Examining the impact of psychological capital on academic achievement and work performance: The roles of procrastination and conscientiousness

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the effect of Psychological Capital (PsyCap) on students’ academic achievement and employees’ performance through procrastination at different levels of conscientiousness. The proposed theoretical model was examined using a moderated-mediation regression technique. The first group of participants comprised 1,670 university students from four major universities in the city of Makassar. Most of them were female (73.7%) with ages ranged from 17 to 24. The second group consisted of 400 employees (female, 57.5%) from five major organisations representing both private and public sectors in Makassar. The findings suggested that the students’ PsyCap had a negative direct impact on academic procrastination, but procrastination did not significantly impact students’ cumulative Grade-Point Average (GPA). The negative effect of PsyCap on students’ procrastination was stronger when students had low conscientiousness compared to high conscientiousness. On the other hand, employees’ PsyCap negatively predicted work procrastination and positively impacted the employees’ work performance. The results also indicated that procrastination negatively mediated the effect of PsyCap on employees’ performance. In brief, conscientiousness moderated the PsyCap-GPA relationship for students, while procrastination negatively mediated the PsyCap-employees’ performance relationship.