Health Human Capital:Conceptualization,Scale,and Influence On Job Performance And Well-Being

Human capital is not only one of the most active factors driving economic growth,but also an important foundation for companies to gain competitive advantage and achieve sustainable development.Nowadays,with the gradual assimilation of material capital,human capital investment has become more and more obvious in promoting the utilization efficiency of material capital,innovation ability,harmonious labor relations and organizational performance.Especially with the advent of the era of knowledge economy,the strategic focus of enterprise development has shifted from contention of external resources to internal resource development.As the most important internal resources of an enterprise,how can employees stimulate the value of human capital embedded in them to gain competitive advantage and achieve sustained development is a key concern for managers.However,whether it is management practice or existing theoretical research,they tend to think that the human capital of enterprise employees,or the content of enterprise human capital investment,is the skills,knowledge,experience,skills and innovation ability that employees need to complete their own work better.They ignore an important basic human capital—health human capital.What are the consequences of lack of health human capital investment?According to the White Paper on Workplace Health of Chinese Enterprise Employees 2018,among the nearly 800 million people employed,37.6% of enterprise employees have no medical check-up benefits,and physical problems such as shoulder,neck,lumbar spine,and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety are spreading in the workplace.Indeed,in recent years,employees have been facing a decline in their physical health,as well as their mental health.Their health behavior is also at a relative low level.The low level of health directly interferes with the daily work of employees,including a reduction in work enthusiasm,satisfaction,attendance,and happiness,as well as an increase in job burnout and turnover intention.Another potential and possibly more serious problem caused by this is to reduce the rate of return of education human capital,because the health level is related to whether the working hours are stable,whether the attention is concentrated,whether the cognitive vitality is strong,and whether the absorption ability is sufficient.Worryingly,the extra medical expenses and the loss of social reputation due to employees' health problems are still on the rise.However,managers seem to have not found an effective solution,and the phenomenon is also occurring frequently.Facing the predicament of theory and practice,this study attempts to systematically study the economic value of health human capital,so as to arouse the attention of management practice and academia.Given that health human capital is a novel concept,and its research is still in its infancy,this study intends to conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis of health human capital from three aspects.First,this study clarifis the conceptual connotation and structural dimensions of health human capital.Also,this study aims to figure out the difference between the concepts of health,human capital,and health human capital.Accordingly,the present study will figure out the similarities and differences between health human capital in the fields of economics and organizational management.In addition,is the health human capital consistent with the three-dimensional structure proposed by the World Health Organization(WHO)as“health is a good condition for physical,psychological and social adaptation”? Or is it a four-dimensional structure that includes the moral health emphasized by domestic scholars? This series of problems also needs to be clarified.For the investigation of the above issues,this study will conduct in-depth interviews based on the qualitative research procedures,obtain textual data and perform step-by-step coding to summarize key information,explore the connotation of health human capital and refine its structure.Second,this study will develop a health human capital scale.After coding and analyzing the interview data,the second research content is to construct health human capital measurement items and develop a health human capital scale.In this process,the present study first demonstrates the theoretical basis of scale development,and compares it with the existing measurement system in the field of economics,focusing on the reasons for designing a self-evaluation measurement scale.Specifically,based on quantitative research methods,this study follows the ideas,steps and procedures of classic scale development,and refers to multiple scale development examples.In this study,the initial items of the health human capital scale were formed on the basis of existing literature and interview data.After forming the initial scale,this study invited some experts to discuss and revise the language description and content structure of the scale.In the quantitative analysis,this study uses exploratory factor analysis(EFA)and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)and other statistical techniques for item purification and verification.Two questionnaires were distributed during the scale development process(the sample size was 200 and 443,respectively).Among them,the data obtained for the first time was used for the purification of scale items,and the data obtained for the second time was used for reliability and validity test.Third,after addressing fundamental issues such as connotation,structure,and measurement,this study will also examine the impact of health human capital on job performance and job well-being and the corresponding mechanisms.As a kind of human capital,an important feature of health human capital is the salient process of investment,production and value-added.To this end,this study will examine the output effect of health human capital,that is,what health human capital brings for enterprises and employees.In the framework of self-determination theory,this study builds a moderated mdediation model that links health human capital with employee performance and job well-being.This study theoretically proposes that the three basic psychological needs of the individual(autonomy needs,ability needs,and belonging needs)will form self-determine pursuit after being satisfied.The pursuit,in turn,stimulates more positive psychological experience and approproate behavior.This study further proposes that work intensification interferes with the relationship between health human capital and work performance as well as work well-being,that is,it is likely to weaken the effect of health human capital through increased labor intensity and extended working hours.In the process of analyzing the effect of health human capital output,this study collected multi-resource data,which were completed by employees and leaders.This study obtained the following research conclusions.First,on the basis of literature review and interview data analysis,this study defines health human capital as the physical functions,psychological qualities,and career adaptability contained in employees,which are used to ensure work development,improve work status,and achieve career growth.As an important human capital,individuals or organizations can invest in health human capital and obtain benefits.Health human capital includes three dimensions of physcial function,psychological quality and career adaptability.The controversial moral health is not a dimension of health human capital,but the content of health human capital also contains information on moral health.In addition,the measurement of health human capital can be carried out by means of employee self-evaluation.In this study,a 31-item health human capital measurement scale was developed.This study found that health human capital can improve employees' work performance and job well-being.The mechanism for achieving this growth process is that health human capital meets three basic psychological needs of individuals.The above process will be moderated by work intersification.When the degree of work reinforcement is high,the effectiveness of health human capital and its various dimensions will be weakened.The above research conclusions not only enrich the current research on human capital theory,but also provide support for the scientific implementation of the national strategy of health China in organizational management,reflecting the important theoretical and practical significance of this research.At the theoretical level,this article systematically studies health human capital,providing some thinking for basic problems such as the concept,structure,and measurement of health human capital research,and also demonstrating the output effect of health human capital.At the practical level,the research conclusions of this paper are operable.This is in line with the “Health China Action(2019-2030)” issued by the State Council in July 2019,which proposed health knowledge popularization actions,reasonable dietary actions,national fitness actions,and mental health promotion actions,leading the construction of health China towards concrete and operational manners.This study reveals that companies should pay attention to health human capital in addition to education human capital,make effective human capital investment,implement scientific employee health management,formulate reasonable job design,and develop effective work performance and well-being management.This study's innovations can be summarized into four aspects.First,unlike simply considering human capital as knowledge,skills,and abilities in the past,this study focuses on the health component of human capital.Health human capital itself is an innovative research topic,because scholars focused on human capital in education,ignoring the basic human capital of health human capital.Second,this study defines the conceptual connotation and structural dimensions of health human capital from the perspective of organizational management.The research on health human capital used to conducted in the field of economics,and the definition of its conceptual connotation and structural dimension is based on the research paradigm of economics.This research not only clarifies the similarities and differences of general health,human capital,health investment and other related constructs,but also explores the basic problems of health human capital from the perspective of organizational context.Third,unlike previous methods that used second-hand data to objectively measure health human capital,this study innovatively developed a subjective,self-evaluated health human capital scale.Due to different measurement levels and measurement purposes,the previous measurement indicators(such as birth mortality,nutritional intake,etc.)are difficult to use in organizational management.In this study,a self-evaluation measurement scale was designed and its reliability and validity have been examined.Fourth,based on the self-determination theory,this paper links health human capital with basic psychological needs satisfaction,job performance,job well-being and job intensification,and builds a complete analysis model of health human capital output.Previous studies have mainly confirmed the promotion of health human capital on relevant economic development indicators.This study innovatively conducted at employee individual level and examines the relationship between employee health human capital and job performance and well-being.Finally,this study discusses the limitations and future research directions.