Proactive personality, social capital, helping, and turnover intentions

Abstract

Purpose – Proactive personality is believed to relate to greater interpersonal helping and lower turnover intentions. Accrued social capital should play a mediating role in this relationship. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used structural equation modeling to analyze the longitudinal data collected from 174 individuals at three points in time. Two dimensions of social capital, i.e. the resource dimension as indicated by information exchange and the relational dimension as indicated by trust relationships were specified. Findings – After controlling for the Big Five personality dispositions, information exchange and then trust relationships sequentially mediated the relationship of proactive personality with helping and turnover intentions. Research limitations/implications – The research highlights the importance of understanding proactive personality through the social capital perspective. Multiple source data collection method is recommended for further validation of the results. Practical implications – The research highlights the importance of recruiting individuals high on proactivity, and the importance of further developing and motivating these individuals by cultivating meaningful interactions and nurturing trustful relationships at work. Then, proactive employees would be more likely to engage in helping behavior and to stay with the company. Originality/value – The paper takes the social capital approach in examining the outcomes of proactive personality. It reveals that resource- and relation-related social capital constructs mediate, in sequence, the relationships of proactive personality with outcomes

How Servant Leadership Influences Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Roles of LMX, Empowerment, and Proactive Personality

“…Second, the present study asks whether the proactive personality of followers strengthens the influence of servant leadership on OCB by facilitating the building of strong relationships with their supervisor as captured by LMX, and by motivating them to perform in the workplace. We chose to focus on proactive personality, which has been defined as an individual's behavioral tendency to identify opportunities to enact change and manipulate the environment to act on such opportunities (Crant 2000) because it has been shown to be a stronger predictor of employee OCB than other personality measures (Fuller and Marler 2009) and influences the propensity of employees to build productive relationships in the workplace and maintain high levels of intrinsic motivation (Li et al 2010;Thompson 2005;Yang et al 2011;Zhang et al 2012). By 4 focusing on whether proactive personality moderates the influence of servant leadership behavior, we address the calls of researchers for greater investigation into how individual differences among followers, such as personality, influence how they perceive and respond to different styles of leadership (Antonakis et al 2012;Zaccaro 2012).…”

Kapittel 20: Eldsjeler i framtidsfylket

“…Sogn og Fjordane. På den andre sida viser personar med høg eldsjelfaktor stor vilje til å få gjennomslag hjå arbeidsgjevar for endra arbeidsvilkår som er betre tilpassa arbeidstakaren sin kompetanse (Parker et al, 2008), og dei er flinkare enn andre til å etablere sosiale, produksjonsfremjande nettverk på jobben (Yang et al, 2011;Joo et al, 2015).…”

“…Personar med høg eldsjelfaktor er og flinke til å forhandla med eigen arbeidsgjevar om endring og tilrettelegging av arbeidsvilkår og -oppgåver slik at dei er betre tilpassa eigen kompetanse og eigne interesser. Dette vil vera enklare å realisera i eit klima prega av sterk konkurranse om arbeidskrafta og med gode karrieremulegheiter, sjå Yang et al (2011).…”

Organizational goal ambiguity and senior public managers’ engagement: does organizational social capital make a difference?

“…In trustful relationships, individuals feel more comfortable in sharing information and knowledge because of their confidence that such openness will be reciprocated (Halbesleban and Wheeler, 2011). This then tends to be associated with increased organizational identification (Yang, Gong and Huo, 2011). In these circumstances, employees become connected and bound together by common aspirations that enhance their engagement (Dvir, Kass and Shamir, 2004).…”

“…Where there are stronger norms of information sharing, trust and a shared vision, senior managers, in particular, are likely to be more engaged because they are more confident that they have the necessary organizational resources required to achieve organizational goals. Frequent information sharing increases employees' sense of responsibility and obligation toward the organization, and thereby enhances their integration within the organization (Yang, Gong and Huo, 2011). In trustful relationships, individuals feel more comfortable in sharing information and knowledge because of their confidence that such openness will be reciprocated (Halbesleban and Wheeler, 2011).…”