Introduction
Customarily, work psychology has looked into job aspects to which workers change with a view of performing their work, on workers enthusiasm to goals that are provided by the company, and on socio-economic elements and customs at work to which a new employee needs to adapt (Campbell, 2000). In contrast, studies about proactive behavior emphasize on how workers adjust the features of their work and circumstance. For instance, workers at times redefine their goals to develop more important ones, and proactively handle socialization procedures with a view of improving the quality of their situations at work. These proactive characteristics have increasingly come to be known as proactive activities.
Proactive Behavior
According to previous studies (Campbell, 2000; Rogelberg and Stanton, 2007), proactive behavior can be defined as self-directed and future-based deed in a company, in which the employee focuses on bringing about change, comprising modification to the circumstance (e.g., introducing modern work techniques, affecting organizational system) and/or adjustment within the employee himself (e.g., learning innovative ways of coping with future issues). This description coincides with other descriptions, which emphasize both a change focus (modification) and a future focus (expectation).
Individual initiative refers to a kind of proactive character that involves exceeding allocated duties, creating one’s own targets, and focusing on solving issues that have not yet happened. All of such characteristics have mutual focus on manipulating situations by looking further and instigating transformation. They are as well characteristics that are partly influenced by nature, and partly determined by conditional pressures like work structure and management.
Campbell (2000) found that organizational and behavioral activities like work improvement, involvement, empowerment, and organizational strategy are managerial efforts to increase the employee function. The author examined some of these activities to demonstrate their importance in role-expansion systems, and how they perfectly describe five function elements usually representative of proactive employees. Whereas work and role capability, interpersonal value, and managerial orientation have constantly been linked to the employee function, the other two work behaviors, enterprising values and individual integrity, signify comparatively new anticipations.
He argues that these fresh demands generate a number of significant concerns for organizations and administrators, focused on variations linked to the firm’s, the administrator’s, and the worker’s anticipations concerning the utilization of decision and inventiveness. Campbell proposed that one possible way for enhancing our understanding of such an adaptive procedure among workers is to investigate interpersonal elements that may aid demonstrate why diverse workers react differently to similar work-based issues.
Even though having in common a focus on managing an event in a self-focused future-oriented way, the ideas as well differ from each other. In reaction to condemnation that the subject is inadequately incorporated, Rogelberg and Stanton (2007) suggested that proactive activities differ as far as their nature, their anticipated influence, their frequency, their timing, and their approaches. Utilizing a pragmatic model, Parker and Turner (2006) studied a higher-order element design of proactive characteristics at work. Factor evaluation of different kinds of proactive characteristics proposed at least two higher-order levels, each with a diverse target of influence.
Tidwell and Sias (2005) discovered an extra higher-order measure, proactive professional character. In contrast to the other kinds of proactive behaviors that happen within the setting of an assigned work, this measure defines proactive behaviors beyond an exact work, such as activities to secure an employment or to secure a new employment, or activities to bargain a better deal before accepting an offer.
Benefits of Proactive and Adaptive Behaviors At Work
One of the benefits to identify such “higher-order” groups of proactive characteristics is that the concept can aid in identifying common procedures across the associated characteristics within each group. For instance, the Tidwell and Sias (2005) research discovered similarities amongst voice, personal novelty, and taking control all kinds of proactive work characteristics, although these seem to be different fields of enquiry. At the same time, the research as well discovered variations across the groups of proactive actions. For instance, while precision was a significant forecaster of proactive individual behaviors, as anticipated given the need of diligent people to be reliable and fit well with the company, it did not estimate positive work characteristics or positive strategic characteristics. The results, therefore, as well serve to emphasize how inspiring forces for proactive activities differ across diverse fields and intentions of influence.
Other experts too have categorized kinds of proactive characteristics. Hence, Warr and Fay (2001) recognized personal proactive behaviors, group member proactive behaviors, and organization member proactive behaviors. Such are efficiently all forms of positive work characteristics in that they focus on taking charge of, and initiating change within, the internal company setting. However, personal proactive behaviors are based on one’s personal work, team proactive behaviors are based on assisting the group and other group participants, and company proactive behaviors are based on modifying larger organization systems.
Summary
In summary, even though there are numerous methods of focusing on proactive behaviors, in addition to numerous relevant aspects across various fields, a valuable concept is to view proactive behavior as a self-oriented method of acting that involves thinking ahead with a view of taking control of an event.
References
Campbell, J. (2000). The proactive employee: Managing workplace initiative. The Academy of Management Executive, 14(3), 52-66.
Parker, S., & Turner, N. (2006). Modelling the antecedents of proactive behavior at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(2), 36-52.
Rogelberg, S., & Stanton, J. (2007). Introduction: Understanding and dealing with organizational survey non response. Organizational Research Methods, 10(7), 195-209.
Tidwell, M., & Sias, P. (2005). Personality and informational seeking. Journal of Business Communication, 42(3), 51-77.
Warr, P., & Fay, D. (2001). Short report: Age and personal initiative at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10(3), 343-353.