Vol. 2, Issue 4, Part A (2016)

Abstract
The concept of Psychological capital can be defined as an individual’s positive psychological state of development, which consists of four components: self-efficacy/ confidence, hope, optimism, and resiliency. Self-efficacy is defined people’s convictions about their own capacity for successfully executing a course of action that leads to a desired outcome. Hope is an individual’s determination to maintain effort toward goals and ability to determine alternative courses of action to attain those goals. Optimism is the ability to the see the brighter side of things always and resiliency is the psychological capacity to bounce back from adversity, uncertainty and conflicting situations. People with high levels of psychological capital can work happily. Coping plays an important role on the protection of physical and mental health and helps to maintain balance during stressful situations. Active coping (taking steps to remove or minimize the effects), planning (thinking about how to cope with a stressor), suppression of competing activities (trying to avoid being distracted by other activities and focusing on the stressor), seeking social support for instrumental reasons (seeking information or advice), seeking social support for emotional reasons (seeking moral support, sympathy or understanding) and positive reinterpretations are considered as functional coping strategies. Dysfunctional coping involves behavioural disengagement (reducing efforts to deal with the stressor), mental disengagement (involves activities that distract the individual from thinking about the stressor) and denial (involves denying when there is a problem). This study aims at exploring the characteristics of coping strategy and positive psychological capital of junior and senior executives working at public at private and public sector banks. The questionnaires on the positive psychological capital and coping strategy were administered on 310 executives drawn from public and private sector banks in Kolkata (India) using simple random sampling method. Results indicated the following points: 1. Senior and junior executives of private sector vary with respect to their Coping strategy (functional and dysfunctional). 2. There are some significant differences between senior and junior executives with respect to their positive psychological capital. 3. Positive psychological capital has a significant positive correlation with the functional coping strategy. The study implies that training and developing positive psychological capital among employees help them to deal with stressful situation assertively rather than avoiding it in order to promote positive attitude at the workplace.