Job Requirements, Resources and Proactive Behavior at Work: The Role of Work Engagement and Stress

Abstract

Proactive employees are an important part of social capital in modern organizations that operate in a competitive and ever-changing business environment. Proactive behavior (PB) is defined as self-directed and future-oriented actions that are aimed to change the situation, work environment, or oneself (Bindl & Parker, 2010). Proactive workers initiate individual and organizational changes, and they not only respond to work requirements or adapt to environmental conditions (Fritz & Sonnentag, 2009). Therefore, it is important to analyze the work and personal characteristics that may be significant in order to enhance the employees’ PB. The paper presents an empirical study that integrates the theoretical approaches of Proactive Behavior (Parker & Collins, 2010) and Job Demands – Resources (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). It is aimed, first, to examine the links between job demands (pace and amount of work, emotional and mental workload), resources (autonomy and feedback), and work engagement and stress with employee strategic proactive behaviors as well as work and person-environment fit proactive behaviors. Second, to determine the role that work engagement and stress have in the relationships between job characteristics and PB types.
 A total of 386 employees from various Lithuanian organizations were surveyed online. Sixty one percent of the respondents were female; the average age of the respondents was 34.8 (SD = 11.32) years, with an average of 7.3 (SD = 8.22) years of working experience in their organizations. Twenty one percent of the respondents were first-level managers. Most of the respondents (93.6%) had acquired higher education.
 Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that strategic PB, through engagement as a mediator, was predicted by autonomy, mental workload, and feedback; proactive work behavior was predicted by emotional workload, while mental workload, autonomy, and feedback were related to proactive work behavior through work engagement as a mediator; proactive person-environment fit behavior was predicted only by feedback via work engagement as a mediator. The study has shown that employee PB can be reinforced not only with job resources (autonomy and feedback) but job demands as well (the mental and emotional workload) via the mediative effect of work engagement. Work stress was not related with PB. The practical applications of research findings are discussed.

Factors predicting proactive work behaviors among nurses: A descriptive predictive study

“…Our findings reinforced the previous study findings that work engagement contributes to PWB (β = 0.59, P < 0.01) (Permata & Mangundjaya, 2021). Individuals who are highly engaged at work exhibit greater work engagement and complete their tasks in a positive way (Miselytė et. al et al, 2019;Mohsin, 2019), which may result in the patient having higher quality nursing care (Slåtten et al, 2022).…”

“…Individuals who are highly engaged at work exhibit greater work engagement and complete their tasks in a positive way (Miselytė et. al et al., 2019; Mohsin, 2019), which may result in the patient having higher quality nursing care (Slåtten et al., 2022).…”

“…PWB has played a significant role in business success due to the increasingly multifaceted and indeterminate nature of the modern workplace (Smithikrai & Suwannadet, 2018; Zhang & Chen, 2020). Employees who are proactive make significant contributions to modern organizations operating in a highly competitive and dynamic business context (Miselytė et al., 2019). Therefore, current organizations look for employees who have PWB that drive elsewhere narrow function requirements and instead perform active, ambitious, forward‐looking, proactive behaviors to meet with organizational goals (Mohsin, 2019).…”

“…They also found that the relationship between education level and PWB is stronger for more educated employees than for less educated employees in their study (Zhang & Chen, 2020). The engaged employee showed greater dedication and absorptive capacity, and are more proactive in their work (Miselyt et al., 2019). Permata and Mangundjaya (2021) reported work engagement can influence PWB among employees.…”