Forthcoming in Journal of Management

Proactive behavior at work is about making things happen. It involves self-initiated, anticipatory action aimed at changing either the situation or oneself. Examples include taking charge to improve work methods, proactive problem solving, using personal initiative, making i-deals, and proactive feedback seeking. In this chapter, we define proactive behavior and distinguish it from related concepts. We also identify higher-order categories of proactivity in the work place. We then summarize a model of the antecedents and outcomes of proactive behavior, as well as moderators of its effects on performance and other outcomes. We argue a review of this topic is timely given both academic developments and technological and social change occurring within the work place.

The authors consider how multiple dimensions of affect relate to individual proactivity. They conceptualized proactivity within a goal-regulatory framework that encompasses 4 elements: envisioning, planning, enacting, and reflecting. In a study of call center agents (N = 225), evidence supported the distinctiveness of the 4 elements of proactive goal regulation. Findings further indicated that high-activated positive mood was positively associated with all elements of proactive goal regulation, and low-activated negative mood was positively associated with envisioning proactivity. These findings were further supported in a longitudinal investigation of career-related proactivity amongst medical students (N = 250). The role of affective experience in proactivity is more nuanced than previously assumed.

Emphasizing differences in activation as well as valence, six studies across a range of situations examined relations between types of job-related core affect and 13 self-reported work behaviours. A theory-based measure of affect was developed, and its four-quadrant structure was found to be supported across studies. Also consistent with hypotheses, highactivation pleasant affect was more strongly correlated with positive behaviours than were low-activation pleasant feelings, and those associations tended to be greatest for discretionary behaviours in contrast to routine task proficiency. Additionally as predicted, unpleasant jobrelated affects that had low rather than high activation were more strongly linked to the negative work behaviours examined. Theory and practice would benefit from greater differentiation between affects and between behaviours.

Employees often self-initiate changes to their jobs, a process referred to as job crafting, yet we know little about why and how they initiate such changes. In this paper, we introduce and test an extended framework for job crafting, incorporating individuals' needs and regulatory focus. Our theoretical model posits that individual needs provide employees with the motivation to engage in distinct job-crafting strategies-task, relationship, skill, and cognitive crafting-and that work-related regulatory focus will be associated with promotion-or prevention-oriented forms of these strategies. Across three independent studies and using distinct research designs (Study 1: N=421 employees; Study 2: N=144, using experience sampling data; Study 3: N=388, using a lagged study design), our findings suggest that distinct job-crafting strategies, and their promotion-and preventionoriented forms, can be meaningfully distinguished and that individual needs (for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) at work differentially shape job-crafting strategies. We also find that promotion-and prevention-oriented forms of job-crafting vary in their relationship with innovative work performance; and we find partial support for work-related regulatory foci strengthening the indirect effect of individual needs on innovative work performance via corresponding forms of job crafting. Our findings suggest that both individual needs and work-related regulatory foci are related to why and how employees will choose to craft their jobs, as well as to the consequences job crafting will have in organizations.

Purpos e-This study examines the applicability of key measures of service quality and customer satisfaction in a cross-cultural setting, first establishing measurement equivalence and then investigating the impact of culture on these measures. Des i gn/ M et hodol ogy-Using scenarios involving a visit to the dentist's office, respondents from Germany, Japan, and the U.S. participated in a 2 x 2 factorial experiment in which the authors manipulated both expectations (low/high) and service performance (low/high). Fi ndi ngs-Regardless of expectations, when performance was low, the low-context respondents (U. S. and Germany) perceived lower quality than did the respondents from the high-context country (Japan), but gave higher quality ratings than did the Japanese respondents when the performance was high. Pract i cal I m pl i cat i ons-The finding of this study highlight the necessity of considering culture when interpreting customer satisfaction ratings. O ri gi nal i t y/ Val ue-This research adds credence to the paramount role culture plays in consumers' ratings of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction.

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Work-related proactivity through the lens of narrative: investigating emotional journeys in the process of making things happen. Human Relations.