In today’s competitive, fast-moving business environment, it is clear that a company’s success is intricately linked to its management of human resources. For example, companies invest in employee development programmes and innovative reward systems, create conducive environments in which employees can thrive, and seek to identify and develop leaders who inspire and transform their employees. As today’s workforce and organisations evolve and respond to constant change, human resource managers and scholars alike acknowledge that, in addition to employee skills and abilities, personality traits are another set of individual characteristics that relate to important employee outcomes. According to Singapore Management University associate professor of organisational behaviour, Gary Greguras, “one personality trait often linked to employee performance and success is proactivity”.

Greguras describes proactive individuals as “dynamic agents who identify and seize opportunities that bring about change in their environments by either improving their current situations or creating new ones. Proactive individuals tend to be self-starters, who are future-oriented and who persist with their activities until their objectives are achieved.”  The emerging research indicates that proactive individuals tend to seek out or create favourable conditions which lead to “high performance, leader effectiveness, career success, and organisational innovation,” he adds.

Testing the Self-concordance Model

Why are proactive employees more satisfied with their jobs and happier with their lives than employees who are less proactive? What do proactive employees do that enables them to perform favourably at work? Seeking answers to these questions, Greguras and University of Akron assistant professor of psychology James Diefendorff, integrated theoretical frameworks and findings from both the personality and motivation literatures to develop their own theoretical model. Based on previous research which indicates that employee motivation links personality to employee attitudes and behaviours, they integrated the self-concordance model (a model which links motivation to attitudes and behaviors) into their research on proactive personality. Although the self-concordance model has been widely supported in other disciplines, few studies have applied and tested the self-concordance model in an actual work context.

The self-concordance model is based on the premise that individuals have innate growth tendencies and psychological needs which guide their motivation and regulation of behaviour. According to the self-concordance model, the reasons why individuals pursue goals impact the quality of goal striving, the likelihood of goal attainment, and ultimately their well-being and outcomes (e.g., performance). Thus, the reason why an individual pursues a goal is critically important. The self-concordance model highlights four reasons for goal pursuit: external (pursuing goals in order to obtain rewards or to avoid punishment from external agents); introjected (pursuing goals in order to enhance one’s feelings of self-worth (e.g., pride) or to avoid feelings of anxiety, shame, or guilt); identified (pursuing goals because they think such goals are inherently important), and intrinsic (pursuing goals for the inherent interest and enjoyment associated with the goal) reasons.

According to the researchers, these four reasons lie along a continuum ranging from external (controlled) to intrinsic (autonomous) regulation of behaviours. Thus, external and introjected behaviours are controlled by factors outside the self while identified and intrinsic behaviours are self-determined and based on personal convictions and values. Hence, autonomous goals are considered self-concordant because they are consistent with the individual’s values, interests, and needs.  

In their study, Greguras and Diefendorff hypothesised that, in contrast to less proactive individuals, proactive employees are more likely to set self-concordant goals which are expected to result in better goal pursuit, a stronger likelihood of goal attainment, and greater satisfaction of their basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Satisfying these innate psychological needs, in turn, leads to improved well-being, job satisfaction, work performance, and organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). OCBs are considered “extra-role behaviors” because they are not necessarily required of one’s job. OCBs include such behaviours as helping other employees who may need help, or attending organisational functions that are not required of the job but that help the organisation’s image and functioning.

To test their theoretical model, the researchers collected data from full-time employees working in a variety of industries and occupations (e.g., service, financial, manufacturing, and transportation industries) in Singapore. The majority of participants were Chinese (92.1%), of whom over half (58.2%) were female, from different organisational levels, most being in non-managerial positions (55.8%). Participants completed three surveys, each of which was separated by a three week interval. Employees completed scales that measured proactive personality, goal self-concordance, goal attainment, psychological need satisfaction, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction. In addition, their supervisors were also surveyed to measure the in-role performance and OCBs of the participants. In the first round, a total of 318 surveys were distributed of which 296 were completed and returned; in the second round, 243 were completed, while in the third round, 200 surveys were completed. A total of 165 supervisors completed and returned their surveys, and results are based on 165 matched supervisor-employee pairs.  

Findings

The findings largely supported the researchers’ hypothesised model. Specifically, they observed that proactive employees were more likely to pursue self-concordant goals than were employees who were less proactive. As a result, proactive employees directed greater effort towards achieving their goals and, subsequently, were more likely to achieve their goals. Goal attainment, in turn, was associated with employees satisfying their psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Employees who were more likely to satisfy these basic psychological needs experienced higher levels of job and life satisfaction, performed at higher levels, and engaged in more OCBs than employees who were less likely to satisfy their basic psychological needs.

The study, however, yielded two unexpected findings. One was that proactive personality only indirectly related to employee job performance (i.e., there was no direct effect). Greguras and Diefendorff note that, of the existing research that links proactive personality to in-role performance, the findings have been mixed. Greguras says, “these findings might be expected given that proactive behaviours may not always be desirable or adaptive. For example, in a less structured, more creative organisation, proactivity may improve performance; in contrast, proactivity may have negative effects in a more structured, hierarchical, rule-driven organisation. This idea suggests that to be optimally beneficial, an individual’s proactivity may need to fit with the job specifications or the organisation’s culture.” 

Greguras adds, “if proactivity is beneficial in some organisations but detrimental in others, the diverse sample of organisations and industries in this study may have contributed to our failure to observe a significant relationship because the potentially positive and negative effects of proactivity across organisations may have cancelled one another out.”

The other unexpected finding was that, although proactivity predicted goal attainment, goal self-concordance did not. One explanation, and a limitation of the current study that the authors note, is that participants in the study may not have had time to achieve their goals. They were asked to generate goals that they could potentially achieve within the next 60 days but, due to time constraints, goal attainment was measured just three weeks later.  Another explanation, Greguras notes, is that participants may not have seriously considered how or when they would attain their goals. Existing research indicates that there is no link between self-concordance and goal attainment for individuals who do not plan where and when each goal would be carried out. He explains, “participants in our study may not have developed strong enough intentions for goal self-concordance to relate to goal attainment.”

Summarising their results, Greguras says, “These results clearly demonstrate that a strong predictor of favourable employee outcomes (including performance, OCBs, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction) is the satisfaction of one's psychological needs.  Hence, if [organisations] want happy, productive, and good citizens as employees, they should attend to whether employees' psychological needs are being satisfied. Making sure employees are proactive, set self-concordant goals. and attain their goals will increase the probability that they are able to satisfy their psychological needs and, in doing so, attain these favourable outcomes.” 

Influencing Employees to Be More Proactive

Given the benefits of being proactive and setting self-concordance goals, can organisations influence the level of proactivity or self-concordance of their employees? According to Greguras, the good news is that the answer appears to be, yes. Says Greguras, “This study suggests that individuals who are more proactive are more likely to satisfy their psychological needs. As such, we could select, train, or coach employees on ways to be more proactive. The second finding was that individuals who are more autonomously motivated are more likely to satisfy their needs. As such, organisations might be able to increase autonomous motivation through enriching jobs or by allowing employees to participate in decision-making, for example. Finally, our model suggests that individuals who attain their goals are more likely to satisfy their needs. As such, providing additional training or resources, or creating supportive cultures or environments, may help employees attain their goals and, therefore, satisfy their needs. Our results suggest that each of these potential interventions aimed at satisfying employees’ psychological needs should improve worker attitudes and behaviours.” 

What else might organisations do? Greguras responds, “Given that research indicates that employee self-efficacy relates positively to proactive behaviour, the latter might be enhanced with training programs targeted at improving the self-efficacy or skills of employees. Further, supervisors can be trained and encouraged to be more supportive of their subordinates. Research indicates that supportive supervision is an important factor that influences employee proactive behaviour and self-determination.”