Proactivity at Work

Making Things Happen in Organizations

Sharon K. Parker, Uta K. Bindl, Sharon K. Parker, Uta K. Bindl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317752561
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Industrie- & Organisationspsychologie

As organizations grow increasingly complex and unpredictable, the topic of proactivity at work has become of great importance for contemporary workplaces. Proactivity drives performance and innovation of teams and organizations and boosts individuals' well-being and careers. When individuals are proactive, they use their initiative at work to bring about a better future. They scan for opportunities, persist until change is achieved, and take charge to prevent problems' future reoccurrence.

In this book, leading scholars on proactivity from across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia explore how, why, and when individuals are motivated to initiate change within their organizations or themselves and examine the consequences of various forms of proactivity at work. Individual chapters explore specific concepts of proactivity, such as proactive voice, job crafting, and career proactivity, as well as highlight individual processes and organizational dynamics that underlie successful proactivity at work. By providing insights on key advances and future directions for proactivity theory, research, and practice, Proactivity at Work synthesizes what we already know and identifies what we still need to learn about making things happen at work. This book is relevant to all those involved or interested in Work Psychology and Business, including Human Resource Management scholars.

1

PROACTIVITY AT WORK

A Big Picture Perspective on a Construct that Matters

Sharon K. Parker and Uta K. Bindl

Introduction

There are three types of people: Those who make things happen, those who watch what happens, and those who wonder “what happened?”.

How many times have we heard managers complain that their staff shows “no initiative” or “don’t step up”? We can all readily identify colleagues or employees who seem content to sit back and watch others lead the charge. Even exceptionally busy managers, themselves, can be quite passive: when we probe beneath the surface of the flurry of activities, their time is often dominated by fire-fighting the pressing demands of the moment. Quite rightly then, media commentators lament the extreme reactivity of our CEOs and politicians, and their seeming inability to think and act for the longer-term. And, being honest with ourselves, we all too often experience domains in our lives where passivity dominates. Why is it that we so frequently seem to put off important tasks, like preparing our tax returns, so that we, just like in this famous quote (derived from an address by Nicholas Murray Butler, 1932), end up wondering “what happened?”

Our focus in this book is on proactivity, or on “making things happen”. Although there are many definitions (as we describe shortly), we define proactivity as “taking control to make things happen rather than watching things happen. It involves aspiring and striving to bring about change in the environment and/or oneself to achieve a different future” (Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010, p. 828). This definition identifies three key attributes that collectively define behavior as proactive. First, proactive behavior is future-focused. Whilst that is, of course, to some extent true of all goal-directed behavior, proactivity is especially strongly based on anticipating and thinking about the longer-term future. Simply reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to a problem, regardless of how effective that reaction is, does not constitute proactivity. Second, proactive behavior is change-oriented. It does not constitute proactivity to merely anticipate future problems or opportunities; one must also act to address these future challenges through achieving change. This change might be targeted towards improving or altering the environment one is in, such as improving one’s work procedures, or it might be targeted towards changing one’s self, such as by developing new skills or broadening one’s networks. But in each case, proactivity means a change from status quo or the current trend. As Bateman (in Chapter 11) describes it, proactivity involves discontinuity from an existing status quo. Third, proactive behavior is self-starting. It is an action that is initiated by an individual him/herself, usually as a result of their interest in, or commitment to, the issue at hand. If a supervisor asks or tells a worker to do something, this action does not constitute proactivity. Nor is it proactive if the worker is simply following the tasks laid out and pre-specified in the job description.

Think about a situation in which a customer service representative initiates the creation of a second queue for particular inquiries in order to speed up service and alleviate the frustration of customers. The employee has taken it on herself (self-starting) to improve the work flow (change-oriented) so as to enhance effectiveness for customers (future-focused). This is an example of proactivity from a customer service representative, which would usually be a position held by an employee at lower levels of an organizational hierarchy. We can also see examples of proactivity at the very highest levels of the hierarchy. De Luga (1998), in a study of US presidents, observed that some presidents were significantly more proactive than others, resulting in greater overall presidential effectiveness. Examples of presidential proactivity include Roosevelt’s implementation of the New Deal program and Lyndon Johnson’s introduction of Civil Rights legislation. Thus, individuals (and as Harris and Kirkman, in Chapter 19, argue, entire teams) can be proactive in many different ways, and across multiple levels of an organization or even society. And as we elaborate next, such proactivity can make an important difference to the success of contemporary organizations.

A Topic for Our Times: Proactivity Matters

FIGURE 1.1 Number of published journal articles on proactivity since the year 1990.

Note: Based on a web of science search, focusing only on work and organizational journals, and related journals (e.g. Industrial Rel, HRM, etc.) with relevant search terms, followed by some screening (e.g. to exclude articles on voice where the focus was not on individual or team voice/speaking up), resulted in 363 articles. Search terms included: “self-initiative”; “job crafting”; “flexible role orientation”; “role breadth self-efficacy”; “idiosyncratic deals”; “task revision”; “role redefinition”; “work proactivity”; “proactive personality”; “personal initiative”; “proactive work behavior”; “proactive work behavior”; “work proactivity”; “proactive behavior”; “proactive behavior”; “proactivity”; “career proactivity”; “proactive career”; “taking charge”; “role innovation”; “individual innovation”; “strategic scanning”; “proactive socialization”; “proactive feedback seeking”; “proactive career”; “proactive person-environment fit”; “change-oriented citizenship”; “challenging citizenship”; “problem prevention”; “proactive coping”; “voice”.

In recent times, academic literature on proactivity in organizations has blossomed. As shown in Figure 1.1, over 360 articles in the psychology and management literature have been published since 1990 that either have “proactive” in their abstract or that address topics that we consider examples of proactivity (e.g., taking charge, proactive feedback seeking, individual innovation, personal initiative). As this figure shows, the number of articles each year is accelerating. In the years 2010 to 2014, more than 180 articles on proactivity were published – compared to just four articles in 1990 to 1994. Similarly, in 2015 alone, almost as many articles (N = 56) were published on proactivity in organizations as in the five-year period of 2005 to 2009 together (N = 66). Several integrative meta-analyses have also been recently published, which is a good indicator of the maturing of a body of literature.

But is this interest in the topic just a temporary burst: is proactivity a trendy concept that has captured the interest of doctoral scholars, and that will soon give way to the next vogue topic? Or is this scholarly growth in interest reflecting something more substantial happening in the real world? Without a doubt, we assert that it is the latter. The interest in the concept initially emerged due to the overarching frustration of researchers with existing paradigms that assumed less agentic, and more static, approaches to understanding phenomena in organizations. For example, in the field of work performance, scholars increasingly recognized that traditional notions of task performance focus excessively on employees’ efforts to fulfill expectations and to master elements in their existing job descriptions, whilst behaviors such as being innovative or leading improvements in the workplace were neglected. In the field of socialization, it was recognized that newcomers in organizations do not just passively wait to be socialized: instead, they may actively seek information, develop connections, and self-initiatedly learn about their organization. And in the field of careers in the workplace, researchers using a proactivity paradigm proposed that individuals are not just receptacles of career advice and mentoring: they may sculpt and mold their careers to achieve meaningful future career goals, under their own initiative.

The forces that spurred the growth of such proactive concepts look set to continue. Indeed proactivity will likely become more important in the light of projected changes in work and careers. Today’s growth in precarious forms of employment, changing employment conditions, and greater mobility across organizations (the “boundaryless” career, Arthur, 1994) all indicate it is more than ever important that individuals proactively take charge of their careers. The notion of a self-driven and highly mobile “protean” career (Hall, 1976) reflects these trends and highlights the importance of proactive career behaviors in today’s environment (Sonnentag, in Chapter 3 of this book). Another important trend of our times, globalization in the workplace, implies rising pressure for competitiveness in most industries, which in turn frequently places a premium on innovation. There is a movement (at least in some sectors) away from highly centralized organizational forms, with more flexible entities and more virtual work; all of which increasingly require individuals at work who can “think for themselves” and be proactive. In these cases, an emergent bottom-up change resulting from the self-initiated innovative efforts of employees is needed to ensure the organization remains agile within its environment.

At the same time, digitalization of workplaces increasingly implies that computers will take over employees’ routine work – a phenomenon we are already witnessing in examples such as a shoppers checking out supermarket goods, or employees booking their travels, themselves. As a consequence, the remaining jobs in organizations will necessarily become more dynamic, uncertain, and ambiguous, requiring employees to proactively manage their own performance and professional development, seeking out help or feedback when and from whom they need it, or crafting the job to better fit their abilities and values at work. Further, complexity in the form of diverse and multi-disciplinary teams in organizations means it is more important than ever that individuals are willing to engage in proactive voice, to speak up with their concerns and ideas to improve work outcomes, and so on. There are numerous forces arising from technological, social, and demographic changes, which imply that proactivity will be on the organizational radar for the foreseeable future.

The rapid growth in the literature – combined with the likely continued importance of the topic in the future – make this an apt time to take stock of the field, and to identify key directions of proactivity for the future. To help set the scene for the remaining chapters in this book, we first briefly trace the evolution of the topic. We then describe the approach we have taken to proactivity in this book and provide a brief outline of its structure and content.

Tracing the Evolution of Research on Proactivity in Organizations

How did the research topic of proactivity in organizations emerge? Figure 1.2 shows an overview of highly cited articles on proactive behavior and related concepts since 1990.¹ This overview also includes recent meta-analyses, which are included in the figure to depict the evolving maturity of the field.

Domain-Specific Proactive Behaviors

As Figure 1.2 shows, early developments in proactivity research tended to be domain-specific, stimulated by the recognition that individuals may engage in active and agentic behaviors to a greater degree than traditional concepts in that domain assumed. Within the work performance sphere, early concepts included work role innovation (Farr & Ford, 1990), that is, innovations that individuals introduce to accomplish their roles in different ways; task revision, that is, correcting poor procedures or job specifications (Staw & Boettger, 1990); and individual innovative behavior, that is, producing, adopting, and implementing useful ideas (Scott & Bruce, 1994; see also West & Altink, 1996). All of these concepts, although distinct in important ways, recognized the importance of in...