98 Chapter 4 their work are motivated to stay engaged, and therefore use proactive behaviors (e.g., job crafting) to optimize their own work environment. This means that proactive vitality management is most likely a predictor as well as an outcome of work engagement. In the present study, we treated proactive vitality management as the predictor of work engagement (and indirectly of creativity), because our theoretical arguments clearly suggested that proactive vitality management logically interacts with learning and avoid performance goal orientation in predicting work engagement. Future research may want to test the complete sequence of proactive vitality management predicting work engagement, which, in turn, may predict proactive vitality management. Previous recovery research has clearly indicated that engaged workers know when to recharge, in order to stay engaged (Sonnentag et al., 2017). A third theoretical contribution of the current study is that it shows how goal orientation, as a motivational moderator variable, influences the creativity process. The findings were generally consistent with our hypotheses. When employees have a learning goal orientation, they profit most from their proactive behavior, because this orientation helps them to seek work-related challenges (Porath & Bateman, 2006). They use their inspiration and energy to actively search for possibilities to use and develop a variety of skills, and this will have a positive impact on work engagement and creative performance. In contrast, when employees hold a performance avoidance goal orientation, proactively managing vitality does not help to be more engaged and creative. The reason for this is presumably that individuals who avoid making mistakes prefer not to be enthusiastic about new initiatives or to take the risk of failures by suggesting new solutions for existing problems. Consistent with this interpretation, Zhou (2003) demonstrated that employees were more creative when interacting with creative colleagues, but only when their supervisors did not engage in close monitoring. Moreover, the findings revealed that creativity only crossed over between co-workers when supervisors provided developmental feedback. Thus, in order to be creative, employees need to be in a learning mode, and should not be closely monitored or judged. It should be noted that proactive vitality management has some similarities, but is not the same as recovery. Whereas recovery from work refers to reducing or eliminating job stress to replenish depleted resources (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015), proactive vitality management is intentional and anticipatory behavior and may also occur when people
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