, Fuhrer, Ferrie, & Kivimaki, 2012). These three parts can all be applied to other professions, not only army or air force, teachers and other professionals can be included in this application. Reid and Nygren (1988) did argue that sometimes two individuals performing the same task at work perform equally when they measure their performance. That is why many times teachers get the same score when the end of the year comes and their boss evaluates them. But these does not mean that the tasks were equally different for both of them. As Vidulich and Wickens (1986) said two people performing the same task can obtain the same results, however one of this could still have plenty of attention left to perform other tasks, while the other does not. This
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might add to the physical and psychological aspect of a teachers live. Teachers have to take into consideration the feelings of their students since this is a central value to many of them, this is also part of their workload. This leads to them having secondary roles like counseling and career advice. (Campbell & Neill, 1944). This is sometimes also included in the standards set for teachers. That is why the researcher believed that the following hypothesis would occur:
H3: Job Standardization is positively related to workload.
High workload has many consequences for teachers and others working in different environments. This consequences are both physical and psychological. Deepak, Iyer and Rao (2017) considered that a high workload could result in negative emotions of an employees, they might also present their work late, they might sometimes avoid following standards, and this might eventually create an unpleasant atmosphere for them and their coworkers. Employees who think they are short of time or think that they do not have what it takes to perform the job, tend to drain their mental and physical energy, making them feel emotionally drained which is one of the precursors of burnout (Alarcon, 2011). These and other factors are demising the mental resources of teachers. Consequently the following hypotheses were developed for this study:
H4: Workload is positively related to job burnout.
H5: Workload will mediate the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout.
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