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This study aims to investigates the influence of proactive personality on employee radical creativity through transformational leadership, professional ethical standards and creative self-efficacy.

The data were collected from 343 superior–subordinate dyads in China. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to measure the validity of the variables. A regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between model assumptions.

The results showed that: (1) Proactive personality was positively related to employee radical creativity. (2) Transformational leadership and professional ethical standards moderated the relationship between proactive personality and radical creativity. Specifically, the relationship between proactive personality and employee radical creativity was strong, as expected. It was the strongest in the presence of high transformational leadership and high professional ethical standards. (3) Creative self-efficacy acted as a mediator in this interaction.

This study is a pioneering investigation in the Chinese context. It empirically examines the interactive relationship between proactive personality and radical creativity through transformational leadership and professional ethical standards. Additionally, it substantiates creative self-efficacy as the psychological mechanism behind this interaction. Consequently, this study offers a comprehensive framework with potential implications for personality assessments in the workplace, leadership training, criteria formulation and enhancement of radical creativity.

Based on social dilemma theory, the authors analyze the impact of leader reward omission on employee knowledge sharing and the boundary conditions in their relationship.

This study tested the theoretical hypotheses based on empirical data obtained from 264 employees using a two-wave survey method.

The results indicate that leader reward omission significantly negatively affects employee knowledge sharing. An employee's proactive personality weakens the negative relationship between them; the weakening effects of an employee's proactive personality would decrease along with the perceived increase in organizational unfairness.

This study provides the first insight that leader reward omission can inhibit employee knowledge-sharing behavior. In addition, this study shows that an individual proactive personality and perceived organizational unfairness moderate the relationship between leader reward omission and employee knowledge behavior. Thus, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of whether and when leader reward omission affects employee knowledge sharing.

By integrating proactive perspective and person-environment fit (P-E fit) perspective, this study intends to examine a moderated mediation model of proactive personality to investigate its effects on employee creativity. The current study proposes felt responsibility for change mediates the relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity. The purpose of this paper is to identify core self-evaluation (CSE) and developmental feedback received as personal and situational moderators on the relationship between proactive personality and felt responsibility for change.

A matched sample from 232 employees and their supervisors of software companies in China was used to test the hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analyses and moderated mediation approach were conducted to examine the proposed model.

The results indicate that felt responsibility for change mediates the positive relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity. CSE and developmental feedback received positively moderate the relationship between proactive personality and felt responsibility for change. In addition, CSE and developmental feedback received are two moderators in the path from proactive personality to employee creativity via felt responsibility for change such as the indirect relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity through felt responsibility for change is more pronounced when CSE and developmental feedback received are higher rather than lower, respectively.

The paper contributes to creativity literature by identifying felt responsibility for change as the mediator on the relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity. The current study also contributes to proactive perspective and P-E fit theory by investigating the moderating roles of CSE and developmental feedback received on the relationship between proactive personality and felt responsibility for change. Although data were collected from multiple sources to avoid common method variance, the cross-sectional design cannot unequivocally examine the direction of causality in this study.

By examining both mediating and moderating effects, the paper contributes to uncovering the black box in which employees with proactive personality exhibit felt responsibility for change and creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether and how employees’ proactive personality is related to work engagement. Drawing on job demands-resources theory, the study proposes that this relationship is moderated by a three-way interaction between proactive personality × transformational leadership × growth mindset.

The study is based on survey data from 259 employees of an internationally operating high-tech organization in the Netherlands.

In line with prior studies, support is found for positive significant relationships of proactive personality and transformational leadership with engagement. Additionally, transformational leadership is found to moderate the relationship between proactive personality and work engagement, but only when employees have a growth mindset.

The study advances the literature that investigates the proactive personality-engagement relationship. Specifically, this study is the first to examine a possible three-way interaction that may deepen the insights for how proactive personality, transformational leadership and growth mindset interact in their contribution to work engagement.

This paper aims to examine the impacts of transformational leadership and employee proactive personality on service performance, the mediation role of organizational embeddedness and the synergies of transformational leadership and proactive personality within the proposed framework.

Data was collected following a time-lagged research approach. The study sample included 218 frontline employees and their supervisors from ten carefully selected five-star hotels in China. Structural equation modeling was employed for the data analysis.

Transformational leadership and proactive personality had positive effects on task performance and contextual performance via organizational embeddedness. The interactive influences of transformational leadership and proactive personality on task performance and contextual performance were found significant and negative.

Transformational leaders and proactive employees have been shown to exert a strong influence on excellent service performance, with organizational embeddedness playing a critical role.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating roles of trust in leaders and felt trust by leaders on the relationship between proactive personality and voice behaviour.

Self-report data were collected from 242 employees in China using an online survey.

Trust strengthens, whereas felt trust weakens the relationship between proactive personality and voice behaviour. Proactive personality is related to voice behaviour more positively when trust in leaders is high or when felt trust by leaders is low.

Trust in leaders and felt trust by leaders provide different motivational cues for employee proactivity. It would be wise for leaders to develop different trusting relationships with employees who have different levels of proactive personality. If leaders expect to promote voice behaviour in the workplace, they should gain trust from proactive employees by demonstrating their own trustworthiness while signalling or granting trust to less proactive employees by engaging in trusting behaviours.

The present research extends the boundary conditions of the effectiveness of proactive personality by demonstrating that proactive employees' motivation to speak up can be enhanced or substituted by relational variables. The authors thus underscore the importance of the personality × relations perspective when examining employee proactivity. In addition, the authors contribute to the trust literature by advancing the understanding of different roles of trust and felt trust in influencing proactive motivation in social interactions.

As the literature reveals contrasting arguments regarding the positive effect of a proactive personality on well-being, this paper aims to investigate the negative consequences of a proactive personality on employee well-being. The paper tests the relationships between a proactive personality, trait competitiveness and well-being. It also examines the mediating effect of job burnout on these relationships.

The data were collected from 213 employees working in the retail sector across Malaysia. AMOS’s structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses of the study.

Overall, the findings showed that a proactive personality negatively affected employee well-being. Job burnout had a partially mediating effect on this relationship. However, the effect of trait competitiveness on employee well-being was insignificant and the mediating effect of job burnout on this relationship also found no support.

The main contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study shows that a proactive personality can have negative repercussions for employee well-being. In contrast to many previous findings on the proactive personality, this study tests and verifies the possibility of an adverse impact of being proactive. Second, this study reveals that job burnout can play a vital role in mediating the adverse effect of a proactive personality on well-being. This suggests that depending on the context, being proactive will not always result in desirable outcomes, especially if job burnout is present. Therefore, organizations need to prepare contingency plans to offset the negative effects of such burnout.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation of subordinate proactive personality with subjective evaluations of career success by direct supervisors, as well as conceptualize the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) as a mediator and power distance orientation as a moderator for understanding this relation.

Data were collected using a two-wave survey research design. Participants were drawn from 360 supervisor-subordinate dyads from mainland China. Hierarchical regression analyses, Edwards and Lambert’s (2007) moderated path analysis approach, and Preacher et al.’s (2010) Monte Carlo simulation procedure were used to test the hypothesized relationships.

LMX mediated the positive relationship between proactive personality and career success. Both the relationship between LMX and career success and the indirect relationship between proactive personality and career success were stronger when power distance orientation was lower.

This study contributes to the authors’ understanding of how and when proactive personality facilitates employee career success in the era of the boundaryless career. However, all data were collected within a single organization, which limits the observed variability and decreases external validity.

Training employees to facilitate initiative in the workplace may build and maintain better and stronger relationships with their supervisors. To enhance person-organization fit, organizations should recruit and hire employees with lower levels of power distance orientation.

This study provides solid evidence that the extent to which LMX mediates the relationship between proactive personality and career success depends on power distance orientation. It represents a promising new direction for the proactive personality and career success literatures.

In this study, the authors examine how employees' retention intentions are related to their proactive personalities through the theoretical lens of the model of motivational force of turnover and the model of proactive motivation. More specifically, the authors also verify the partial mediation of work engagement on the main relationship and moderation of high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) in the process, which has rarely been explored previously.

The hypothesized model was tested using partial least squares structural equational modeling on a sample of 221 employees of a bank in Bangladesh.

The results showed that having a proactive personality is positively related to retention intentions due to enhanced work engagement. However, the effect of the interaction between having a proactive personality and HPHRPs was found to be not significant on work engagement and retention intention.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring the reason behind mixed results found in the relationship between having a proactive personality and retention intentions through work engagement as a mediator and HPHRPs as a contextual boundary condition in a single model.

Based on social exchange theory and research on proactive personality, this study aims to explore the relationship between abusive supervision and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), taking proactive personality as a boundary condition.

This study conducted a two-wave questionnaire survey and used data from 353 Chinese employees of a diversified company to test the research hypotheses.

The relationship between abusive supervision and UPB varied with proactive personality. Specifically, abusive supervision had an inverted U-shaped effect on UPB when proactive personality was high, while abusive supervision was negatively related to UPB when proactive personality was low.

More research are encouraged to replicate our study in different cultural contexts. Besides, future research can gather data from dyads (e.g. supervisor–subordinate dyad and coworker–subordinate dyad) so as to increase the objectivity and validity of the data.

Managers should reduce abusive supervision and elevate proactive employees' moral awareness.

This study hopes that the authors’ findings will help practitioners to devote greater attention to managing proactive personality, abusive supervision and UPB in the organization.

First, this study enriches the abusive supervision literature by identifying UPB as a consequence of abusive supervision. Second, this study provides a better understanding of the coping tactics used to combat abusive supervision. Third, this study uncovers a dark side of proactive personality by verifying the moderating effect of proactive personality.