Proactive Work Behavior (PWB)

Listen

Proactive work behavior (PWB) in organizations is a well-researched topic.

Proactivity is important for individual career success [1]. Proactive persons tend to interpret their roles more widely and this more “strategic” and “proactive” viewpoint necessitates the restructuring of jobs and relevant authority structures [2]. A change in power structure is necessary to create proactive, “broad-thinking” staff, “because such a change must be a lived experience and it can be neither contrived nor commanded” [3]. Moreover, proactive persons tend to redefine their positions to include new tasks, responsibilities and goals [4]. Proactive work behaviour is not always forwarded automatically, despite its advantages because it includes “uncertainty” for the future and initiates change which is not always accepted by others in organisations (i.e., managers, supervisors) who favour the “status quo” [5]. Features of the workplace can interfere to stop proactive persons from being so (i.e., job control, procedural justice) [6].

One of the most significant impediments of proactive work behaviour is the absence of “job control,” since circumstances low in job control allow little horizon for “individual antecedents” to affect actions [7]. For instance, research has demonstrated a stronger connection between feeling recovered in the morning and acting proactively during the day for staff members with high levels of job control than for staff with low levels of job control. Low levels of job control seem to suffocate peoples’ proactive work behaviour [8].