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Scholars have argued that different forms of proactive behaviors (e.g., career initiative, feedback seeking, and taking charge) all involve employees’ self-initiated and future-focused efforts to bring about change in a situation (Parker et al., 2006). There are at least three important elements that define proactivity: future-focus, change-orientation, and self-initiation (Frese & Fay, 2001; Parker et al., 2006). First, proactive behavior is future-focused, which means that this action is targeted at anticipated problems or at opportunities with a long-term focus. Second, proactive behavior is change-oriented, involving not just reacting to a situation but being prepared to change that situation in order to bring about a different future. Third, and underpinning the prior two elements, proactive behavior is self-initiated, which means that employees initiate a proactive goal without being told to, or without requiring explicit instructions from supervisors. Accordingly, proactivity has also been conceived of as a process in which employees generate and implement, under their own direction, a proactive goal to bring about a different future (Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, & Hagger-Johnson, 2012; Frese & Fay, 2001; Grant & Ashford, 2008).

Proactivity is a type of goal-directed work behavior in which individuals actively take charge of situations to bring about future change in themselves or their organization. In this chapter, we draw on goal-regulation research to review conceptual and empirical evidence that elucidates some of the complex links of affective experience and employee proactivity. We identify the different ways in which affective experience influences different stages of proactivity, including employees’ efforts in setting a proactive goal (envisioning), preparing to implement their proactive goal (planning), implementing their proactive goal (enacting), and engaging in learning from their proactive goal process (reflecting). Overall, our review suggests an important, positive role of high-activated positive trait affectivity and moods in motivating proactivity across multiple goal stages, as compared to low-activated positive affectivity and moods. The role of negative affect is mixed, and likely depends on both its valence and the stage of proactivity that is being considered. We identify a lack of research on the role of discrete emotions for employee proactivity. We discuss future avenues for research, particularly the roles of intra- and inter-personal emotion regulation for proactivity and of affective embeddedness of proactive processes in the social environment of organizations.

Simon L. Albrecht is a registered psychologist and has a PhD and a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology. Simon’s PhD focused on identifying the dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of organizational trust. Simon is a Senior Lecturer within the Organizational Psychology program at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Teaching, research, and practice interests are in the areas of work engagement, organizational development and change, leadership development, culture and climate, and organizational politics. Simon has published in numerous international journals, has numerous book chapters in print, and has presented at international conferences. In addition to his academic and research interests Simon also has considerable consultancy experience. He has previously been a director of a human resource consultancy engaged in delivering a broad range of organizational development activities and programs.

The chapters in this volume are drawn from the best contributions to the 2010 International Conference on Emotion in Organizational Life held in Montreal, Canada in August of that year, complemented with invited chapters consonant with the theme of this volume. This highly successful conference, founded by the editors of this volume, and first held in 1998, is fondly referred to by many as the “Emonet” conference, after the email discussion listserv set up to support the conference and all those interested in advancing knowledge in emotions in organizational settings. We are especially grateful to the conference paper reviewers and acknowledge their service in the appendix of the book.

This study aims to examine 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.

Using scenarios involving a visit to the dentist's office, respondents from Germany, Japan, and the USA participated in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment in which the authors manipulated both expectations (low/high) and service performance (low/high).

Regardless of expectations, when performance was low, the low‐context respondents (USA 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.

The findings of this study highlight the necessity of considering culture when interpreting customer satisfaction ratings.

This research adds credence to the paramount role culture plays in consumers' ratings of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction.

Given that the relationship between proactive personality and turnover intention is not straightforward in the literature, the authors address two research questions focusing on the nursing profession: does proactive personality negatively influence nurses' turnover intention by alleviating their lack of professional recognition? And does a supervisor’s proactive personality act as a boundary condition for the mediating effects of the lack of professional recognition in the link between proactive personality and turnover intentions?

A moderated mediation model linking proactive personality and turnover intentions was developed and tested on a sample of 579 nurses in 88 work units in general hospitals in South Korea.

The results of multilevel path analysis reveal that proactive personality has a negative indirect relationship with turnover intention via lack of professional recognition. Additionally, the indirect relationship is strengthened when the supervisor’s proactive personality is low.

These findings provide valuable empirical evidence on the inconclusive relationship between proactive personality and turnover intention by highlighting the role of proactive personality in attenuating the influence of negative occupational factors. Moreover, proactive personality as a boundary condition for the aforementioned relationship was empirically examined.