13 General Introduction PROACTIVE BEHAVIOR Traditional theories of motivation and performance have usually considered individuals as rather passive and reactive recipients of their environment (Parker et al., 2010). However, people are active contributors to their life circumstances, not just products of them. Human beings possess personal agency, and may act intentionally and deliberately, make choices and decisions, formulate and follow plans of action, and set goals and pursue them (Bandura, 2001). The idea that individuals are not necessarily reactive creatures has also been adopted in the stress and coping literature. Traditionally, the coping literature focused on how individuals react to and deal with stressors and threats. However, the notion that coping may not only involve the reactions to stressful past events but may also be aimed at anticipated events in the future has gained traction among scholars (Aspinwall, 2005; Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Schwarzer, 2000). This ‘forward time perspective’ is inherent to proactive motivation and behavior (Parker et al., 2010). Similarly, in the organizational literature, scholars have theorized and shown that individuals may take an active role in their approach toward work, creating favorable situations and conditions and shaping their own work experiences and outcomes (Crant, 2000; Grant & Parker, 2009). Parker and colleagues (2010) developed a model of proactive motivation, describing proactivity as a goal-driven process in which individuals may set and strive to achieve proactive goals. Such proactive behavior is a) self-starting – initiated by the individual, b) change-oriented – aimed at changing and improving the situation or oneself – and c) future-focused – involving goal-oriented processes (Parker et al., 2010). These characteristics distinguish proactive constructs from top-down approaches and more passive or reactive patterns of behavior (Crant, 2000). Multiple forms of proactive behaviors have been studied and described in the organizational literature. Examples of such behaviors include – but are not limited to – personal initiative (Frese et al., 1997), taking charge (Morrison & Phelps, 1999), voice (LePine & Van Dyne, 1998), job crafting (Tims et al., 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), and playful work design (Scharp et al., 2019). While it has been theorized that proactive behavior aims at changing aspects of the situation or the self (i.e., locus of change; Parker et al., 2010), most of the studied examples involve behavior aimed at changing
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw