proactive personality and job performance: exploring job autonomy as a moderator

Proactive Personality and Job Performance: Exploring Job Autonomy as a ModeratorAuthor(s): Jerry Bryan Fuller Jr., Kim Hester and Susie S. CoxSource: Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 35-51Published by: Pittsburg State UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25822514 .

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JOURNAL OF MANAGERIAL ISSUES Vol. XXII Number 1 Spring 2010: 35-51

Proactive Personality and Job Performance: Exploring Job Autonomy as a Moderator

Jerry Bryan Fuller, Jr. Assistant Professor of Management

Louisiana Tech University

Kim Hester Professor of Management

Arkansas State University

Susie S. Cox Assistant Professor of Management

McNeese State University

As organizations attempt to cope with more dynamic competitive environments, there has been a growing interest in workers who are not only cooperative, but who are self-starting and proactive in helping their organizations function more effectively (Chan, 2000; Crant, 2000). Indeed, the competitive advantage and success of organizations is thought to be increasingly dependent upon personal initiative and proactive behavior (Crant, 2000; Fuller et al, 2007; Seiling, 2001). As a result, more and more organizations are beginning to hold employees accountable for behavior that contributes to constructive

improvement in the workplace (Seiling, 2001). GrifFm et al. (2007) note that work performance is no longer considered as simply completing required tasks

proficiently and broader meanings of work performance are being examined.

Consequently, a growing stream of research has focused upon gaining a

greater understanding of people with "proactive" personalities. According to

Rank, Pace, and Frese (2004), the trait components of personal initiative are

captured by the "proactive personality" construct (Bateman and Crant, 1993). A person who has a proactive personality is "one who is relatively unconstrained

by situational forces and who effects environmental change" (Bateman and

Crant, 1993: 105). People with proactive personalities seek out opportunities to improve things, take action, and tend to "persevere until they bring about

JOURNAL OF MANAGERIAL ISSUES Vol. XXII Number 1 Spring 2010

(35)



36 Proactive Personality and Job Performance

meaningful change" (Seibert et al, 1999: 417). People who are less proactive do not show personal initiative and do not identify or act upon opportunities to

produce constructive change. Accordingly, people with proactive personalities tend to engage in constructive, change-oriented behavior and create situations that facilitate high job performance (Crant, 1995). Empirical investigations of the criterion validity of the proactive personality scale indicate that proactive personality is positively related to proactive behavior (e.g., Kammeyer-Mueller andWanberg, 2003; Seibert etal., 2001; Thompson, 2005) and job performance (e.g., Crant, 1995; FittetaL, 2002; Thompson, 2005).

From a practical and theoretical perspective, the proactive personality construct is appealing and unique, in part, because it is what Locke and Latham

(2004) call a "strong personality" trait. According to Locke and Latham, strong personalities are traits that "should be less constrained by situations than weak ones" (2004: 395). However, no research has examined the extent to which "situational forces," such as job autonomy, might enhance or attenuate the positive relationship between proactive personality and job performance.

This is unfortunate because in Bateman and Crant's (1993) original article, there was a call for research to assess the extent to which "situational strength" influences manifestations of a proactive personality. Consequently, there has yet to be a complete critical evaluation of the proactive personality construct, and

prior findings indicating a positive relationship with proactive behavior and

performance "should be considered incomplete" (Thompson, 2005: 1016). Because part of the appeal of a trait-based measure of personal initiative

is that it captures a tendency to persevere in enacting environmental change even when faced with substantial obstacles, an examination of the extent to which situational constraints suppress or reduce the performance of people with proactive personalities appears to be long overdue. Although Chan (2006) finds that the relationship between proactive personality and job performance was influenced by the individual's situational judgment effectiveness, this study differs from Chan's research in that it assesses a characteristic of the work environment as a moderator rather than a characteristic of the individual as a moderator. In short, the purpose of this study is to provide the first critical test of the "strong personality" aspect of the proactive personality construct by assessing the extent to which one situational constraint, job autonomy, influences the relationship between proactive personality and job performance.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

The proactive personality construct is grounded in the social interactionist

perspective (Bandura, 1977; Jones, 1983), which holds that people are not only influenced by their environment, but also are capable of creating or enacting their environment (Bateman and Crant, 1993). The essence of the proactive personality construct is that people differ in their need to manipulate and control their surrounding environment, which results in differences in their proclivity




Fuller, Hester, and Cox 37

to initiate change-oriented actions (Bateman and Crant, 1993). People with

proactive personalities are purported to identify and act upon opportunities, show personal initiative, and persist in their pursuit of constructive change (Crant, 1995). Non-proactive, or passive, people do not actively scan the environment for opportunities to change their surrounding environment nor

do they take action when the opportunity arises-they are more likely to adapt to environmental change rather than enact it. Thus, proactive personality is thought to be a stable trait characterized by a tendency "to take personal initiative in a broad range of activities and situations" (Seibert et ai, 2001:

847).

According to Crant (1995), people with highly proactive personalities are

likely to perform better than more passive individuals because they engage in behaviors that make important contributions to work-related tasks. For

example, proactive people are purported to be persistent, which has been found to be related to job performance (e.g., Barrick and Mount, 1991). Crant further states that "more proactive people can be expected to create

situations and environments conducive to effective performance" (1995: 532

533). In discussing his finding that proactive personality is positively related to

objective job performance, Crant (1995) suggests that future research is needed to more broadly assess criterion validity by studying both objective as well as

subjective measures of job performance. Subsequent research examining the

relationship between proactive personality and job performance has utilized

subjective performance ratings. Utilizing survey questionnaires, Pitt et al.

(2002) and Thompson (2005) use supervisors to evaluate their subordinates'

job performance. Both Pitt et al. (2002) and Thompson (2005) report a positive relationship between proactive personality and job performance. Therefore, research indicates that proactive personality predicts both objective and

subjective job performance. These findings are important because meta-analytic research indicates that objective and subjective ratings of performance should not be viewed as interchangeable (Bommer et al, 1995). Therefore, research

may benefit from examining performance measures that have elements of both

subjectivity and objectivity. Multiple dimensional performance appraisal tools

may offer such a benefit.

However, researchers have yet to relate proactive personality to perhaps the most common and important measure of job performance-the employee's formal performance evaluation. Research relating personality characteristics

with job performance rarely utilizes results of the performance appraisal instrument used by the job incumbent's organization (c.f. Taylor et al, 2004).

This is unfortunate for several reasons. First, the outcome of the organization's

performance appraisal process is likely to be the most important measure of

job performance from the employee's perspective. Performance appraisals are

often the instrument used by not only management, but also the employee to

gauge his/her performance. Employees understand that the rating received

on the company performance appraisal affects their job security, opportunities





for promotion, salary, and bonuses. Second, efforts to validate a personality variable as a selection tool are likely to be based upon the organization's performance appraisal data rather than on subjective supervisor performance ratings obtained by survey or an objective performance rating. Performance as

assessed by the firm is much more likely to withstand legal scrutiny than other measures of performance. Third, performance appraisal instruments used by organizations often require supervisors to assess subordinates on dimensions of performance beyond that assessed by objective measures of performance (Duarte et ai, 1994). For example, a salesperson's performance appraisal may not only include the number of new accounts they acquired or units they sold in a certain period, but also the extent to which they serviced old accounts,

helped new hires and other sales people, and assisted with non-sales-related duties. Consequently, it seems that performance as evaluated by a firm's formal

appraisal process is likely to be a more salient criterion measure than either solely objective measures or survey-based subjective measures of job performance. For this reason, the organization's formal performance evaluation was used to assess job performance in the present study.

Hypothesis 1. Proactive personality has a positive relationship to job performance.

Although we expect to replicate prior findings indicating a positive relationship between proactive personality and performance, this relationship

may vary according to the degree of "strength" of the job environment. According to the situational strength hypothesis (Mischel, 1977), individual differences determine behavior more strongly in situations that are unstructured than in situations that are structured. Unstructured situations are considered "weak"

because they do not provide clear expectations about appropriate behavior or

provide incentives to perform desired behaviors (Mischel, 1977). On the other

hand, structured or "strong" situations are likely to reduce the influence of individual differences on behavior because they constrain behavioral choice by creating invariant expectations of appropriate behavior or by providing strong incentives to perform only specified behavior. Research generally supports the view that the relationship between personality variables and outcomes such as behavior and job performance is strongest in weak psychological situations

(e.g., Barrick and Mount, 1993; Lee et al, 1990). In organizational settings, job autonomy is often used to assess situational

strength (Barrickand Mount, 1993; LeeetaL, 1990; PetersetaL, 1982). Hackman and Oldham (1975) define job autonomy as the degree of freedom one has to schedule and determine the method of how his/her work is to be accomplished. In situations where individuals have a high degree of job autonomy (i.e., a

weak situation), behavior is more likely to be related to individual personality differences because there is discretion in the choice of behaviors used to

accomplish assigned tasks or achieve specified goals. In jobs with low levels





of autonomy (i.e., a strong situation), an individual's actions are likely to be constrained by a variety of factors including close supervision, machine-driven

pacing, and detailed work rules. Therefore, in conditions of low job autonomy, personality is likely to play little or no role in the behavior of individuals because

they have no discretion with regard to performance-related activities. Although Mischel (1977) specifically refers to behavior as the criterion variable in his situational strength argument, little research has been conducted examining the extent to which job autonomy moderates the relationship between personality and behavior. However, research has shown that job performance is a function of the interaction between job autonomy and a variety of individual difference variables including: Type A personality characteristics (Lee et al, 1990); conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness (Barrick and Mount, 1993);

growth-need strength (Hackman and Lawler, 1971); and need for achievement

(Steers and Spencer, 1977). While level of job autonomy is unlikely to affect the proactive behavior and

job performance of passive individuals, it may have a significant effect upon

people with proactive personalities. Individuals with proactive personalities may be less proactive when they experience low levels of job autonomy because some forms of proactive or performance- enhancing behavior may be either

very difficult or even impossible to perform when freedom of behavior is

severely curtailed (e.g., network building, information-seeking, altering or

experimenting with processes and procedures). Further, explicit consequences for deviation from unambiguous behavioral demands may also deter proactive behavior in low job autonomy conditions. Alternatively, high levels of job autonomy have ambiguous expectations with regard to how and when tasks are

performed as well as little in the way of negative consequences for deviating from traditional task behavior, thus providing people with a proactive personality the

opportunity to try new ways of accomplishing their work assignments. This is consistent with recent theoretical models of work design which predict that

job performance is likely to be a function of the interaction between proactive personality and work design characteristics such as job autonomy (Parker et al.,

2006). To the extent this is true, the predictive validity of proactive personality may be substantially reduced in conditions of low job autonomy and substantially enhanced in conditions of high job autonomy.

It may also be that high job autonomy is "relevant" to proactive personality in the sense that situations with high job autonomy offer cues for expressing

proactive personality. Trait activation theory suggests that "personality traits are expressed as responses to trait relevant situational cues" (Tett and Burnett, 2003: 502). Situations with high job autonomy are likely to present cues that

suggest it is acceptable or even desirable to alter the way work is performed

(e.g., lack of supervision, limited task structure, no external pacing signals, co-worker communication). People with proactive personalities are likely to

respond to these cues by experimenting with novel ways of performing tasks

and implementing changes that enhance performance. People with passive





personalities are likely to ignore cues suggesting work tasks may be performed in a variety of ways. In a situation with a low level of job autonomy, few cues are

likely to be present signaling that personal initiative is acceptable or desired.

Therefore, from a trait activation perspective, high job autonomy "activates"

people with proactive personalities, while low job autonomy is likely to have

low trait activation potential. Thus, trait activation may also be a factor

that contributes to the relationship between proactive personality and job

performance being moderated by job autonomy.

Hypothesis 2. The relationship between proactive personality and job

performance is moderated by job autonomy, such that the positive relationship is strongest when job autonomy is highest.

METHODS

Data and Sample

Data were collected at a small utility company in the southern United

States with 120 employees. Employees were informed that participation in the

survey was voluntary and confidential. Employees were also informed that top

management supported the research and was providing time during regular work hours for employees to complete the survey. The first survey collected

data on control variables, proactive personality, and perceived job autonomy. The company conducted performance appraisals for all employees at the same time?during the time period between the initial data collection and the

collection of data from the supervisors. These performance appraisal data were drawn from company records immediately prior to the collection of the

supervisor data. A total of 115 sets of matching subordinate-supervisor data were obtained, which represents a 95.8% response rate. With regard to job tenure, a majority of the respondents had been with the company less than 10

years (<1 year, 5%; 1-5 years, 30%; 6-10 years, 26%; 11-15 years, 11%; >15

years, 28%). With regard to education, a majority of the respondents reported some college education (some high school, 1%; high school degree, 35%; some

college, 39%; college degree, 22%; graduate degree, 3%). With regard to age, the majority of the workers were 40 or younger (<20, 0%; 20-30, 26%; 31-40,

29%; 41-50, 29%; 51-60, 13%; >60, 3%).

Measures

Job Performance. Performance data were collected from company records. The organization used a common performance appraisal instrument for all

employees except the chief executive officer. Supervisors were required to

evaluate each of their subordinates on a number of different dimensions of

job performance (i.e., job knowledge, dependability, behavioral expectations,





communication skills, teamwork, external/internal customer relations, problem solving, quality, organizational skills, continuous improvement, safety and

attendance), with each dimension consisting of multiple items. Each subordinate was also required to perform a self-evaluation on the same dimensions and items. Each item was evaluated on a three-point scale (exceeds standards, meets

standards, or below standards). When an item was rated "exceeds standards" or "below standards" by either supervisor or subordinate, they were required to include a comment justifying this rating. Further, employees were evaluated on

the extent to which they achieved a variety of specific, measurable performance goals that had been established in the prior performance evaluation. Research indicates that this tends to minimize rating bias (Huber, 1989). Finally, supervisors were required to synthesize all of these data into an overall

performance appraisal rating utilizing the same three-point rating scale (i.e., exceeds standards, meets standards, or below standards) and provide written comments justifying the overall performance rating. Supervisors were required to discuss the completed performance evaluation with their own supervisor and the human resources manager. In addition, supervisors were required to receive

approval from both of these individuals before conducting the performance evaluation with the employee. Each employee was provided the opportunity to

detail the extent to which he or she agreed or disagreed with the supervisor's overall performance appraisal rating. The company provided the researchers with the overall performance evaluation assigned to the employee at the end of this evaluation process (i.e., below standards, meets standards, or exceeds

standards). For the purposes of this study, job performance was coded for each individual as a "3" (exceeds standards), "2" (meets standards), or "1" (below standards). The organization used these performance ratings to make merit raise decisions.

Proactive Personality. Proactive personality was assessed with Seibert et a/.'s

(1999) 10-item scale by subordinates at time 1 (e.g., "Wherever I have been, I

have been a powerful force for change."). The response scale used for proactive personality was a Likert-type scale of" 1" to "7" where

" 1" represented "Strongly

Disagree" and "7" represented "Strongly Disagree." Job Autonomy. Job Autonomy was assessed with Spreitzer's (1995) three

item scale by subordinates at time 1 (e.g., "I have considerable opportunity for

independence and freedom in how I do my job."). Self-reports of perceived

job autonomy were used in the present study because in person-situation interactional models, "the psychological meaning of the situation for the

individual is the important determining factor" (Endler and Magnusson, 1976:

968). That is, individuals act upon their perceptions rather than objective reality

(Jones, 1990). The response scale for job autonomy was a Likert-type scale

of "1" to "5" where "1" represented "Strongly Disagree" and "5" represented

"Strongly Disagree." Control Variables. Based upon Edmondson's (1999) suggestion that trust

promotes the belief that the situation is safe for risk-taking (i.e., psychological





safety), trust in the organization was included as a control variable. Trust in the

organization was assessed with Robinson and Rousseau's (1994) seven-item scale (e.g., "In general, I believe my employer's motives and intentions are

good."). Consistent with Barrick and Mount (1993), the respondent's^ level within the firm's hierarchy was included as a control variable. Job level within the firm's hierarchy was included based upon the likelihood that individuals at

higher levels of the organization would have more authority and responsibility to address problems and undertake improvement initiatives. Further, higher level jobs might have greater job complexity, and research has shown that the

relationship between general mental ability and job performance is stronger at higher levels of job complexity than it is at low levels of job complexity (Hunter and Hunter, 1984). Based upon an organizational chart provided by the organization, individuals were grouped into three categories: lower-level

(i.e., non-supervisory and first line supervisors, 83%), mid-level (i.e., mid-level

managers, 13%), and top management team (4%). Finally, tenure, education, and

age were included as demographic control variables.

Analysis

To test the study's hypotheses, moderated hierarchical regression analysis is used. In order to reduce the effects of non-essential ill-conditioning encountered in moderated hierarchical regression analysis, Aiken and West's

(1991) suggestion to center both main effects variables prior to creating the interaction term is followed. This involves subtracting the mean value of the variable from the score of each respondent, the result being a variable with a mean value of zero. Performing this transformation prior to creating the interaction term reduces the potential for multicollinearity among main effect variables to bias the interaction term and its interpretation (i.e., its statistical

significance).

RESULTS

The summary statistics for the study variables are reported in Table 1. All of the latent variable scales exhibited acceptable reliability. The results

presented in Table 2 indicate that proactive personality is positively related to the employee's performance appraisal rating. These results provide support for

Hypothesis 1 that proactive personality is directly related to job performance. The results of the analysis utilizing subordinate-rated job autonomy indicate that the relationship between proactive personality and employee performance appraisal is moderated by job autonomy, supporting Hypothesis 2. The additional four percent of variance accounted for by the interaction term is

marginally larger than the 1-3% of incremental variance explained in most field studies (McClelland and Judd, 1993).




Table 1

Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations, and Reliabilities*1

Variable M S.D.

1. Job Performance 2.05 0.25

2. Job Autonomy

4.03

0.72 .06 (.81)

3. Proactive

Personality

5.10 0.80 .19* .14 (.90)

4. Trust in Organization

3.79

0.76 .14 .27** .05 (.84)

5. Job Tenure n.a. n.a. -.02 .17+ .05 -.03

6. Education n.a. n.a. -.11 .18+ .05 .35** -.07

7. Age n.a. n.a. .04 .13 -.05 .04 .44** .17+

8. Position in Firm Hierarchyb n.a. n.a. -.24* .27** .05 .21* .27** .49** .25*

aN= 115. Reliabilities in ().

bLower-level coded as 1, mid-level coded as 2, top-level coded as 3.

+p<.10;*p<.05; **p < .01.




Table 2 Results of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Job Performance

(Annual Company Performance Evaluation)

Job Performance Variable B AR2

Step 1: Control Variables Job Tenure .03 Education -.03

Age .08 Position in Firm Hierarchy -.28* Trust in Organization .20*

Change in R2 .09+

Step 2: Main Effect Job Autonomy .08

Change in R2 .01

Step 3: Main Effect Proactive Personality .18*

Change in R2 .03*

Step 4: Interaction Proactive Personality X Job Autonomy .22*

Change in R2 .04*

Overall Adjusted R* .11

Overall F Value (df regression, residual) 2.81** (8, 106)

aN = 115. Standardized beta coefficients are shown. AR2 is based upon variables included in each step. +p <.10; *p<.05; **p < .01.

However, the amount of incremental variance explained by an interaction term is an incomplete measure of the effects of a moderator variable

(Champoux and Peters, 1980, 1987). Therefore, following Cohen etal.'s (2003) recommendation, the regression of proactive personality on job performance was plotted at three values of job autonomy: the mean of job autonomy, one standard deviation above the mean, and one standard deviation below the

mean. Figure I shows that this positive average effect is suppressed by low

perceived job autonomy and enhanced by high perceived job autonomy. That is, proactive personality is strongly related to job performance for those individuals with high job autonomy, but unrelated to job performance for those individuals with low job autonomy.





Figure I

Plot of Interaction between Proactive Personality and Job

Autonomy

High

Job Performance

(Annual Company Performance

Evaluation)

Low

High Autonomy

Mean Autonomy

Low Autonomy

Low

(-1 SD) High (+1 SD)

Proactive Personality

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this research is to provide an initial examination of the extent to which job autonomy influences the relationship between the proactive personality trait and job performance. The results indicate that proactive personality is positively related to job performance. This study establishes, for the first time, criterion-related validity of the proactive personality construct utilizing the measure used by the worker's organization to assess

employee performance. This new finding provides an important contribution to the literature not only because it is based upon a more salient measure of

performance (i.e., salient to the employee) than prior research, but also because

it provides the missing component of a triangulation approach (i.e., objective

performance, subjective performance, and "actual" performance as measured

by the company) to validating the relationship between proactive personality and job performance. The magnitude of the relationship between proactive





personality and job performance found in this study (r =

+.19) is generally consistent with prior research utilizing other measures of performance (e.g., r = +.23, Crant, 1995; r = +.20, Thompson, 2005), although the correlation

reported by Pitt et al.'s (2002) study is somewhat larger than reported here (i.e., r = +.29).

However, the main purpose of the present research is to provide an

examination of the extent to which proactive personality is indeed a "strong personality." This research is long overdue given that a plea was made by Bateman and Crant (1993) in the original article introducing the proactive personality construct for research evaluating the extent to which people with

proactive personalities are, or are not, constrained by strong situations. The results indicate that low levels of job autonomy do attenuate the positive relationship between proactive personality and job performance, which

suggests that job autonomy does serve as a significant workplace constraint for people with proactive personalities. Figure I reveals that low perceived job autonomy completely attenuates the relationship between proactive personality and job performance. Alternatively, high levels of perceived job autonomy appear to enhance the positive relationship between proactive personality and job performance. Thus, these results suggest that proactive personality is not a "strong" personality trait. Therefore, this study suggests there are other

important performance-related behaviors that proactive people may be unable to perform in lowjob autonomy conditions. For example, if the design of the job restricts the employee's movement within the workplace and interaction with other employees, then it may be difficult for even proactive people to engage in

network-building activities which Thompson (2005) suggests may be important for increased levels of job performance. To the extent that this is true, then this study's results suggest that the relationship between proactive personality and other task- and performance-related behaviors are likely moderated by job autonomy. This is something that future research needs to examine in greater depth.

Managerial Implications

This research has implications for those organizations that wish to increase the level of personal initiative and performance in the workplace. If "performance is what selection and classification procedures should be

designed to maximize" (Campbell, 1990: 715), then this study's results suggest that a proactive disposition may be a useful tool for human resource managers seeking to enhance adaptive behavior and job performance. However, given that there is support for the hypothesis that the relationship between proactive personality and performance is moderated by job autonomy, it would appear that Campbell's (1990) distinction between selection and classification was

particularly prescient with regard to maximizing the performance of people with proactive personalities. That is, the results suggest that performance





maximization is not solely a function of selecting people with proactive personalities, but also a matter of assigning these individuals to jobs where

they feel they have a relatively high degree of freedom to determine how they do their job. Practically, this means that personality-oriented job analysis should be an important part of any system designed to extract the most from

people selected for their proactive personalities (Tett and Burnett, 2003). In

addition, managers may facilitate expression of the proactive personality trait by providing appropriate and timely cues that reinforce the autonomy the worker has to employ new and untried work methods and engage in problem-solving (i.e., exhibit personal initiative). That is, managers may effectively motivate

employees with proactive personalities based upon this trait, as trait expressive behavior tends to be intrinsically satisfying (Tett and Burnett, 2003). In short,

organizations and managers have a degree of control over how jobs are designed and managed, including the level of autonomy allowed for a specific job and the cues that reinforce that autonomy. Therefore, job autonomy appears to be an important factor in extracting the most from proactive employees.

Limitations

In the present study, the predictor and criterion variables were drawn from multiple sources (i.e., employee self-report and company records) at different times, which should reduce the concern that common methods variance accounts for the relationships found in the data (Podsakoff et aL, 2003). Concerns about representativeness are all but eliminated due to the very high participation rate of company employees (i.e., 96% response rate). However, caution should be used with regard to any conclusions about the causal nature of the relationships examined in this study due to its non-experimental design. It may also be the case that the significant interaction reported here may not

generalize to other types of performance data (i.e., objective performance or

survey-based subjective supervisor ratings of performance). Therefore, caution should also be used when generalizing this study's results to other types of

performance measures. It may also be that the results here were influenced by the predominance of lower-level employees in the sample in that this may have

constrained the variability of the autonomy variable to some degree. Further,

controlling for job level in this study's analyses may have reduced the degree of

variation in the autonomy variable. Even so, the differences in job autonomy were enough to moderate the relationship between proactive personality and

job performance in the analysis.

Future Research

Future research should not only seek to replicate this study's results with the same outcome variable, but also with proactive behaviors such as voice behavior,

taking charge, and more domain-specific behaviors such as issue selling and





innovation. This research could also assess other contextual influences that

might constrain proactive individuals from engaging in change-related behavior such as access to resources and access to

strategy-related information. Further,

research should investigate other features of work situations that are relevant to the expression of the proactive personality trait (e.g., innovation climate,

supervisor personality, environmental turbulence/dynamism). To the extent

that this is performed in future research, there should be greater understanding of the boundary conditions under which proactive people may or may not

flourish. Future research should also focus upon more clearly determining the motivational processes that move people with proactive personalities to take

personal initiative in enacting positive change. For example, prior research

suggests that the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance is partially mediated by autonomous goal setting and goal commitment.

Investigations of the types of goals and self-management strategies associated with proactive personalities would be beneficial.

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proactive personality and job performance: exploring job autonomy as a moderator

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