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Unintended Consequences of Being Proactive? Linking Proactive
Personality to Coworker Envy, Helping, and Undermining, and the
Moderating Role of Prosocial Motivation
Jiaqing Sun
University of Illinois at Chicago
Wen-Dong Li
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Yuhui Li
Renmin University of China
Robert C. Liden
University of Illinois at Chicago
Shuping Li
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Xin Zhang
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Drawing upon social comparison theory, we developed and tested a model to examine potential negative
coworker reactions toward proactive employees. We theorized that a focal employee’s proactive
personality is positively related with his or her high relative standing in the group, which in turn exposes
him or her to being the target of coworker envy. This may then reduce the focal employee’s received help
from coworkers and give rise to coworker undermining. We further reasoned that employee prosocial
motivation moderates the serial mediated relationships. Our hypotheses were generally supported in 3
field studies involving a total of 1,069 employees from 223 groups. Proactive personality was negatively
and indirectly related to received help from coworkers, via relative leader-member exchange (RLMX)
and relative job performance, and then via being envied by coworkers (Study 1). Results also generally
supported the positive and indirect effect of proactive personality on coworker undermining via the same
set of sequential mediators (e.g., RLMX and then being envied, Study 2). The indirect effects of proactive
personality on coworker helping and undermining (e.g., via relative job performance and coworker envy)
were only significant when employees’ prosocial motivation was low (Study 3). This research contributes
to a more complete and balanced theorization of the influences of proactive personality in organizations.
Keywords: proactive personality, leader-member exchange, envy, helping and social undermining,
prosocial motivation
He who surpasses . . . must look down on the hate of those below.
— Lord Byron (1885), Childe Harold’s pilgrimage: A romaunt, p. 186.
The past two decades have been witness to a surge of research
interest in proactivity (Bindl & Parker, 2010;Frese & Fay, 2001;
Grant & Ashford, 2008), probably because of the increasing need
for employees to take initiative in organizations facing increased
uncertainty and competition (Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007). Sub-
stantial research efforts have been devoted to antecedents of pro-
active behaviors, and in particular to proactive personality, defined
as “a relatively stable tendency to effect environmental change”
(Bateman & Crant, 1993, p. 103). Indeed, meta-analytic evidence
has documented that proactive personality is positively related to
such favorable outcomes as quality leader-member relationships
and superior job performance, even when controlling for other
Jiaqing Sun, Department of Managerial Studies, University of Illinois at
Chicago; Wen-Dong Li, Department of Management, Chinese University
of Hong Kong; Yuhui Li, School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin
University of China; Robert C. Liden, Department of Managerial Studies,
University of Illinois at Chicago; Shuping Li, Department of Management
and Marketing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Xin Zhang, De-
partment of Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Jiaqing Sun and Wen-Dong Li contributed equally to this article. This
project was supported by a direct grant for research from CUHK Business
School, the Chinese University of Hong Kong awarded to Wen-Dong Li.
This research was also partially supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant 71502043). We are indebted to Neal Ashka-
nasy, Sue Ashford, Mark Bolino, Mike Crant, Michael Frese, Adam Grant,
KiYoung Lee, Elizabeth Morrison, Sharon Parker, Sabine Sonnentag,
Zhaoli Song, Kenneth Tai, and Zhen Zhang for insightful discussions. We
also appreciate the invaluable feedback from Phil Podsakoff and other
participants in the OB junior faculty workshop during the 2016 Academy
of Management annual meeting.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yuhui Li,
School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China,
Beijing, China. E-mail: yuhui_li@ruc.edu.cn
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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Journal of Applied Psychology
© 2020 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 2, No. 999, 000
ISSN: 0021-9010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000494
1
personality traits (Fuller & Marler, 2009;Spitzmuller, Sin, Howe,
& Fatimah, 2015;Thomas, Whitman, & Viswesvaran, 2010;Tor-
nau & Frese, 2013).
As demonstrated in the above meta-analyses, research has pre-
dominantly portrayed proactive personality as beneficial for em-
ployees and organizations. While insightful, this research has paid
less attention to the potential unintended consequences— being
proactive may not always be appreciated by coworkers (Bindl &
Parker, 2010;Frese & Fay, 2001;Grant & Ashford, 2008). Indeed,
the same meta analyses have revealed substantial variability (e.g.,
large credibility intervals) in the generally positive relationships
between proactive personality and proximal positive work out-
comes (e.g., job performance and leader-member relationships).
Such findings suggest that the positive effects of proactive per-
sonality are not universally strong in magnitude.
1
Furthermore, the
credibility intervals for the meta-analyzed correlations between
proactive personality and distal objective career success variables
(i.e., salary and promotion, see Fuller & Marler, 2009) included
both positive and negative values, suggesting that positive effects
of proactive personality in some situations may be negative in
others. Such findings point to the possibility of looking into
potential negative effects of proactive personality.
In fact, scholars have found that under certain conditions, pro-
active personality may be negatively related to job performance
(e.g., Chan, 2006;Erdogan & Bauer, 2005;Wihler, Blickle, Ellen,
Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2017; see Crant, Hu, & Jiang, 2016 for a
review) and well-being (e.g., Fay & Hüttges, 2017;Strauss,
Parker, & O’Shea, 2017). Conceptually, Bateman and Crant
(1999) theorized that proactive personality may be “counterpro-
ductive” (p. 67). Frese and Fay (2001) concurred that proactive
people may be “perceived by the environments [e.g., coworkers] as
being tiring and strenuous” (p. 141). Bolino, Valcea, and Harvey
(2010) pointed out that proactive people may pose a threat to
coworkers of losing desired organizational resources, and lead to
“increased tension between proactive and non-proactive employ-
ees” (p. 333). Given the prominence of coworker influence in
organizations (e.g., Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008;Sherony & Green,
2002), it is somewhat surprising that there has been little research
on “peers’ responses to proactivity” (Parker, Wang, & Liao, 2019,
p. 240).
Our examination of possible negative influences of proactive
personality has also been inspired by recent research on negative
effects of other “positive” individual characteristics, including
cognitive intelligence (Kim & Glomb, 2010), extraversion (Grant,
Gino, & Hofmann, 2011), and emotional intelligence (Côté, De-
celles, McCarthy, Van Kleef, & Hideg, 2011). Judge, Piccolo, and
Kosalka (2009) termed such cases as “paradox of traits”: “traits
rarely have unalloyed advantages (or disadvantages) even in a
single context at a single point in time” (p. 859). Evolutionary
psychologist Nettle (2006) pointed out that “behavioral alterna-
tives [of personality] can be considered as trade-offs, with a
particular trait producing not unalloyed advantage but a mixture of
costs and benefits such that the optimal value for fitness may
depend on very specific local circumstances” (p. 625).
In the current research, we adopt social comparison theory (e.g.,
Festinger, 1954;Greenberg, Ashton-James, & Ashkanasy, 2007)
as the overarching theoretical backdrop to investigate how,why,
and when proactive personality leads to unintended coworker
reactions (see Figure 1). Existing literature has primarily focused
on performance-related variables as catalysts of social comparison
in organizations (Greenberg et al., 2007).
2
Investigating the role of
proactive personality in social comparison is important in the
group context. Proactive personality is “rooted in people’s needs to
manipulate and control the environment” (Bateman & Crant, 1993,
p. 104) and represents “a form of dominance” to coworkers (Parker
et al., 2019, p. 229). Thus, proactive employees may be perceived
by coworkers as potential threats and competitors, and then se-
lected as targets of social comparison and envy (Festinger, 1954).
We propose a moderated serial mediation model by drawing
primarily upon the literatures on relative leader-member exchange
(RLMX; e.g., Epitropaki & Martin, 2013;Hu & Liden, 2013;Tse,
Ashkanasy, & Dasborough, 2012) and workplace envy (e.g.,
Duffy, Shaw, & Schaubroeck, 2008;Kim & Glomb, 2014;Vec-
chio, 1997), both of which share a common emphasis on the
prominence of social comparison in organizational contexts
(Greenberg et al., 2007). Leader-member exchange (LMX), which
focuses on the quality of relationship between each leader and
follower, provides the basis for RLMX, which is defined as “the
actual degree to which the focal individual’s LMX differs from the
average leader–subordinate LMX in the work group” (Vidyarthi,
Liden, Anand, Erdogan, & Ghosh, 2010, p. 850). In brief, because
proactive employees tend to garner high standings in terms of
RLMX and relative job performance, upward social comparison
may prompt coworker emotional reactions of envy toward proac-
tive employees. Coworker envy in turn is hypothesized to be
negatively related to received help from coworkers and positively
related to being undermined by coworkers, two major types of
behavioral outcomes of coworker envy (e.g., Duffy, Scott, Shaw,
Tepper, & Aquino, 2012;Parrott, 2016).
We further probe whether employee prosocial motivation, the
desire to protect and enhance others’ well-being (Batson, 1987;
Grant, 2007), moderates the relationships between RLMX and
being envied, and between relative job performance and being
envied and, thus, the indirect effects of proactive personality on
received coworker help and social undermining in the serial me-
diation model. Recent research on social comparison and envy
suggests that employees are most likely to become targets of
coworker envy when they have high status (e.g., high RLMX and
relative performance), and do not get along well with coworkers
(Cuddy, Glick, & Beninger, 2011;Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007).
This notion has been echoed by recent theorizing on wise proac-
tivity, highlighting the importance of social and interpersonal
contexts in proactivity processes (Parker et al., 2019).
The current investigation contributes to the scholarship on pro-
active personality and related literatures in three ways. First, by
investigating potential negative effects of proactive personality on
coworker reactions, it complements and broadens previous re-
search that has primarily focused on the benefits (Fay & Hüttges,
2017;Strauss et al., 2017). Parker et al. (2019) contended that “the
more proactive employees consider their social and relational
context, and stay attuned to the characteristics of others, the more
likely their proactivity will be effective” (p. 235). Judge and
Lepine (2007) asserted that “a more nuanced view of the impor-
1
We are indebted to our anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.
2
We thank our anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.
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tance of personality to behavior would recognize that even gener-
ally desirable traits (i.e., traits associated with fitness in a general
or even evolutionary sense) likely involve trade-offs associated
with particular criteria” (p. 333). In this vein, this research con-
tributes to the development of a more balanced and completes
theorization on the effects of proactivity.
Second, our research extends the scholarly work on social
comparison by highlighting the role of employee proactivity and
prosocial motivation. Prior research has paid little attention to what
types of personality traits trigger upward comparison and bound-
ary conditions (Cuddy et al., 2011;Greenberg et al., 2007). Pro-
active personality reflects a disposition to gain control and domi-
nance over the work environment (Bateman & Crant, 1993;Parker
et al., 2019). As such, proactive employees tend to become the
targets of upward social comparison, especially when they are low
on prosocial motivation. Through exploring the unique agentic
characteristics embedded in proactive personality and moderating
role of prosocial motivation, this research paves a new avenue for
examining more social comparison processes in organizations.
Third, this research contributes to the literature on leader-
member exchange (LMX) by shedding light on crucial employee-
related antecedents and coworker-related consequences of RLMX.
RLMX represents a central premise of LMX theory that leaders
differentiate between followers (Graen, Liden, & Hoel, 1982). Yet,
substantially less is known about precursors of RLMX as well the
mechanism through which one group member’s RLMX affects
coworkers (Tse et al., 2012). Through probing the antecedents and
coworker-related outcomes, our investigation extends research on
differentiated leadership by moving a “leader-centered” perspec-
tive in the prior research to a relatively more comprehensive
perspective that also considers employee personality traits and
coworker reactions.
Theoretical Development and Hypotheses
Social Comparison in Organizations
Theory of social comparison was originally put forth by Leon
Festinger (1954). Social comparison was later formally defined as
“the process of thinking about information about one or more other
people in relation to the self” (Wood, 1996, pp. 520 –521). In his
seminal paper, Festinger (1954) contended that human beings have
an innate and fundamental drive to assess their abilities and opin-
ions for the purpose of adaptation. Often times, they lack objective
standards; thus, they turn to other similar people (e.g., peers) as
references instead. This is especially the case in uncertain and
competitive environments.
The nature of organizational life provides abundant opportuni-
ties for employees to compare themselves frequently and closely
with coworkers (Brown, Ferris, Heller, & Keeping, 2007;Green-
berg et al., 2007). Employees compete for scarce organizational
rewards and resources, such as pay raises, promotions, training
opportunities, rewarding assignments, and office space. Competi-
tion and hierarchy in organizations serve as the breeding ground
for social comparison, either privately or in public, automatically
or in a motivated manner (Duffy & Shaw, 2000;Lazarus &
Cohen-Charash, 2001;Vecchio, 1997). Wood (1996) proposed
three major processes of social comparison: acquiring,thinking
about, and reacting to social information. This framework explains
how and why a social comparison process happens.
Acquiring social information is the first critical step, which
entails selecting “particular targets and types of social information
for further observation” (Wood, 1996, p. 521). Employees often
select peers as targets (e.g., Duffy et al., 2008;Greenberg et al.,
2007), because members in the same group have ample chances for
close and frequent observations, communications, and interactions
with each other— unconsciously or consciously (Gilbert, Giesler,
& Morris, 1995). Human beings are sensitive to threats in the
environment (Abrams & Christ, 2003). This accounts for why
proactive employees are likely to become targets of coworkers’
social comparison, because proactive employees obtain control
and dominance over other people.
Coworkers may proceed with thinking about the meaning of the
social information to their work (Parrott & Smith, 1993). The
comparisons of the relative standings of the targets (i.e., proactive
employees) with coworkers’ own standings further affect the di-
rection of the social comparisons (i.e., upward or downward) as
well as subsequent emotional and behavioral reactions (Wood,
1996). In organizations, the quality of relationship with supervi-
sors and job performance represent two core factors that supervi-
sors consider when allocating crucial rewards and resources
among employees (Rynes, Gerhart, & Parks, 2005). Thus, proac-
Figure 1. Overall research model. Being socially undermined was examined in Study 2 and Study 3. Prosocial
motivation was tested in Study 3. All the other parts of the model were examined in the three studies. RLMX ⫽
relative leader-member exchange.
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tive employees’ relative standings on LMX and job performance
are often utilized by coworkers as salient attributes at work in
social comparison (e.g., Hu & Liden, 2013;Kim & Glomb, 2014).
The last stage involves emotional and behavioral reactions to
the results of the social comparisons. Proactive employees’ high
RLMX and relative job performance may trigger coworkers’ up-
ward social comparisons, and in turn give rise to proactive em-
ployees’ becoming targets of envy by coworkers. Envy is defined
as a “painful emotion characterized by feelings of inferiority,
hostility, and resentment caused by an awareness of a desired
attribute enjoyed by another person” (Smith & Kim, 2007, p. 46).
Coworker envy may result in their withdrawing cooperation and
enacting hostility toward proactive employees (Greenberg et al.,
2007).
Indirect Effect of Employee Proactive Personality on
Being the Targets of Coworker Envy Through
Employee RLMX and Relative Job Performance
Proactive employees tend to become the targets of coworker
upward social comparison. The changes made by proactive em-
ployees may introduce uncertainties and challenges for the co-
workers (Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010). As proactive employees
tend to gain control and dominance (Parker et al., 2019), their
coworkers may experience a corresponding decrease in control
over valued resources and a feeling of being dominated by proac-
tive employees. Taken together, the uncertainties and potential loss
of control faced by coworkers render proactive employees as
targets of coworker upward social comparison (Taylor & Lobel,
1989).
Proactive personality and RLMX. We expect that proactive
employees’ relative standings on LMX and job performance rep-
resent two major manifestations of their securing control and
dominance, which may serve as two forms of work attributes with
which coworkers may compare themselves. Thus, employee pro-
active personality may have an indirect effect on being the target
of coworker envy through RLMX and relative job performance.
Research on LMX is based on the supposition that leaders formu-
late differentiated relationships with followers (Dansereau, Graen,
& Haga, 1975;Dienesch & Liden, 1986). RLMX research origi-
nated from this premise with a focus on the group context. Em-
ployees with high proactive personality may cultivate a relatively
high quality relationship with the leader. First, proactive employ-
ees tend to initiate and implement positive changes to the organi-
zation (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Supervisors control crucial re-
sources in organizations. Hence, proactive employees are
motivated to develop relatively higher quality relationships with
supervisors to attain such resources (Liden, Wayne, & Sparrowe,
2000). Second, proactive employees are inclined to gain more
control over the environment (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Consid-
ering that the flow of power and control in organizations often runs
from supervisors to followers (Yukl, 2013), proactive employees
may form relatively higher quality relationships with supervisors
to gain latitude and control over their work (Yukl & Fu, 1999).
Thus, although proactive behaviors may not always be appreciated
by supervisors (Fast, Burris, & Bartel, 2014), research has shown
a generally positive relationship between proactive personality and
LMX (Fuller & Marler, 2009), providing indirect support to this
proposition.
Proactive personality and relative job performance. Simi-
lar to RLMX, relative job performance refers to the difference
between one’s own job performance and the average job perfor-
mance of group members (Kim & Glomb, 2014). Proactive people
have a tendency to make positive changes and to correct inefficient
work procedures (Parker, Williams, & Turner, 2006). Furthermore,
compared with less proactive employees, they have higher levels
of persistence and, thus, are more adept at overcoming obstacles
and barriers in achieving their change-oriented goals (Crant, 2000;
Parker et al., 2010). As such, proactive people tend to outperform
their less proactive counterparts, leading to a positive relationship
between proactive personality and relative job performance. Meta
analytic research has provided indirect support for this notion by
showing an overall positive relationship between proactive per-
sonality and job performance (Spitzmuller et al., 2015;Tornau &
Frese, 2013).
RLMX, relative job performance, and being envied by
coworkers. The relatively higher standings on LMX and job
performance of proactive employees in the group may impose
threats on coworkers, which may in turn breed coworker envy.
Envy represents an unpleasant and painful outgrowth of upward
social comparison (Parrott & Smith, 1993). Organizational con-
texts are competitive and hierarchical (Katz & Kahn, 1978;Weber,
1978). Resource scarcity drives organizations to select the most
valuable employees in whom to invest, and employees compete
continuously for valuable rewards and resources to get ahead.
Given that employees with high RLMX and relative job perfor-
mance are valued by organizations (Rynes et al., 2005), they tend
to receive more resources and better opportunities than other
coworkers. It follows that such employees may become targets of
coworker envy. Taken in concert, we predict that:
Hypothesis 1: Employee proactive personality is positively
and indirectly related to being envied by coworkers via em-
ployee (a) RLMX and (b) relative job performance.
Coworker Behavioral Reactions: Helping and
Social Undermining
Being envied and received coworker help. Coworker envy
may further give rise to unfavorable coworker behaviors—reduced
cooperation (e.g., received help from coworkers) and enhanced
hostility (e.g., coworker undermining). The burgeoning literature
on workplace envy suggests that to cope with envious feelings
caused by upward social comparisons, envious coworkers may
engage in either self-enhancing behaviors to improve their relative
standings or other-diminishing behaviors to lower the target’s
relative standing (Parrott, 2016;Smith & Kim, 2007). Compared
with self-enhancing behaviors, other-diminishing behaviors have
been portrayed as a more direct and efficient strategy for the envier
to alter his or her relative standing, because it takes more time for
self-improvement strategies to take effect (Lee & Duffy, 2019;
Smith & Kim, 2007;Tesser, 1988). Accordingly, we focus on
other-diminishing behaviors—reducing help and/or harming the
envied person—as two major outcomes of coworker envy.
There are two reasons to expect a negative relationship between
coworker envy and coworker help. Envy represents a painful
experience stemming from upward social comparison (Smith,
1991). The envious may have a sense of inferiority compared with
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the envied. As such, envious coworkers may be unlikely to provide
help to the envied proactive employees to cope with the frustration
as a result of the sense of inferiority (Greenberg et al., 2007;Smith,
1991) and to maintain self-esteem (Tesser, 1988). Furthermore,
envious coworkers may not help the envied proactive employees
for the sake of conserving resources (Hobfoll, 1989). Because
helping behaviors are resource depleting, providing less help to the
target of envy may conserve resources for envious coworkers to
achieve their own success. Thus, we predict that:
Hypothesis 2: Being envied by coworkers is negatively related
to receive coworker help.
Being envied and coworker social undermining. Envious
coworkers may also engage in social undermining toward employ-
ees with relatively higher standings in the group. Social under-
mining is defined as behaviors “intended to hinder, over time, the
ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relation-
ships, work-related success, and favorable reputation” (Duffy,
Ganster, & Pagon, 2002, p. 332). Coworker envy and social
undermining behaviors have been shown to be positively related
(Kim & Glomb, 2014;Lee & Duffy, 2019), because social under-
mining, “an instrumental form of aggression” (Duffy et al., 2012,
p. 646), is useful in enhancing oneself at the expense of others. Put
differently, to maintain a positive self-image and reduce a sense of
relative deprivation stemming from upward social comparison
(Crosby, 1976), envious coworkers may attempt to harm the
better-off proactive employees (Duffy et al., 2012). Thus, from the
perspective of proactive employees, we propose that being envied
by coworkers is positively related to their being the target of social
undermining from coworkers.
Hypothesis 3: Being envied is positively related to being
undermined by coworkers.
A Serial Mediation Model
We further propose a serial mediation model in which employee
proactive personality has indirect effects on received coworker
help and undermining via employee relative standings (RLMX and
relative job performance) and then via coworker envy. Proactive
employees likely initiate positive changes at work (Bateman &
Crant, 1993). Thus, they are motivated to forge relatively higher
quality relationships with supervisors compared with coworkers.
They persevere and are able to overcome obstacles, which in turn
may contribute to their relatively higher job performance (Parker
et al., 2006). Proactive employees’ relatively high standings in the
work group render them to become targets of coworkers’ upward
social comparison and envy. Because being the targets of envy
may elicit coworkers’ withholding help and undermining, proac-
tive personality may be indirectly related to coworker helping and
undermining.
Hypothesis 4: Employee proactive personality is negatively
and indirectly related to received help from coworkers via (a)
RLMX and (b) relative job performance, and then via being
envied by coworkers.
Hypothesis 5: Employee proactive personality is positively
and indirectly related to being socially undermined by co-
workers via (a) RLMX and (b) relative job performance, and
then via being envied by coworkers.
Moderating Role of Prosocial Motivation in the
Relationships of RLMX and Relative Job Performance
With Being Envied
We further propose that the relationships between a focal em-
ployee’s relative standings in a group (i.e., RLMX and relative job
performance) and coworker envy may be buffered by the focal
employee’s prosocial motivation. Recent research on envy sug-
gests that upward social comparison does not always result in
feelings of envy toward people who are better off (Cuddy et al.,
2011;Fiske et al., 2007;Smith & Kim, 2007). In organizations
replete with competition and status differentiation, targets of envy
are often those who are good at achieving high status (e.g., high
RLMX and relative performance), but not adept at getting along
with others (Cuddy et al., 2011;Fiske et al., 2007). This line of
reasoning suggests that competent but cold employees are most
likely to be perceived as threatening by coworkers. Stated differ-
ently, if an employee is able to both get ahead and get along with
colleagues, he or she is less likely to become the target of envy by
coworkers than those who are able to get ahead, but do not get
along. Based on this logic, we expect that although proactive
people are able to secure relatively high status in a group, they may
not necessarily become the targets of coworker envy, especially if
they are able to get along well with and benefit coworkers.
There are three reasons to expect a moderating role of employee
prosocial motivation in the relationships of RLMX and relative job
performance with coworker envy. First, employees with high
prosocial motivation are motivated to help coworkers (Batson,
1987). They take others’ perspectives (Grant & Berry, 2011) and
place great value on promoting others’ welfare. Second, prosocial
employees tend to attend to information outwardly (De Dreu &
Nauta, 2009). As such, prosocial motivation will encourage high
status employees (e.g., those with high RLMX and relative per-
formance) to identify multiple opportunities to protect and pro-
mote coworkers’ well-being (Grant & Wrzesniewski, 2010). Third,
high status employees with high prosocial motivation tend to be
perceived by supervisors and coworkers as behaving for the sake
of benefiting other people, not serving their own self-interests
(Grant & Berg, 2011). Taken together, prosocial motivation is
likely to impede high status employees from being perceived as
threatening, which in turn may decrease the chance for coworkers
to select such high status employees as targets of upward social
comparison. It follows that the positive relationships of relative
high standings in a group with coworker envy may be attenuated
by high employee prosocial motivation. Grant, Parker, and Collins
(2009) found that supervisors were more likely to value proactive
behaviors when employees’ prosocial motivation was high rather
than low.
Hypothesis 6: Prosocial motivation moderates the positive
relationships (a) between RLMX and being envied and (b)
between relative job performance and being envied, such that
these positive relationships are less pronounced when proso-
cial motivation is high rather than when it is low.
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Moderating Role of Prosocial Motivation in the Serial
Mediation Model
Integrating the moderating role of prosocial motivation pro-
posed in Hypothesis 6 with the serial mediation model (Hypoth-
eses 4 and 5), we propose the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 7: Prosocial motivation moderates the negative
and indirect effect of proactive personality on received help
from coworkers via (a) RLMX and (b) relative job perfor-
mance, and being envied, such that the indirect effect is less
pronounced when prosocial motivation is high rather than
when it is low.
Hypothesis 8: Prosocial motivation moderates the positive and
indirect effect of proactive personality on being socially un-
dermined by coworkers via (a) RLMX and (b) relative job
performance, and being envied, such that the indirect effect is
less pronounced when prosocial motivation is high rather than
when it is low.
Overview of the Three Studies
We conducted three studies in a progressive manner to examine
our research questions. We first examined the serial mediation
model in Studies 1 and 2. In Study 1, we investigated the indirect
effect of proactive personality on received coworker help via the
focal employee’s relative standings (i.e., RLMX and relative job
performance) and then coworker envy. In Study 2, we construc-
tively replicated and extended findings of Study 1 by including
coworker undermining (i.e., the whole serial mediation model), a
more active form of negative consequence of being envied (Duffy
et al., 2012). The moderating role of prosocial motivation in the
whole moderated serial mediation model was examined in Study 3.
The three studies were designed to increase the robustness of the
findings in two ways. First, we sampled from both for profit and
nonprofit organizations to enhance the generalizability of the re-
search findings. Research suggests that the extent to which co-
workers feel envious toward a better-off employee is influenced by
organizational contexts (Dineen, Duffy, Henle, & Lee, 2017).
Second, we tested being envied—the core mechanism—with both
coworker-report (in Studies 1 and 3) and self-report (in Study 2)
measures. Lee, Duffy, Scott, and Schippers (2018) suggested that
employee’s perception of being envied and envy reported by
coworkers may capture different aspects of the interactions be-
tween the envious and the envied. In this vein, it is important to
test whether our results hold with both measures.
Study 1: Examination of the Serial Mediation Model
With Coworker Help
Participants and Procedure
We administered the first wave of online surveys to 400 em-
ployees from 70 work groups in 17 for-profit companies in North
China. In total, 375 employees from the 70 groups completed the
Time 1 survey, with measures of employee proactive personality
and demographic variables. Group leaders rated employee job
performance. We administered the Time 2 survey one month later.
At Time 2, 249 group members from 50 groups completed the
survey. Employees reported their LMX, envy toward each of the
other group members. Two months later, we administered Time 3
survey and measured received help from coworkers. This study
(also Studies 2 and 3) has been approved by the Survey and
Behavioral Research Ethics Committee of the Chinese University
of Hong Kong (“A Multilevel Investigation Linking Proactive
Personality and Envy,” 21/09/2017).
Matching Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3 data yielded our final
sample of 243 employees from 49 groups with a final response rate
of 61% for employees. Of the employees, 43% were male, 89%
had a bachelor’s degree, and their mean age was 28.77 years old.
Measures
We followed Brislin’s (1980) translation-back-translation pro-
cedure to generate the Chinese versions of the scales used in this
study. The items were rated on a response scale ranging from 1
(Strongly disagree)to7(Strongly agree) unless otherwise noted.
Proactive personality (Time 1). We adopted the most-widely
used 10-item scale by Seibert, Crant, and Kraimer (1999) to
capture employee proactive personality (␣⫽.93). One sample
item is “I am always looking for better ways to do things.”
Leader-member exchange (Time 2). Employee LMX was
assessed with the widely used LMX-7 scale (Graen & Uhl-Bien,
1995;␣⫽.96). A sample item is “My working relationship with
my manager is effective.” Items were revised slightly to accom-
modate a strongly disagree to strongly agree response format
(Bauer & Green, 1996).
Job performance (Time 1). Employee job performance was
evaluated with four items from a scale by Pearce and Porter
(1986). We dropped the item, ability to get along with others,
because it was confounded with the outcome variable (i.e., re-
ceived help from coworkers). Group leaders rated group members
on their “overall performance in general,” “ability to get the task
done on time,” “performance quality,” and “achievement of work
goals” (␣⫽.91).
Operationalization of RLMX and relative job performance.
Consistent with previous research (e.g., Graen et al., 1982;Hen-
derson, Wayne, Shore, Bommer, & Tetrick, 2008;Tse et al.,
2012), we operationalized RLMX as one’s LMX score relative to
the mean of all the group members’ LMX scores by using group-
mean centered LMX scores in analyses. The same approach was
used for relative job performance. This approach enables us to
focus on individual level relationships (Bliese, 2000).
Being envied (Time 2). We followed Kim and Glomb’s
(2014) approach and captured the focal employee’s degree of
being envied with the average level of coworker envy (i.e., in-
degree envy centrality) toward the focal employee reported by all
other group members. To reduce participant fatigue, each group
member was asked to indicate their level of envy toward all the
other group members by answering the question “To what extent
do you envy this coworker?” on a 7-point scale (1 ⫽not at all,7⫽
to a great extent). To increase the accuracy of the interpretation of
envy, we provided examples of envy based on instruction by
Smith, Parrott, Diener, Hoyle, and Kim (1999): “For example, it is
frustrating to see this person to be successful so easily and it makes
you feel inferior.” The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for
coworker ratings of envy were sufficient (ICC(1) ⫽.53 and
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ICC(2) ⫽.82) to warrant aggregating all coworkers’ ratings of
envy as the target employee’s score (LeBreton & Senter, 2008).
Received help from coworkers (Time 3). Following Venkat-
aramani and Dalal (2007), we measured received coworker help by
asking the extent to which the focal employee received help from
each of the other group members: “On average, how many times
has this coworker helped you last month?” We used the mean
score across group members in analyses. Interrater reliabilities,
ICC(1) ⫽.34 and ICC(2) ⫽.68, justify our aggregation of all
coworkers’ help to the focal employee as the indicator of the
employee’s received coworker help.
Control variables (Time 1). Employee sex and tenure with
the leader may be related to social comparison (Hu & Liden, 2013;
Vidyarthi et al., 2010). Thus, it seems reasonable to control the two
variables in analyses. However, neither of them was significantly
correlated to our study variables. Thus, we reported the results
without controls (Becker et al., 2016).
Analytical Strategy
We adopted the multilevel structure equation modeling
(MSEM) approach (Preacher, Zhang, & Zyphur, 2011;Preacher,
Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010) in hypothesis testing. This approach
enabled us to simultaneously test all of the hypothesized relation-
ships at the individual level, while controlling for group level
variance. We used the “Two-level Complex” function with sand-
wich estimators in Mplus to deal with the issue of nonindepen-
dence caused by employees being nested in groups. We used all
available data in our analyses with full-information maximum-
likelihood estimation (Newman, 2014). Following Selig and
Preacher (2008), we used Monte Carlo bootstrapping to estimate
indirect effects. As suggested by Preacher et al.’s (2011), 90%
confidence intervals (CI) were used in testing indirect effects.
Results of Study 1
Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (MCFAs). We con-
ducted MCFAs to test the independence of the measures. First, we
tested a model in which proactive personality, RLMX, and relative
job performance were treated as individual level factors, and
coworker envy and helping were treated as both the individual
level and group level factors. Referring to previous research (e.g.,
Williams, Vandenberg, & Edwards, 2009), we formed three item-
parcels for proactive personality and RLMX. The model fit the
data well (
2
(50) ⫽89.42, p⬍.001, comparative fit index
[CFI] ⫽.96, Tucker-Lewis index [TLI] ⫽.94, root mean square
error of approximation [RMSEA] ⫽.06, and standardized root
mean square residual [SRMR] ⫽.05). This model generated better
fit indices than two alternative models. In the first alternative
model, all of the self-reported items (i.e., proactive personality,
RLMX, and received help from coworkers) loaded on one factor
(
2
(57) ⫽391.49, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.69, TLI ⫽.59, RMSEA ⫽
.16, and SRMR ⫽.16). The second alternative model was with all
items loaded on one factor (
2
(59) ⫽626.66, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.47,
TLI ⫽.32, RMSEA ⫽.20, and SRMR ⫽.18). These results
demonstrated that the variables used in this study represent sepa-
rate constructs.
Tests of hypotheses. The means, standard deviations, and cor-
relations among study variables are displayed in Table 1.Table 2
displays unstandardized coefficients for direct and indirect effects.
Figure 2 presents the results related to the hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1 stated that proactive personality was positively
and indirectly related to being envied by coworkers though RLMX
and relative job performance. Our analyses revealed a significant
positive indirect effect of proactive personality on being envied via
RLMX (indirect effect ⫽0.04, 90% CI ⫽[0.01, 0.08]) and relative
job performance (indirect effect ⫽0.07, 90% CI ⫽[0.02, 0.13]).
Hypothesis 1 was supported.
Hypothesis 2 focused on a negative relationship between being
envied and coworker helping. The results supported this hypoth-
esis (coefficient ⫽⫺0.54, p⬍.05; Table 2). The indirect rela-
tionship between proactive personality and received help from
coworkers was the focus of Hypothesis 4. The indirect relationship
from proactive personality to RLMX, being envied, and received
help from coworkers was significant (indirect effect ⫽⫺0.02,
90% CI ⫽[⫺0.05, ⫺0.003]). The indirect relationship via relative
job performance and being envied was also significant (indirect
effect ⫽⫺0.04, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.09, ⫺0.005]). Hypothesis 4 was
supported.
Study 2: Test of the Serial Mediation Model With
Coworker Help and Undermining
Participants and Procedures
We administered two-waves of online surveys in a nonprofit
organization in China in Study 2. At Time 1, 589 employees from
120 groups were invited to provide information on proactive
personality as well as their demographic information. Among
those invited, 443 returned their questionnaires. Approximately 2
months later, the same employees were invited to participate in the
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations Among Study Variables (Study 1)
Mean SD 1234
1. Proactive personality 5.12 0.84
2. RLMX 0.00 0.57 .20
ⴱⴱ
3. Relative job performance 0.00 0.60 .33
ⴱⴱ
.07
4. Being envied by coworkers 2.56 1.15 .14 .26
ⴱⴱ
.28
ⴱⴱ
5. Received help from coworkers 3.52 2.52 .04 ⫺.01 ⫺.02 ⫺.12
ⴱⴱ
Note.N⫽194 –243 individuals. LMX ⫽leader-member exchange. Correlation results indicated the
individual-level relationships among variables.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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7
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PROACTIVE PERSONALITY?
T1-2,
F2
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Time 2 survey with measures of LMX, being envied, and coworker
helping and undermining. There were 443 employees who com-
pleted the Time 2 survey. The final matched sample included 438
employees from 86 work groups (response rate was 74.36%).
Of the 438 employees, 63% were female, and 99% had a
bachelor’s degree. Their average age was 31.16 years old and had
worked with their leaders for 31.72 months at Time 1.
Measures
As in Study 1, we translated and back-translated all the scales
into Chinese following Brislin’s (1980) procedure. Unless other-
wise noted, the items were rated on a response scale from 1
(strongly disagree)to7(strongly agree).
Proactive personality (Time 1). We adopted the same scale
(Seibert et al., 1999) as in Study 1 to measure proactive personality
(␣⫽.91).
Leader-member exchange (Time 2). As in Study 1, we as-
sessed LMX with the LMX-7 scale (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995;␣⫽.92).
Job performance (Time 1). Job performance was rated by
leaders with the four-item scale used in Study 1 (Pearce & Porter,
1986;␣⫽.83).
Being envied (Time 2). We adopted the three-item scale by
Lee et al. (2018) to measure employees’ perceptions of being
envied by coworkers. A sample item is “Because of my success at
work, I am sometimes envied by my teammates” (␣⫽.94).
Received help from coworkers (Time 2). Following Venkat-
aramani and Dalal (2007), we captured received coworker help by
asking employees to indicate the degree to which they had helped
each of their coworkers in the same group (“How often have you
helped this coworker during the past two months?”) on the 7-point
scale (1 ⫽never,7⫽very often). We then calculated the mean
score of received help from all the coworkers for the focal em-
ployee and used it in all analyses. Interrater reliabilities for this
variable were sufficient (ICC(1) ⫽.16 and ICC(2) ⫽.60). These
results justify our aggregation of all the coworkers’ provided help
to the focal employee as the indicator of the focal employee’s
received help from coworkers.
Being socially undermined (Time 2). Being socially under-
mined by coworkers was measured following the same approach
we adopted to capture received help from coworkers in Study 1
(Venkataramani & Dalal, 2007). Participants rated each of the
other group members on the question “How often has this co-
Table 2
Summary of Results of Testing the Serial Mediation Model (Study 1)
Effect type Coefficient SE CI
Direct paths
Proactive personality ¡RLMX (first stage of H1a) 0.17
ⴱⴱ
0.04 [0.09, 0.25]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance (first stage of H1b) 0.29
ⴱⴱ
0.11 [0.08, 0.50]
RLMX ¡Being envied (second stage of H1a) 0.23
ⴱ
0.09 [0.05, 0.40]
Relative job performance ¡Being envied (second stage of H1b) 0.24
ⴱⴱ
0.09 [0.07, 0.42]
Proactive personality ¡Being envied 0.004 0.04 [⫺0.08, 0.09]
Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H2) ⫺0.54
ⴱ
0.21 [⫺0.95, ⫺0.13]
Proactive personality ¡Received help from coworkers 0.19 0.23 [⫺0.25, 0.64]
Indirect effects
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied (H1a) 0.04 0.02 [0.01, 0.08]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance ¡Being envied (H1b) 0.07 0.04 [0.02, 0.13]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H4a) ⫺0.02 0.01 [⫺0.05, ⫺0.003]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H4b) ⫺0.04 0.03 [⫺0.09, ⫺0.005]
Note.N⫽243 individuals. CI ⫽confidence interval; RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange. Confidence intervals for indirect effects were estimated
via Monte Carlo bootstrapping; 95% and 90% CIs were reported for direct and indirect effects, respectively.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
Figure 2. Results of testing the serial mediation model (Study 1). N⫽243 individuals. T1 ⫽Time 1; T2 ⫽
Time 2; T3 ⫽Time 3. Unstandardized path estimates are reported. The dashed lines indicate nonsignificant
relationships. Standard errors are presented in brackets. RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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worker insulted you during the past two months?” on a 7-point
scale (1 ⫽never,7⫽very often). This item had the highest factor
loading in the most-widely used measure of coworker undermining
(Duffy et al., 2002). The mean of received undermining from all
the coworkers in the group was used to reflect the focal employ-
ee’s coworker undermining. Interrater reliabilities were high
(ICC(1) ⫽.67 and ICC(2) ⫽.94).
Analytical Strategy
The multilevel structural equation modeling approach (Preacher
et al., 2010,2011) was used in hypothesis testing. As in Study 1,
we operationalized RLMX and relative job performance by group-
mean centering LMX and job performance, respectively. The
variances of other variables were estimated at both the individual
and group level (Preacher et al., 2010,2011). All the relationships
were tested simultaneously via the “Two-level Random” function
in Mplus. Indirect effects were estimated via Monte Carlo boot-
strapping.
Results of Study 2
Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (MCFAs). We ran
MCFAs to test whether the scales in Study 2 were distinct from
each other. We used the same item parceling strategy as in Study
1. RLMX and relative job performance were treated at the indi-
vidual level, and being envied, received help from coworkers, and
coworker social undermining were considered at both the individ-
ual and group level. The model fit the data well (
2
(93) ⫽153.21,
p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.98, TLI ⫽.97, RMSEA ⫽.04, and SRMR ⫽
.03). We then tested two alternative models. In the first model, the
items for RLMX, proactive personality, and envy were specified to
load on the same factor (
2
(105) ⫽1317.94, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.53,
TLI ⫽.41, RMSEA ⫽.16, and SRMR ⫽.13). In the second
model, all the items were specified to load on one factor
(
2
(110) ⫽1638.04, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.41, TLI ⫽.29, RMSEA ⫽
.18, and SRMR ⫽.16). Results show that the measurement model
fit the data best.
Tests of hypotheses. Table 3 presents the means and standard
deviations of the Study 2 variables, and their correlations. The
unstandardized coefficients of the direct and indirect effects in the
serial mediation model are displayed in Table 4.Figure 3 presents
the unstandardized coefficients for hypothesis testing.
Hypothesis 1 was partially supported in Study 2, as the indirect
effect of proactive personality on being envied via RLMX (indirect
effect ⫽0.22, 90% CI ⫽[0.13, 0.32]; Table 4) was supported, but
the indirect effect via relative job performance was not significant.
Hypothesis 2 was supported, as the negative relationship between
envy and coworker help was significant (coefficient ⫽⫺0.05, p⬍
.05). Findings of Study 2 also supported Hypothesis 3 on the rela-
tionship between coworker envy and undermining (coefficient ⫽
0.22, p⬍.01).
Hypothesis 4 predicted a negative relationship of proactive
personality with coworker help via RLMX and relative job per-
formance, and then via envy. The indirect effect via RLMX and
being envied was significant (indirect effect ⫽⫺0.01, 90% CI ⫽
[⫺0.02, ⫺0.001]). The indirect effect via relative job performance
was not. Thus, Hypothesis 4 was partially supported.
Hypothesis 5 focused on the indirect effect of proactive person-
ality on coworker social undermining. The indirect effect was
positive and significant via RLMX and then being envied (indirect
effect ⫽0.05, 90% CI ⫽[0.02, 0.08]), but was not significant via
relative job performance and being envied. Thus, Hypothesis 5
was partially supported.
Study 3: Examination of the Moderated Serial
Mediation Model
Participants and Procedure
In Study 3, we invited 451 employees and their immediate
supervisors from 90 work groups in five for-profit organizations to
participate. Among those invited, 388 employees returned usable
questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 86%. Of the 388 em-
ployees from 88 groups in the final sample, 62% were female, and
84% had a bachelor or equivalent degree. Their average age was
32.45 years old.
Measures
All the items were rated on a response scale from 1 (strongly
disagree)to7(strongly agree) unless otherwise noted.
Proactive personality. Because of the limit of survey length
imposed by the participating organizations, we measured proactive
personality with a six-item scale adapted from Seibert et al. (1999)
(␣⫽.77). The items were selected based on our discussion with
HR managers. Short-version proactive personality scales have
been adopted previously (e.g., Parker, 1998). We used an inde-
pendent sample of 572 employees to validate the scale used in this
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations Among Study Variables (Study 2)
Mean SD 1 234 5
1. Proactive personality 5.17 0.99
2. RLMX 0.00 1.04 .28
ⴱⴱ
3. Relative job performance 0.00 0.81 .25
ⴱⴱ
.24
ⴱⴱ
4. Being envied by coworkers 3.74 1.68 .10 .45
ⴱⴱ
.08
5. Received help from coworkers 4.18 1.01 ⫺.10 ⫺.26
ⴱⴱ
⫺.14
ⴱ
⫺.21
ⴱⴱ
6. Coworker social undermining 2.42 1.59 ⫺.03 .26
ⴱⴱ
⫺.09 .31
ⴱⴱ
⫺.25
ⴱⴱ
Note.N⫽399⫺438. LMX ⫽leader-member exchange. Correlation results indicated the individual-level
relationships among variables
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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9
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PROACTIVE PERSONALITY?
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study. The correlation between this scale and the scale by Seibert
et al. (1999) was .91 (p⬍.001), providing preliminary evidence
that the scale used in this study is a valid measure of proactive
personality.
Leader-member exchange and job performance. We as-
sessed LMX (␣⫽.90) and job performance (␣⫽.94) with the
same instruments as in Studies 1 and 2.
Being envied. We measured being envied via the same ap-
proach as in Study 1 (Kim & Glomb, 2014). We calculated the
average of coworker reported envy toward the focal employee as
the indicator of being envied. The ICC values indicated that the
aggregation of data was appropriate (ICC(1) ⫽.11 and ICC(2) ⫽
.48).
Received help from coworkers. Following Study 1, we mea-
sured received help from coworkers with the mean of focal em-
ployee reported help received from all the other group members.
Values of ICCs warranted the aggregation (ICC(1) ⫽.38, and
ICC(2) ⫽.83).
Being socially undermined. We captured coworker social
undermining by the three items with the highest factor loadings
from the social undermining scale by Duffy et al. (2012) (␣⫽.86).
One sample item is “My coworkers insulted me.”
Prosocial motivation. Prosocial motivation was assessed
with the four-item scale by Grant’s (2008) (␣⫽.91). A sample
item is “I work because I care about benefiting others through my
work.”
Analytical Strategy
Because participants of Study 3 were from 88 groups, we used
the “Two-level Complex” function in Mplus to obtain robust
estimates. We group-mean centered LMX, job performance, and
prosocial motivation (Enders & Tofighi, 2007). We examined the
hypotheses using the MSEM approach (Preacher et al., 2010)in
two models. In Model 1, we tested the serial mediation model
(Hypotheses 1–5). In Model 2, we tested the moderated serial
Table 4
Summary of Results of Testing the Serial Mediation Model (Study 2)
Effect type Coefficient SE CI
Direct paths
Proactive personality ¡RLMX (first stage of H1a) 0.33
ⴱⴱ
0.08 [0.18, 0.48]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance (first stage of H1b) 0.23
ⴱⴱ
0.09 [0.06, 0.41]
RLMX ¡Being envied (second stage of H1a) 0.66
ⴱⴱ
0.06 [0.54, 0.78]
Relative job performance ¡Being envied (second stage of H1b) ⫺0.05 0.08 [⫺0.20, 0.11]
Proactive personality ¡Being envied ⫺0.04 0.10 [⫺0.23, 0.16]
Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H2) ⫺0.05
ⴱ
0.02 [⫺0.09, ⫺0.002]
Being envied ¡Being socially undermined (H3) 0.22
ⴱⴱ
0.05 [0.11, 0.32]
Proactive personality ¡Received help from coworkers ⫺0.01 0.04 [⫺0.09, 0.08]
Proactive personality ¡Being socially undermined ⫺0.11 0.10 [⫺0.30, 0.09]
Indirect effects
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied (H1a) 0.22 0.06 [0.13, 0.32]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance ¡Being envied (H1b) ⫺0.01 0.02 [⫺0.02, 0.04]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H4a) ⫺0.01 0.01 [⫺0.02, ⫺0.001]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H4b) 0.001 0.001 [⫺0.001, 0.003]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Being socially undermined (H5a) 0.05 0.02 [0.02, 0.08]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance ¡Being envied ¡Being socially undermined (H5b) ⫺0.002 0.004 [⫺0.01, 0.004]
Note.N⫽438 individuals. CI ⫽confidence interval; RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange. Confidence intervals were estimated via Monte Carlo
bootstrapping; 95% and 90% CIs were reported for direct and indirect effects, respectively.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
Figure 3. Results of testing the serial mediation model (Study 2). N⫽438 individuals. T1 ⫽Time 1; T2 ⫽
Time 2. Unstandardized path estimates are reported. The dashed lines indicate nonsignificant relationships.
Standard errors are presented in brackets. RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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mediation model (Hypotheses 6 –8). Indirect effects, moderated
mediation effects, and conditional indirect effects were estimated
with Monte Carlo bootstrapping (Preacher et al., 2010).
Results of Study 3
Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (MCFAs). We con-
ducted MCFAs to examine the distinctiveness of the measures
used in Study 3. A seven factor model (i.e., proactive personality,
RLMX, relative job performance, being envied, received help from
coworkers, being socially undermined, and prosocial motivation)
fit the data well (
2
(320) ⫽572.97, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.94, TLI ⫽
.93, RMSEA ⫽.05, and SRMR ⫽.04). This model fit the data
better than two alternative models: A model in which RLMX
and relative job performance items were loaded on one factor
(
2
(326) ⫽1618.58, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽.70, TLI ⫽.65, RMSEA ⫽
.10, and SRMR ⫽.11), and a one-factor model with all items
loaded on the same factor (
2
(342) ⫽3104.01, p⬍.001, CFI ⫽
.36, TLI ⫽.29, RMSEA ⫽.14, SRMR ⫽.16). Results show our
study variables represent different constructs.
Tests of hypotheses. Means, standard deviations, and corre-
lations for study variables appear in Table 5.Figure 4a presents
unstandardized path coefficients testing Hypothesis 1–5 (i.e.,
Model 1). Figure 4b shows the path coefficients for the moderated
serial mediation model. Indirect effects and conditional indirect
effects are displayed in Table 6.
We first tested Hypotheses 1–5 again. The indirect effects of
proactive personality on envy was significant via relative job
performance (indirect effect ⫽0.02, 90% CI ⫽[0.003, 0.03]), but
not via RLMX (indirect effect ⫽⫺0.01, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.02, 0.03]),
lending partial support for Hypothesis 1.
The results also supported Hypotheses 2 and 3 by showing a
significant relationship between being envied and coworker help
(coefficient ⫽⫺0.34, p⬍.01), and a significant positive relation-
ship between being envied and coworker undermining (coeffi-
cient ⫽0.10, p⬍.01).
Results partially supported Hypothesis 4 by showing a signifi-
cant indirect relationship of proactive personality with coworker
help via relative job performance and envy (indirect ef-
fect ⫽⫺0.005, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.008, ⫺0.001]), but the indirect
effect was not significant via RLMX (indirect effect ⫽0.002, 90%
CI ⫽[⫺0.01, 0.01]). The indirect relationship between proactive
personality and coworker undermining via relative job perfor-
mance and envy was significant (indirect effect ⫽0.001, 90%
CI ⫽[0.0002, 0.004]), while the indirect effect through RLMX
was not (indirect effect ⫽⫺0.001, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.003, 0.002]).
Hypothesis 5 was partially supported. The nonsignificant indirect
effects of proactive personality via RLMX may be partially ex-
plained by the moderating role of prosocial motivation, which was
the focus of Hypotheses 6 –8.
Results (Figure 4b) showed that the moderating effect was
significant on the relationship between relative job performance
and being envied (coefficient ⫽⫺0.10, p⬍.05), but not on the
relationship between RLMX and being envied (coeffi-
cient ⫽⫺0.07, p⫽.16). Simple slope analyses (see Figure 5)
show the relationship between relative job performance and envy
was positive and significant (simple slope ⫽0.29, p⬍.01) when
prosocial motivation was low (e.g., ⫺1SD below the mean), but
not significant (simple slope ⫽0.10, p⫽.21) when prosocial
motivation was high (e.g., 1 SD above the mean). Hypothesis 6
was partially supported.
Hypotheses 7 and 8 focus on the moderating role of prosocial
motivation in the serial mediation model. The moderated media-
tion effect of prosocial motivation on the indirect relationship
between proactive personality and received coworker help via
relative job performance and being envied was significant (mod-
erated mediation effect ⫽0.003, 90% CI ⫽[0.0004, 0.005]).
When prosocial motivation was high, the conditional indirect
effect was nonsignificant (⫽⫺0.003, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.01, 0.001]),
but when prosocial motivation was low, the indirect effect was
significant (⫽⫺0.007, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.011, ⫺0.002]). The mod-
erated mediation effect of prosocial motivation on the indirect
relationship from proactive personality to RLMX, envy, and then
to received coworker help was not significant (⫽0.01, 90% CI ⫽
[⫺0.002, 0.02]). Hypothesis 7 was partially supported.
The moderated mediation model predicted in Hypothesis 8 (i.e.,
proactive personality ¡relative job performance ⫻prosocial
motivation¡being envied ¡being socially undermined) was
significant (moderated mediation effect ⫽⫺0.0008, 90% CI ⫽
[⫺0.0013, ⫺0.0001]). When prosocial motivation was high, the
conditional indirect effect of proactive personality on coworker
undermining through relative job performance and being envied
was not significant (⫽0.001, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.0002, 0.003]). The
indirect effect (⫽0.002, 90% CI ⫽[0.0004, 0.01]) was only
significant when prosocial motivation was low. The moderated
mediation effect proposed in the indirect relationship through
RLMX (i.e., Proactive personality ¡RLMX ⫻Prosocial motiva-
Table 5
Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations Among Study Variables (Study 3)
Mean SD 123456
1. Proactive personality 5.14 0.67
2. RLMX 0.00 0.78 .27
ⴱⴱ
3. Relative job performance 0.00 0.61 .08
ⴱ
.01
4. Being envied 2.20 1.03 .10 .01 .19
ⴱⴱ
5. Received help from coworkers 3.85 1.17 .11 .24
ⴱⴱ
.03 ⫺.18
ⴱⴱ
6. Coworker social undermining 1.61 0.89 .00 ⫺.17
ⴱⴱ
⫺.08
ⴱ
.06
ⴱ
⫺.08
7. Prosocial motivation 4.71 1.10 .26
ⴱⴱ
.32
ⴱⴱ
.03 .06 .25
ⴱⴱ
⫺.05
Note.N⫽370⫺388. RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange. Correlation results indicated the individual-
level relationships among variables
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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11
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PROACTIVE PERSONALITY?
T5, F4
T6
F5
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tion¡Being envied ¡Being socially undermined) was not sig-
nificant (⫽⫺0.003, 90% CI ⫽[⫺0.01, 0.0004]). The results
partially supported Hypothesis 8.
General Discussion
Implications for Theory and Research
Drawing upon social comparison theory, the current research
examined coworker-related outcomes for employee proactive per-
sonality. The results of three field studies suggested that proactive
personality exerts a negative and indirect effect on received help
from coworkers. The findings also revealed positive and indirect
effects on coworker undermining. The indirect effects became
realized through sequential mediators: RLMX or relative job per-
formance, and then via being envied by coworkers. The indirect
effects (e.g., through relative job performance and then being
envied) were significant only when employee prosocial motivation
was low rather than high. Thus, the present research provided
further support to the notion that proactive personality is not
always beneficial, especially when coupled with low prosocial
motivation.
The primary contribution of this research lies in providing a
more balanced and nuanced understanding of the influences of
proactive personality in organizations. Prior research has primarily
shown that proactive personality is beneficial (Fuller & Marler,
2009;Tornau & Frese, 2013). Yet, examining the potential cost of
being a proactive person has been suggested by many scholars
(e.g., Bindl & Parker, 2010;Frese & Fay, 2001;Grant & Ashford,
2008), though with limited attention in empirical research. The
limited research on possible negative effects of proactive person-
ality has primarily focused on performance-related outcomes (e.g.,
Chan, 2006;Wihler et al., 2017; see Crant et al., 2016 for more)
and has only recently tapped into well-being outcomes (e.g., Fay &
Hüttges, 2017;Strauss et al., 2017). The present research builds
on, but diverges from, the prior research by focusing on coworker
affective and behavioral reactions (e.g., Bolino, Turnley, & An-
derson, 2017;Parker et al., 2019). The current investigation is in
alignment with the recent trend in organizational research looking
at negative outcomes of positive individual characteristics (e.g.,
Côté et al., 2011;Grant et al., 2011;Kim & Glomb, 2010) and
other constructs such as leadership (e.g., Li, Schaubroeck, Xie, &
Keller, 2018). The current investigation offers support for the
notion of paradox of traits (Judge et al., 2009) by suggesting that
paradoxical effects of personality traits also apply to proactive
personality. The findings that proactive personality have both
negative and positive effects is also consistent with previous
research showing that coworkers may show high levels of helping
and undermining toward the same employee to achieve their
distinct goals of connectedness and self-protection (Campbell,
Figure 4. Results of Study 3. N⫽388. Unstandardized coefficients are reported. Standard errors are presented
in brackets. Dashed lines indicate nonsignificant relationships. RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange.
Panel A: Replication of findings of Studies 1 and 2. Panel B: Results of testing moderating role of prosocial
motivation in the serial mediation model.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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12 SUN, LI, LI, LIDEN, LI, AND ZHANG
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Liao, Chuang, Zhou, & Dong, 2017;Duffy et al., 2002;Murray,
Derrick, Leder, & Holmes, 2008). Campbell et al. (2017) con-
cluded that “social relationships rarely lie on a continuum from
negative to positive but rather comprise of simultaneously helpful
and harmful experiences and interactions” (p. 848). Such findings
are also in keeping with research on triadic relationships among a
focal employee, coworker, and supervisor (Sherony & Green,
2002) and on harming high performers (e.g., Kim & Glomb, 2014),
such that under certain conditions, superior relationships with
supervisors may result in coworker undermining.
Our research also sheds light on important precursors and boundary
conditions for workplace envy. Proactive employees may become the
targets of upward social comparison, which in turn may breed co-
worker envy. This is because of their relatively superior standings on
LMX and job performance in the group. Organizational research has
primarily focused on consequences of envy and, thus, “relatively little
is known about the specific organizational antecedents that may elicit
organizational envy” (Duffy et al., 2008, p. 169). Investigating the
roles of proactive personality and prosocial motivation enhances our
understanding of what, how and when individual characteristics may
affect workplace envy and social comparison.
Furthermore, our results expand the knowledge on person-related
antecedents of RLMX. Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer, and Ferris
(2012) showed that compared with research on consequences, much
less attention has been devoted to the antecedents of LMX, let alone
RLMX. Results of the present research suggest that one’s relatively
stable tendency to initiate environmental change is an important factor
that may drive RLMX. LMX research has long recognized the sig-
nificance of subordinate characteristics in the development of differ-
entiated relationships with supervisor (Dienesch & Liden, 1986;
Graen & Scandura, 1987). In this vein, the present research provides
further support to this notion by showing the influence of an agentic
personality trait on RLMX.
Although results of this research generally support our hypotheses,
findings across the three studies were not always consistent. The
indirect effects of proactive personality on received help through both
RLMX and relative job performance and then coworker envy were
supported in Study 1. The results supported only the mediating path
Table 6
Summary of Results for Testing Indirect Effects, Moderated Mediation, and Conditional Indirect Effects (Study 3)
Effect type Coefficient SE CI
Direct paths (testing the serial mediation model)
Proactive personality ¡RLMX (first stage of H1a) 0.35
ⴱⴱ
0.08 [0.20, 0.49]
Proactive personality ¡Relative job performance (first stage of H1b) 0.08
ⴱ
0.04 [0.003, 0.15]
RLMX ¡Being envied (second stage of H1a) ⫺0.02 0.05 [⫺0.12, 0.09]
Relative job performance ¡Being envied (second stage of H1b) 0.19
ⴱⴱ
0.05 [0.09, 0.29]
Proactive personality ¡Being envied 0.09 0.07 [⫺0.05, 0.23]
Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H2) ⫺0.34
ⴱⴱ
0.09 [⫺0.51, ⫺0.17]
Being envied ¡Being undermined (H3) 0.10
ⴱⴱ
0.02 [0.06, 0.13]
Proactive personality ¡Received help from coworkers 0.12 0.14 [⫺0.16, 0.40]
Proactive personality ¡Being undermined 0.07 0.04 [⫺0.02, 0.15]
Indirect effects (testing the serial mediation model)
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied (H1a) ⫺0.01 0.02 [⫺0.02, 0.03]
Proactive personality ¡Relative performance ¡Being envied (H1b) 0.02 0.01 [0.003, 0.03]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H4a) 0.002 0.01 [⫺0.01, 0.01]
Proactive personality ¡Relative performance ¡Being envied ¡Received help (H4b) ⫺0.005 0.002 [⫺0.008, ⫺0.001]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Being undermined (H5a) ⫺0.001 0.002 [⫺0.003, 0.002]
Proactive personality ¡Relative performance ¡Being envied ¡Being undermined (H5b) 0.001 0.001 [0.0002, 0.004]
Moderated mediation and conditional indirect effects (Moderator: Prosocial motivation)
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Received help from coworkers (H7a) 0.01 0.01 [⫺0.002, 0.02]
Proactive personality ¡Relative performance ¡Being envied ¡Received help (H7b) 0.003 0.001 [0.0004, 0.005]
High prosocial motivation (1 SD): ⫺0.003 0.002 [⫺0.01, 0.001]
Low prosocial motivation (⫺1SD): ⫺0.007 0.003 [⫺0.011, ⫺0.002]
Proactive personality ¡RLMX ¡Being envied ¡Being socially undermined (H8a) ⫺0.003 0.002 [⫺0.01, 0.0004]
Proactive personality ¡Relative performance ¡Being envied ¡Being undermined (H8b) ⫺0.0008 0.001 [⫺0.0013, ⫺0.0001]
High prosocial motivation (1 SD) 0.001 0.001 [⫺0.0002, 0.003]
Low prosocial motivation (⫺1SD) 0.002 0.002 [0.0004, 0.01]
Note.N⫽388. CI ⫽confidence interval; RLMX ⫽relative leader-member exchange. Confidence intervals were estimated via Monte Carlo
bootstrapping; 95% and 90% CIs were reported for direct and indirect effects.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
Figure 5. Results of simple slope tests for the moderating effect of
prosocial motivation (Study 3). N⫽388.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
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13
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PROACTIVE PERSONALITY?
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through RLMX in Study 2. We suspect that there might be two
explanations. First, we assessed envy through a coworker-report scale
in Study 1, but a self-report scale in Study 2. Although self-report and
other-report envy are significantly correlated (Lee et al., 2018), they
may reflect different aspects of the social interactions between pro-
active employees and coworkers. As we found in Study 3, a second
explanation is that the relationship between relative job performance
and envy is moderated by prosocial motivation. Similarly, the rela-
tionship between RLMX and coworker envy was not significant in
Study 3. This might be because of differences in study contexts or
samples among the three studies, different measures of envy we used
or other moderators. For example, research has revealed that justice
climate moderates the relationship between RLMX and coworker
helping (Erdogan & Bauer, 2010). Future research could explore such
possibilities in greater depth.
Findings of this research raises a broader question on how to
reconcile the seemingly contrasting positive and negative effects of
proactive personality. Given that research on negative effects of
proactivity is still in its infancy (Belschak, Den Hartog, & Fay, 2010;
Fay & Hüttges, 2017;Strauss et al., 2017), we are not aware of any
research integrating both positive and negative effects of proactive
personality. As suggested by Cangiano and colleagues (2019) and Fay
and Hüttges (2017), proactivity fluctuates over time and positive and
negative effects may operate through distinct mechanisms and time-
scales. Thus, the net effect of proactivity may also fluctuate, contin-
gent on other factors, such as whether proactivity is expressed wisely
according to social and interpersonal contexts (Parker et al., 2019).
Our findings show that the potential negative effects of proactive
personality were contingent on prosocial motivation. The conditional
negative effects of proactive personality might be short lived and,
thus, may not necessarily translate into long-term detrimental effects
on career success (Pingel, Fay, & Urbach, 2019). Yet, our research
still provides a cautionary note for proactive employees to deal with
potential negative coworker reactions to sustain their proactivity. This
is consistent with research showing that proactivity needs to be
accompanied by adaptivity (Strauss, Griffin, Parker, & Mason, 2015),
and that employees need to manage their affects to sustain proactivity
(Bindl, 2019). Envy research has shown that the envied may provide
help to the envious (van de Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2010). Such
prosocial behaviors may be adopted as appeasement strategies
by proactive people (e.g., Belschak & Den Hartog, 2010).
Parker et al. (2019) recently put forth a novel construct, wise
proactivity, defined as “initiating goals to make ‘wise things
happen,’ and then pursuing these goals in a wise manner,
effectively managing the tensions across different interests that
arise” (p. 239). Future research could utilize wise proactivity as
a starting point in integrating the positive and negative effects
of proactivity.
Study Strengths, Limitations, and Directions for
Future Research
The current research has several strengths. We conducted three
studies in private sector organizations (Studies 1 and 3) and a
nonprofit organization (Study 2) to examine our theoretical model.
We collected data from multiple sources— employee, supervisor,
and coworker—across different time points. Such strengths point
to the robustness of our findings.
Nevertheless, the current research has its limitations, which suggest
directions for future studies. First, as with the majority of research on
proactive personality, LMX, and envy, this research was essentially
cross-sectional in nature. Recent research suggests that relationships
between proactivity or personality and work outcomes may be recip-
rocal (Li, Fay, Frese, Harms, & Gao, 2014;Li, Li, Fay, & Frese, 2019)
and, thus, longitudinal studies are needed to reveal more delicate
relationships related to proactive personality, and interactions between
proactive employees and coworkers. Second, following previous re-
search (e.g., Duffy et al., 2012), we studied envy as a unidimensional
construct. Recent theorizing suggests that envy may be manifested in
two forms—malicious envy and benign envy (van de Ven et al.,
2010). Future research may examine how proactivity and relative
standings play their roles in shaping the two different types of envy.
Third, we focused on contrast effects of upward social comparison,
building upon previous social comparison studies in organizational
contexts (e.g., Dineen et al., 2017;Schaubroeck & Lam, 2004).
Contract effects focus on differences with the better-off person, while
assimilation effects focus on similarities with the social comparison
target. Yet, a recent meta-analysis (Gerber, Wheeler, & Suls, 2018)
has found that contrast effects are dominant in social comparisons.
Future research may explore the conditions that can cultivate assim-
ilative reactions in organizational contexts.
Fourth, although social comparison may include both automatic
and motivated processes (Gilbert et al., 1995;Greenberg et al., 2007;
Suls, Martin, & Wheeler, 2002;Wood, 1989), we did not distinguish
between the two processes given our already complex moderated
serial mediation model. We encourage future research to explore
automatic versus controlled processes within the context of social
comparisons. Fifth, although our proposed mechanism through co-
worker envy was supported, it is possible that our examination of the
mediating mechanism is not exhaustive. For instance, coworkers may
react negatively to proactive employees’ change-oriented behaviors,
as suggested by research on system justification and resistance to
change (Kaltiainen, Lipponen, & Holtz, 2017;Kay, Jost, & Young,
2005;Sung et al., 2017).
3
Future research may scrutinize more alter-
native mechanisms and examine their relative importance. Sixth,
consistent with most of research on proactive personality (e.g., Fuller
& Marler, 2009;Tornau & Frese, 2013), the effect sizes recorded in
the current research were small in magnitude. Yet, this does not
necessarily mean that our findings have little practical significance
(Prentice & Miller, 1992), given the broad and long term influences of
proactivity on employee attitudes, behaviors, work characteristics,
and well-being (Crant et al., 2016). Future research should explore
suitable environments that may amplify and sustain the influences of
proactivity. Last, we conducted this research in China, characterized
by high power distance and collectivism. The nature of work is
influenced by country culture (e.g., Taylor, Li, Shi, & Borman, 2008).
Future research should examine the relationships in other cultural
settings.
Practical Implications
Our findings offer critical implications for organizations and em-
ployees to manage the costs of proactivity and differentiated treatment
by leaders. Specifically, our results serve as a cautionary note for
organizational selection, because the majority of the proactive per-
3
We are grateful to our anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
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14 SUN, LI, LI, LIDEN, LI, AND ZHANG
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sonality research has demonstrated its beneficial effects, which is
consistent with the tendency for organizations to select highly proac-
tive job candidates. Our findings introduce an intriguing dilemma
facing organizations. On the one hand, proactive people tend to
outperform those with lower levels of proactive personality. On the
other hand, however, proactive people may be envied by their co-
workers, because of their relatively high status in work groups, which
may then prompt coworkers to withdrawal prosocial behaviors and/or
enact aggressive behaviors. Thus, organizations need to balance the
benefits and costs associated with hiring proactive employees. For
example, ensuring that the uneven distributions of rewards and re-
sources are well justified may be one useful way to deal with such
situations (e.g., Erdogan & Bauer, 2010).
Our findings also have important implications for proactive em-
ployees to reap more benefits for their career development. Given the
negative effects of being proactive, proactive employees need to
better manage their interpersonal and social relationships with co-
workers, to avoid potential negative reactions enacted by envious
coworkers. Caring about coworkers’ welfare and engaging in proso-
cial behaviors may be helpful (Parrott, 2016). A recent study on
coworker envy (i.e., Lee & Duffy, 2019) suggests that instead of
socially undermining an envied employee, the envious may also seek
advice from the envied to learn how to improve their relative stand-
ings. Proactive employees may take this approach to achieve greater
career success and to sustain their proactivity in the long run.
Conclusion
The majority of the proactive personality research has portrayed
proactive personality as a positive personality trait that mostly brings
about benefits to employees and organizations. Providing a more
balanced view, the current study revealed that being proactive may
also result in negative coworker reactions through high relative stand-
ings in the group and coworker envy. Our results indicate the com-
plexity of proactive personality in the context of work groups. Future
research should integrate potential positive and negative effects of
proactive personality longitudianlly.
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Received January 14, 2019
Revision received February 1, 2020
Accepted February 23, 2020 䡲
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