Proactivity

Магистерская диссертация посвящена проблеме реализации проактивности сотрудника, как личностной диспозиции, в сфере неформального электронного обучения.

Цель исследования – выявление характера связей между выраженностью проактивности у сотрудников организации и их участием в неформальном электронном обучении с учетом характеристик выполняемой работы. Основной гипотезой стало предположение о наличии положительной связи между изучаемыми явлениями.

Исследование проводилось с помощью опросных методик. Выборку составили 86 человек (33,7% мужчин и 66,3% женщин в возрасте от 22 до 56 лет), представляющие организации разных типов хозяйственной деятельности (производство, маркетинг, консалтинг, торговля, образование и другие).

По результатам исследования основная гипотеза нашла своей подтверждение, а также эмпирически была подтверждена опосредованность связи проактивности и проактивного организационного поведения в области неформального электронного обучения характеристиками выполняемой работы и условий труда (инновационность, степень автономности, возможности обучения на рабочем месте).

Полученные результаты могут быть использованы для дальнейшей разработки темы проактивности и неформального (очного и электронного) обучения в бизнес-организациях.

Projeto sobre "Ser Proativo", abordado no livro "Os 7 hábitos das pessoas altamente eficazes", de Stephen Covey.

No artigo é detalhado as definições e conceitos de uma pessoa proativa, tanto na vida pessoal quanto profissional, seus meios de aplicações e outras referências do livro.

Disciplina: Relações Interpessoais/Unisinos
Professora: Talita Raquel de Oliveira
Autoria do projeto:  Bruno França, Claino Borges, Marcelo Bonamigo, Naiara Dalla Corte e Ruimack Fontana.

Observação importante: o artigo/projeto não se trata do projeto oficial apresentado perante a turma de Relações Interpessoais, portanto, o referido projeto aqui anexado é apenas uma referência e réplica do projeto oficial que tem por objetivo compartilhar com acadêmicos/professores e cia, afim de proporcionar conhecimentos e afins.

P.S: para uma melhor visualização, recomenda-se a fazer o download do documento em formato PDF.

Instagram: @ruimackfontana

Although the experience of negative emotions is generally associated with negative behaviors and outcomes, researchers have largely overlooked the possibility that negative emotions can lead to proactive behavior.  For instance, emotions such as anger and fear can spark proactive behavior by signaling a need to change the status quo.  Whereas theory and research on the topic have produced conflicting arguments and inconsistent results, I integrate a discrete emotions perspective with theories of proactivity to determine the conditions under which anger and fear prompt proactive behavior.  In doing so I provide a conceptual framework that enables understanding of specific factors that determine when anger is directed away from fight that harms others and toward fight that benefits others, and when fear is directed away from flight and toward increased protective effort (fight).  This article contributes to theory with a contingent model that specifies when and why anger and fear spark proactive behavior and generate functional outcomes.  It also offers practical advice for organizations to effectively manage emotional experiences and thereby increase proactive behavior resulting from experienced anger or fear.

Abstract
While fear is generally assumed to powerfully limit employee voice, a functional view of emotions suggests that responses to fear vary.  Instead of assuming that fear is negatively associated with voice, I argue that this relationship may be more complex.  Adopting a functional view of emotions, I hypothesize that fears from external sources focus attention on shared threat to the organization and may be positively associated with employee voice.  This effect is likely contingent: when employees perceive their supervisors as open to input, they are motivated to speak up.  Thus, perceptions of supervisor openness can help transform other-focused motives resulting from fearing external threat into information-sharing.  Results from two studies suggest that fear of external threat positively relates to voice when employees perceive their supervisor as open to input.  Additionally, results suggest that this interactive effect is mediated by prosocial motivation spurring employees to speak up when fearing external threat.

Although considerable research demonstrates that employees are unlikely to be proactive when they view their supervisors as discouraging this type of behavior, we challenge the assumption that this is true for all employees. Drawing on motivated information processing theory, we argue that prosocial motivation can spark employees to be proactive even when supervisors are perceived as discouraging. Specifically, prosocial motivation may weaken the negative relationship between perceived discouraging supervisor behaviors and proactivity by driving employees to bring about change to impact co-workers or the organization. Because they are less focused on self-interest and more focused on benefitting others, prosocially motivated employees are able to maintain their reason-to (felt responsibility for change) and can-do (efficacy to be proactive) motivation even when supervisors do not welcome proactivity. We test our hypotheses across three studies, using multi-source data from employees and supervisors in two organizations (Studies 1a & 1b), and lagged data from employees working in a range of industries (Study 2). By identifying the mechanisms driving prosocially motivated employees to be proactive despite having supervisors who are perceived to be discouraging, we offer novel theoretical and practical insights regarding the effects of context on proactivity at work.

Researchers have proposed that leader support helps employees behave proactively at work. Leader support can facilitate the opportunities for employees to bring about
change, as well as their motivation to do so. Nevertheless, empirical studies have shown mixed effects of leader support on employees’ proactive behavior. In this study, to reconcile the inconsistent findings on the impact of leader support on employees’ proactive behavior, the authors consider the content, mediating mechanisms, and boundary conditions of leader support in shaping employees’ proactive behavior. Based
on attachment theory, the authors propose that secure-base support from leaders (support in the form of leader availability, encouragement and noninterference) positively predicts
employees’ proactive work behavior by increasing their role breadth self-efficacy and autonomous motivation. These hypotheses are supported in an online-survey sample from
Unite State (n = 138) and a sample from a large gas and oil company in China (n = 212). The authors further propose that the beneficial effects of secure-base support from leaders
are more prominent for individuals with lower attachment security. This hypothesis was also supported: individuals high in attachment anxiety especially benefited from leader
secure-base support in terms of its effect on role breadth self-efficacy; whereas those who are high in attachment avoidance especially benefited from leader secure-base support in
terms of its effect on autonomous motivation. Our study helps explain how leaders’ support motivates employees’ proactive behavior, particularly for those individuals who have lower attachment security.

The benefit of proactive work behaviours for performance-related outcomes has been well established. However, this approach to studying proactivity has not yet acknowledged its potential implications for the actor's well-being. Drawing on the fact that resources at work are limited and that the workplace is a social system characterized by interdependencies, we proposed that daily proactivity could have a negative effect on daily well-being. We furthermore proposed that this effect should be mediated by work overload and negative affect. We conducted a daily diary study (N = 72) to test the potential negative effects of proactivity on daily well-being. Data was collected across three consecutive work days. During several daily measurement occasions, participants reported proactivity, work overload, negative affect, and fatigue. They also provided four saliva samples per day, from which cortisol was assayed. Based on the four samples, a measure of daily cortisol output was produced. Multilevel analyses showed that daily proactivity was positively associated with higher daily cortisol output. The positive association of daily proactivity with bedtime fatigue was marginally significant. There was no support for a mediating effect of work overload and negative affect. Implications for theory-building on the proactivity - well-being link are discussed.

Towards the end of the Republic, some powerful promagistrates found themselves at the height of their political and military power and yet also formally excluded from the sphere of domestic politics in Rome. As a result, they were repeatedly compelled not only to influence affairs in Rome at a distance but also to interfere in the sphere domi by being personally present near or within the city. Thus, at the beginning of 32 bce, Octavian—now formally a proconsul rather than a triumvir—took an active part in senatorial proceedings. Girardet’s conjecture, that Octavian was careful not to violate some most evident formal safeguards surrounding the promagistracy, is plausible. However, details reported by Cassius Dio, such as Octavian taking his seat between the two consuls during a Senate meeting, demonstrate that the proconsul successfully appropriated the consuls’ leading role in the Senate. Dio’s passage focuses on changes in political initiative and proactivity—the very ideas which underpinned the Roman understanding of the essence of a magistrate’s power. There are the indications in other parts of Dio’s work of the fact that he indeed recognized a problem in the agency of promagistrates within the sphere domi. But the picture that Dio provides is more than the mere result of his own understanding, or even reconstruction, of events. A few parallel cases demonstrate that predecessors, including Caesar and later Lucan, problematized the same issue.

The working paper explores job crafting and their convergent validity with work engagement and proactive personality in Spain. Based on the Job Demands-Resources model with four dimensions (increasing structural job resources, decreasing hindering job demands, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands) the working paper validates a job crafting scale using a sample of 896 employees working for firms in Spain. The results of the confirmatory factor and invariance analyses suggest that the four-factor model satisfactorily describes the dimensional structure of the 21-item scale, with Cronbach’s alpha reliability indices between 0.70 and 0.79. Regarding convergent validity, the factors increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands correlate positively with the three sub-scales of Work Engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and with the Proactive Personality Scale. In contrast, the facto...

Background. The initiation of social responsibility on the part of a company – according to which corporations integrate social and environmental exercises in their business activity – has gained more publicity recently, so the CSR has become common knowledge. However, the CSR which was created in the interest of sustainable development is not exclusively the privilege of the organizational environment. The elements of social responsibility are those that can be integrated and realized in the non-business sphere, out of which the present study focuses on social and employment matters.
Research aims. The research aim is to cognize the employees’ expectations in public schools, the general attitude of employees regarding their labour and social sensitivity, and the internal communication of public schools.
Method. The research applied the focus group depth interview method.
Key findings. According to the results, differences can be seen in the preference of em-ployment and social matters between the business and non-business sectors. One of them is the need for employees to have esteem and also the knowledge of the explicit effects that must be improved. The role of trainings is important, but the adaption of responsible organisational solutions, methods (family-friendly view, healthy working environment, gender equality, activities outside work etc.) can help to improve proactive motivation among employees and also the inner communication that motivates employees.

The study tested the extent to which perceived desirability mediates the effects of student creativity and proactivity on entrepreneurial intent. Participants were 199 engineering and business university students from Greek Universities. Results using Structural Equation Modelling indicated that perceived desirability fully mediates the relationship of student creativity, proactivity and entrepreneurial intent. Additionally, proactivity was found to be related to creativity. The findings have implications for explaining perceived entrepreneurial desirability and direct attention on creativity as an essential competence in the entrepreneurial process.

The purpose of this paper is to show the relation between job satisfaction and proactive behaviour. Existing studies clearly indicate the impact of proactive attitude on job satisfaction. The authors' objective was to verify this relation, assuming reversed hypothesis. Therefore their intention was to establish to what extent job satisfaction affects proactive attitude. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was implemented to test and verify the micromodel containing two latent variables: job satisfaction (exogenic) and proactive behaviour (endogenic). Both of them were equipped with relevant manifest variables, measured in a survey. The survey questionnaires were distributed using snowballing method and the model was tested on the sample of 292 employees. The verification process came out positive and provided necessary data to support the assumed hypothesis. However the model fit was problematic in a sense that it requires verification of the measurement model in order to increa...

Crowdsourcing as a tool for idea generation has become popular for companies in the last few years. The aim of this research is to identify innovative behaviour types in an intra-organisational online ideation contest. Based on a survey with 75 employees of a specialty chemicals company, we determined the degrees of personality severity of two main factors — creativity and proactivity. Creativity seems to enhance the number of submitted ideas while proactive people's ideas seem to have greater chances of being pursued by the company. Four different personality combinations arise out of the empirical analysis that show specific performance types and are clustered into different activity roles, such as the follower, the proactive promotor, the creative innovator and the intrapreneur. Some of them refer to existing innovation roles. This novel combination of crowdsourcing performance and innovative behaviour delivers new insights that enrich current understanding on the characteris...

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,
high-activation 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 job-related 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.

This paper presents a moderation-mediation model suggesting that proactivity and job autonomy moderate the mediating
effects of engagement on the relationship of servant leadership with job performance and lateness. Data were collected
from a sample of 50 bank departments from three sources: managers (n = 50), employees (n = 165), and objective data
provided by human resources departments. The results show that as expected, the association of servant leadership with
work engagement was stronger for employees with low levels of proactivity and job autonomy. Proactivity moderated
the mediating effect of engagement on the relationship of servant leadership with both job performance and lateness;
autonomy moderated the mediating effect of engagement on the relationship between servant leadership and lateness.
The results imply that placing employees with low levels of proactivity and job autonomy under the supervision of servant
leaders can engender higher job engagement and better organizational outcomes.

Case studies of Latino adolescents and their families indicating that in spite of resource constraints and discrimination suffered in U.S. society, in some cases individuals and families are proactive in response. The case materials suggest the value of investigating the role of agency in mitigating constraints and discrimination.

'El aleteo de una mariposa en Sri Lanka puede provocar un huracán en EE.UU'. Foto: Alberto Lavarello/Altamira Adventures Nos movemos y desarrollamos en un mundo donde los sucesos y acciones inciden entre sí. Lo mismo sucede con las decisiones que tomamos: éstas encaminan sucesos que podrían diferir de elegir actuar distinto. Esta es una de las razones principales por la cual considerar las consecuencias resulta relevante para lograr determinados objetivos. Otra muy importante es prepararnos para eventos que son susceptibles de suceder. Trabajar PROSPECTIVAMENTE hacia nuestro futuro resulta imprescindible en momentos de suma incertidumbre como la que estamos viviendo. El Efecto Mariposa nos presenta un concepto que podemos aplicar bastante bien a la situación que estamos viviendo actualmente. Un primer caso del Covid-19, en Wuhan, China, propagado al mundo entero por efecto de la interacción entre personas, que llega a paralizar el ritmo de vida en el mundo entero. ¿Teoría del Caos? La explicación que se le quiera dar, para efectos de esta presentación, no es relevante. El hecho es que sucedió, y que en estos momentos lo que se está haciendo es intentando evitar que se siga propagando. Sin embargo las repercusiones abarcan mucho más de lo que se asumió inicialmente. No sólo estamos viviendo el desconocimiento respecto a cómo atacar el virus; irremediablemente surgen y se evidencian las carencias que se tienen como sociedad, como país y, obviamente, las consecuencias económicas y sociales que ya se empiezan a vivir, entre otras. Quedarnos inertes, quejarnos, o reclamar, no es lo que nos va a permitir salir adelante. Es por eso que se convierte en imperante empezar a ser productivos, y más importante aún, proactivos. Necesitamos tomar acción para crear el camino que nos lleve a minimizar la incertidumbre de los próximos tiempos, inmersos en un entorno que ha cambiado súbitamente y en el cual muchos de nuestros hábitos y sistemas de vida ya no encajarán. Requerimos de nuevos conceptos, enfoques y herramientas, o por lo menos, de una manera diferente de usarlas; de una nueva forma de pensar. Definitivamente no será fácil, pero ¿qué, que valga la pena lo es? Resulta imprescindible empezar por asumir esta nueva situación. Es prácticamente un hecho que estamos moviéndonos en un momento de cambio donde existe un antes y un después de la aparición del COVID-19. Ha cambiado nuestra vida como la conocíamos, por lo tanto es momento de cambiar nuestro enfoque y actitud también. No podemos pretender controlar lo que esté por suceder pero sí prepararnos para este futuro inmediato que probablemente será el inicio de un nuevo sistema. Si bien esto es algo que deberíamos haber entendido frente a la rapidez de los continuos cambios que ya se experimentaban, hoy resulta totalmente evidente. Partiendo de este enfoque, pensar el futuro se convierte en la opción viable a considerar, como personas, como empresas y como sociedad. La incertidumbre, que resulta la única constante en este momento, no nos va a ayudar a resolver el problema y menos nos ayudará a encontrar el camino. Se trata de pensar en el largo plazo para tomar decisiones hoy, las cuales no sólo darán

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention.
The sample of this empirical study consists of a group of 239 students in Istanbul. The surveys that have been
given to these students are collected by hand. The data that has been gathered later on is analysed by using two
programs, namely the AMOS 24 and SPSS24. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of
entrepreneurial behaviour in terms of the vital role of entrepreneurship that has been observed in the economy.
Additionally, the hypothesis “Proactive personality has a significant effect on all dimensions of entrepreneurial
intention” is accepted. In addition, proactive people tend to benefit greatly from the appropriate backdrop for their
various entrepreneurial activities. According to the result, proactivity is positively related to all dimensions of
entrepreneurial intention such as Utilize the Opportunities, Determination, Openness to Change, Risk Taking, and
Openness to New Experiences.

Kas Oosterhuis repositions the architect in society today as a well-trained hyperconscious idiot savant. Audacious intuition must be trained to decide in split seconds, like the Formula I driver. Todays architect is an information architect, able to act intuitively and to process information rationally at the same time. Buildings are seen as processes running in real time. Building components communicate with other building components. All are members of the swarm, members of the hive. Swarm architecture implies that all building elements operate as intelligent agents, data carriers and data processing devices. Swarm architecture feeds on data generated by social transactions in the transformation economy.

The working paper explores job crafting and their convergent validity with work engagement and proactive personality in Spain. Based on the Job Demands-Resources model with four dimensions (increasing structural job resources, decreasing hindering job demands, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands) the working paper validates a job crafting scale using a sample of 896 employees working for firms in Spain. The results of the confirmatory factor and invariance analyses suggest that the four-factor model satisfactorily describes the dimensional structure of the 21-item scale, with Cronbach’s alpha reliability indices between 0.70 and 0.79. Regarding convergent validity, the factors increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands correlate positively with the three sub-scales of Work Engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and with the Proactive Personality Scale. In contrast, the facto...

The growing number of tools and methods for environmental impact analysis shows the variety of contexts covered by ecodesign. As ecodesign tools are evolving rapidly and manipulating different data, environmental engineers are facing some difficulties to share data efficiently with the current product designers tools. To support this data exchange among software, the capacity of tools to interoperate has been widely improved over the last ten years by software integrations. However, this paper argues that the lack of dynamism and flexibility of those solutions cannot fully face the challenge of designing ecoeffective products. Therefore, this paper proposes a three-step method to build dynamic information exchanges between environmental engineers and product designers activities involved along the design process. This proposal can be adapted to the various ecodesign contexts encountered during the design process. It also gives the capacity to the environmental engineer to use any available information produced by other designers and to give them back an adapted answer to reiterate their choices. In this paper, the proposal has been tested on an industrial case study. The results are used to discuss the benefits of developing such a method in the industry to build a constant proactivity along the design process between the environmental engineer and product designers.

Resumen
Introducción: La huelga protagonizada por los controladores aéreos en España durante los días 3, 4, 5 y 6 de diciembre de 2010 representa un caso paradigmático de comunicación de crisis. Objetivos y metodología: El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar las estrategias de comunicación públicas desarrolladas por el Ministerio de Fomento y el Gobierno. Por otro lado, se han estudiado las acciones en materia de comunicación de los promotores de la huelga, el sindicato de controladores aéreos. Se ha tomado como referencia la cobertura informativa de cinco de los principales diarios españoles y la repercusión del paro en las redes sociales. Conclusiones: Entre las principales conclusiones, se constata el éxito de la política de comunicación del Gobierno, basada en la previsión, la proactividad y la técnica del storytelling, es decir, la formulación de un relato con ‘buenos’, los ciudadanos y el Ejecutivo, y ‘malos’, los convocantes de la huelga, que cala en la opinión pública. También se comprueba el fracaso de la comunicación de los promotores del paro, condicionada por la improvisación, la actitud reactiva y la descoordinación.
Abstract
Introduction: The air traffic controllers’ strike that took place in Spain from the third to the sixth of December 2010 is a paradigmatic case of crisis communications. Objectives: The objective of this research article is to analyse the public communications strategies implemented, on the one hand, by the Ministry of Public Works and the Spanish government and, on the other, by the promoters of the strike, the air traffic controllers union. Methods: The study is based on the analysis of the news coverage of five of the main Spanish newspapers and the impact of the strike on the social networks. Conclusions: The results indicate that the Spanish government implemented a better communications plan, which was based on anticipation, proactivity and the use of the storytelling technique, i.e. the narration of a story with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters (the citizens and the government, on the one hand, and the promoters of the strike, on the other), which had a huge impact of the public opinion. The communication “strategy” of the promoters of the strike failed in its mission as it was characterised by improvisation, reactive attitudes and lack of coordination.

The aim of this article is to indicate selected possibilities of analysing the construct of proactivity. This goal was achieved by referring to selected definitions and the concepts of proactivity and by discussing a research project aimed at recognizing the proactivity of students towards their professional career. To measure the level of proactivity, the Scale of Proactive Behavior in Career was used, which includes four types of proactivity: general, cognitive, in building a support network and in building psychological comfort. The independent variables in the research were: taking on professional activity during studies, using services offered by a Career Office and a career counsellor. 271 students from four Polish universities took part in the study. The highest mean score was on the general proactivity scale, followed by the proactivity scale in building a support network, the scale of proactivity in building psychological comfort, and the lowest on the scale of cognitive pr...

This conference seeks to explore the question of what it meant to take political initiative in ancient Rome. Such initiative may be understood as the ability of political agents to behave proactively, rather than only to react to what others have to suggest. It is clear that in Republican Rome, this ability mostly belonged to magistrates and indirectly to the Senate, while in the Early Empire the princeps became, in practice, the principal source of political initiative. But how are we to define the specific preconditions, mechanics, and outcomes of taking the lead in Rome, especially if apart from legislative proposals we also consider various informal undertakings and projects of political actors? Under which circumstances, if at all, were non-magistrates or later those from outside the “imperial court” able to seize political initiative? We envisage that papers will engage with different understandings of what political agency and initiative was—and indeed is now also. In this latter regard, this conference additionally aims to explore the possible application of modern conceptions of political initiative to Classical studies, and vice versa, the lens provided by ancient models of political initiative to the modern context.