Innovative management practices for enhancing employees' psychological capital, guided by positive psychology

Abstract

Against the backdrop of evolving market structures and intensifying industry competition, persistent workplace stress has led to accumulated negative emotions among employees and the widespread prevalence of occupational burnout, increasingly hindering corporate human resource efficiency and team stability. Traditional human resource management approaches primarily focus on problem-solving, emphasizing post-event responses to employee psychological issues rather than fostering positive psychological traits at their root. This limitation fails to meet modern enterprises' demands for human-centered, sustainable human resource development. Using positive psychology's PERMA theory as an analytical framework and incorporating the four core dimensions of psychological capital—namely self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism—this study examines structural deficiencies in employees' psychological capital and associated management challenges through frontline corporate data collected from a Chinese enterprise. A mixed-methods approach combining quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews was employed to identify key gaps in current management practices. Building upon these findings, the study proposes a positive psychological cultivation mechanism and an innovative management system tailored to contemporary business contexts. Pilot implementation results demonstrate that this model effectively improves employees' workplace mental health, enhances organizational performance, and strengthens team cohesion. The findings provide empirical evidence and practical frameworks for human-centric management development in Chinese enterprises, contributing to the growing body of literature on positive organizational behavior and employee well-being.