How Does Proactive Behaviour Manifest Itself?

A range of proactive behaviours are likely to be displayed from individuals having a proactive personality. In fact, many studies have found that proactive personality was a driver of proactive behaviours (Parker and Collins, 2010; Williams et al., 2010; Liang and Gong, 2013; Bergeron et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014). Bateman and Crant (1993) state that the range of behaviours that proactive individuals might show are almost limitless, and this statement is confirmed by the many sub-constructs of proactivity that have been developed into distinct literature streams. Table 2.2 defines six of the most researched proactive behaviours.

The appearance of proactive behaviours in the literature can appear haphazard and unstandardized. Some constructs appear under multiple names, but have a similar meaning. For example, although Chiaburu et al. (2013) list issue selling and voice as separate proactive behaviours, Morrison (2011, p. 377) describes issue selling as a subset of voice, specifically focused at communicating organization-level strategic challenges and opportunities. Again, in Hwang et al.'s (2015) study, the measure for interpersonal proactive behaviour, similar to a dimension of proactive behaviour labelled prosocial proactive behaviour from Belschak and Den Hartog (2010), was adapted to measure organizational citizenship behaviour towards other individuals (OCB-I), i.e. supervisors and peers. In another example, Hwang et al. (2015, p. 848) define interpersonal proactive behaviour as a focus on "promoting partners’ benefits and maintaining high- quality relationships." However, from this definition, it is easy to see the connection to another proactive behaviour, relationship building, which has also been conceptualised as political skill in other studies (Ferris et al., 2005; Garcia-Chas,

2015). Wang and Kim (2013) listed relationship building as an example of proactive socialization behaviour, as did Kammeyer-Mueller et al. (2013), who also conceptualised proactive socialization on two levels; towards supervisors, and towards peers. Fig 2.1 shows the six main types of proactivity constructs and their various other manifestations in the literature.

Table 2.2: Proactive Behaviours

Construct Definition How is it Proactive?

Voice Nonrequired behaviour that

emphasizes expression of constructive challenge with an intent to improve rather than merely criticize (LePine and Van Dyne, 1998, p. 854).

Constructive, discretionary, challenging, and focused on changing the status quo (Morrison, 2011, p. 375) Organizational

Citizenship Behaviour

Individual behaviour that is

discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization (Organ, 1988, p. 4).

Discretionary, directed toward meeting

organizational goals, and can be outside of role specifications (Li et al., 2010, pp. 395-396)

Personal

Initiative Personal initiative is a behaviour syndrome resulting in an individual’s taking an active, self-starting

approach to work and going beyond what is formally required in a given job (Frese et al., 1997, p.140).

Actions are future-oriented and directed towards meeting organizational targets; persistent in spite of challenges; and self- starting (Crant, 2000, p. 441)

Taking Charge Voluntary and constructive efforts by individual employees, to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations (Morrison and Phelps, 1999, p. 403).

Voluntary and constructive, aimed at effecting change in work environment (Tornau and Frese, 2013, p. 47)

Feedback Seeking Behaviour

Conscious devotion of effort toward determining the correctness and adequacy of behaviours for attaining valued end states (Ashford, 1986, p. 466).

Helps individual to understand environment better and thus to meet organizational goals (Lam et al., 2015, p. 4)

Political Skill The ability to effectively understand others at work and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objectives (Ferris et al., 2005, p.127).

Adaptive and flexible behaviour to other actors in environment in order to facilitate meeting organizational goals (Wihler et al., 2014, p. 5)

Figure 2.1: Different Manifestations of Proactivity Constructs Proactivity Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Helping OCB- Individual OCB- Organization Change- Oriented Citizenship Interpersonal Facilitation Prosocial Organizational Behaviour Voice Constructive/ Destructive Voice Upward Communication Issue Selling Self Protective Voice Problem Focused/Opinion Focused Voice Silence Taking

Charge InitiativePersonal Political Skill Relationship Building Networking/ Network Building Social Astuteness Social Competence Relationship Development Feedback Seeking Self Negative Feedback Seeking Self Positive Feedback Seeking Other Negative Feedback Seeking Other Positive Feedback Seeking

Although studies such as Parker and Collins (2010) found that many proactive behaviours including voice, taking charge, and feedback seeking were distinct from each other, there is still considerable confusion over definitions and conceptualisations of the proactivity sub-constructs. This lack of universality in the proactivity literature has urged many authors to suggest an integrative theory and framework, but to no avail, since the constructs are usually conceptualised to fit their use in specific disciplines (Mowbray et al., 2015). For example, Crant (2000) showed that the proactivity construct has been applied in six domains: socialization, feedback seeking, issue selling, innovation, career management, and stress management. Parker and Collins (2010) sought to organize the sub-constructs in Table 2.2 as well as a few others into higher order constructs: proactive work behaviour (taking charge and voice), proactive person environment fit behaviour (feedback seeking), and proactive strategic behaviour, thus grouping them according to key similarities. Another important objective of their paper was to determine if there were significant differences between the proactive behaviours, which was confirmed. Nevertheless, these higher-order constructs are yet to be adopted. Thus, despite many attempts to consolidate the sub-constructs, their conceptualisation continues to be modified to fit researchers' objectives.

One last challenge regarding the conceptualisation of proactivity and its sub- constructs is in measurement, where there has also been some inconsistency. Thomas et al. (2010) list proactive personality, voice, personal initiative, and taking charge as the primary sub-constructs in their meta-analysis of proactive behaviours. However, one could argue that proactive personality is more an antecedent to proactive behaviour than a sub-construct if it is agreed that an individual's proactive personality

increases the likelihood that they will display proactive behaviours (Williams et al., 2010; Liang and Gong, 2013; Zhang et al., 2014). As discussed earlier, some proactive behaviours are often combined into a composite measure of proactivity. For example, Lam et al. (2014) adapted several scales measuring different proactive behaviours- taking charge, voice, and issue selling- to develop a composite scale of proactivity relevant to the organizational context of their research, a support service management company in the healthcare industry. Again, in Schmitt et al.'s (2016) model of work engagement, where transformational leadership was hypothesized to relate to proactive behaviour, voice and personal initiative were used as proxies for proactive work behaviour. Likewise, Grant et al. (2009) used a composite variable formed of items from scales measuring voice, rational issue selling, and taking charge to operationalize proactivity. In essence, the reader must be careful to determine what the author refers to as proactivity, and how it is measured, when critically evaluating the results of hypothesized relationships with other constructs of a given research project.