No abstract

Personal initiative is conceptualized as a behavioural syndrome made up of several factors. It is important for organizational effectiveness and is one aspect of ‘contextual performance’. The construct validity of a set of interview‐ and questionnaire‐based scales for measuring initiative was ascertained in interrelated studies (two waves from a longitudinal study in East Germany [N = 543] and a cross‐sectional study in West Germany [N = 160]). As hypothesized, initiative correlated with partners' assessments, need for achievement, action orientation, problem‐focused and passive emotion‐focused coping, career planning and executing plans, but not with job satisfaction. Higher initiative existed in small‐scale entrepreneurs in the East and in those unemployed who got a job more quickly.

The authors used the frameworks of reciprocal determinism and occupational socialization to study the effects of work characteristics (consisting of control and complexity of work) on personal initiative (PI)--mediated by control orientation (a 2nd-order factor consisting of control aspiration, perceived opportunity for control, and self-efficacy) and the reciprocal effects of PI on changes in work characteristics. They applied structural equation modeling to a longitudinal study with 4 measurement waves (N = 268) in a transitional economy: East Germany. Results confirm the model plus 1 additional, nonhypothesized effect. Work characteristics had a synchronous effect on PI via control orientation (full mediation). There were also effects of control orientation and of PI on later changes in work characteristics: As predicted, PI functioned as partial mediator, changing work characteristics in the long term (reciprocal effect); unexpectedly, there was a 2nd reciprocal effect of an additional lagged partial mediation of control orientation on later work characteristics.

Construct validity of an interview measure of personal initiative (PI) is examined in two parts. The first part assembles the results from 11 samples, showing that PI is meaningfully related to a nomological network of variables, based on environmental supports; knowledge, skills, and cognitive abilities; personality variables and orientations; and behavior and performance, confirming our hypotheses. In the second part, the article presents a new analysis that looks at the influence of motivational parameters (control aspiration, self-efficacy, and change orientation) and cognitive ability on PI within a longitudinal study in East Germany.