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A resources perspective on when and how proactive work behaviour leads to employee withdrawal
Author(s) -
Pingel Ruta,
Fay Doris,
Urbach Tina
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of occupational and organizational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.257
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 2044-8325
pISSN - 0963-1798
DOI - 10.1111/joop.12254
Subject(s) - proactivity , rumination , psychology , social psychology , irritability , work (physics) , perspective (graphical) , moderated mediation , cognition , mechanical engineering , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , engineering
Previous organizational behaviour research has mainly focused on the benefits of proactivity while disregarding its possible drawbacks. The present study examines the ways in which proactive behaviour may foster counterproductive behaviour through increased emotional and cognitive strain. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we propose that proactive behaviour is a resource‐consuming activity that causes irritability and work‐related rumination, which, in turn, leads to instrumentally driven employee withdrawal. Further, we hypothesize that external motivation towards proactivity amplifies its strain‐eliciting effects. We conducted a longitudinal three‐wave questionnaire study ( N = 231) and tested hypotheses using an autoregressive, time‐lagged model with latent variables. Results showed that when external motivation for proactivity was high, proactivity led to increased irritability and rumination; irritability was, in turn, related to higher levels of withdrawal. The moderated mediation analysis revealed that when external motivation towards proactive behaviour was high, proactive behaviour had an indirect effect on withdrawal behaviour via irritability. The direct effect of proactivity on work‐related rumination was in the expected direction, but failed to reach conventional levels of significance (β = .09, p = .08). Our results indicate that proactivity is not without costs, most clearly if motivated by external reasons. Practitioner points Managers should be cautious about the ways they promote employees’ proactivity because our research shows that proactive behaviours that are motivated by a desire of external rewards, or an avoidance of negative consequences, might have detrimental effects on employees’ psychological well‐being. Organizations should be aware that using rewards and punishments for motivating employees’ proactivity might not only backfire on employees’ well‐being, but also lead to increased counterproductive work behaviours in terms of withdrawal.