Proactive Personality and Behaviour for Individual and Organizational Productivity

Proactive Personality and Behaviour for Individual and Organizational Productivity

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, Volume 28, Issue 4

John P. Wilson,

Edward Elgar,

Cheltenham, UK,

2013,

ISBN: 9781782549345,

Price: £75 online discount: £67.5,

223 pp. Hardback.

With limited time and resources, managers have little spare capacity to micro-manage employees, and so many recruitment processes are designed to identify and select people who exhibit proactive behaviour. In effect, the people employers most value are the ones who demonstrate particular proactive characteristics, and Andrew DuBrin identified nine:

1. a desire for control;

2. taking charge at work;

3. above-average cognitive skills;

4. high self-efficiency;

5. setting challenging goals;

6. opportunity seeking and breaking things that merit breaking;

7. independent judgement combined with willingness to speak out;

8. being an early riser; and

9. assessing the probable success of proactive behaviour.

Proactive people also tend to receive higher salaries, more promotions and achieve career and job satisfaction.

Organizational success, however, does not just materialise because proactive people have been employed, but there also has to be a supportive environment to enable them to flourish. For example, if there is no job autonomy, proactive workers will be too constrained to perform to their optimum. For this reason, an enabling climate has to be created which will give employees the space and freedom to perform to their maximum.

Creativity and innovation are also likely to be encouraged by including:

* intellectual challenge;

* empowerment and freedom to choose a method;

* supervisory encouragement and connecting innovation to performance;

* effective design of workgroups;

* positive and trusting interaction between workers; and

* providing financial rewards for innovation.

Research into proactivity found that proactivity was significantly associated with the Big Five factors of human personality:

1. Neuroticism – the extent to which people display emotional instability and psychological distress;

2. Extraversion – the amount or intensity of social interactions;

3. Openness – the extent to which people seek experience for its own sake;

4. Agreeableness – the quality of interpersonal interaction; and

5. Conscientiousness – organization, motivation and persistence towards achieving goals.

Proactive behaviour is not always successful in the workplace and depends on the culture and environment. For example, expressing one’s concerns may backfire, and some proactive employees may develop a poor reputation for drawing attention to underperforming areas.

The book itself consists of 11 chapters:

1. The Nature of the Proactive Personality;

2. Traits and Behaviours Associated with the Proactive Personality;

3. Initiative as Part of the Proactive Personality;

4. The Proactive Personality, Job Performance, and Satisfaction;

5. The Proactive Personality and Career Success;

6. Opportunity Recognition, Innovation, and Proactivity;

7. The Entrepreneurial Personality, Behaviour, and Proactivity;

8. Business Strategy and Proactivity;

9. Problem Prevention and Proactivity;

10. Talent Management and Proactivity; and

11. Leadership Influences on Proactivity.

Each chapter also contains a number of supporting references.

The book also contains a number of questionnaires which might be adapted for use in an organization to identify proactive individuals and practices.

There has been a considerable amount of research and academic writing on proactivity, but this is the first book on the subject, and it fills an important gap in the literature on the organization. The book is primarily targeted at academics and students in organizational behaviour and psychology and will be a most helpful resource for them.

In Stephen Covey’s highly successful book, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, the first habit is “Be proactive”. With careful reading, this book should provide a number of helpful pointers to making you and your organization highly successful.

Reviewed by Andrew J. DuBrin

The review was originally published in Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 46 No. 3, pp. 166-167