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Despite the widely held belief that a proactive workforce is necessary for
competitive advantage, research investigating how to assess and promote such
change is limited. Two potentially important precursors to proactivity include
flexible role orientation (FRO) and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE). These
concepts have been shown to have construct validity and to be distinct from
related dispositional variables, but their discriminant validity in terms of
outcome variables has not been demonstrated. In this article, I show that FRO
and RBSE are factorially distinct from outcomes commonly used in organis-
ational research (job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and job strain).
I also show that, as expected, the proactive motivation and traditional out-
come variables have different relationships with various predictor variables.
I outline the study implications, and suggest a broader research agenda on
proactive motivation.
________________
INTRODUCTION
It is widely agreed that a different type and level of contribution is expected
from employees within today's organisations (Mohrman & Cohen, 1995;
Lawler, 1992). To compete in a global market place, to satisfy demanding
customers, and to fully exploit the opportunities offered by flexible tech-
nologies, reliable performance of a fixed set of prescribed tasks is no longer
considered adequate. Instead it has been argued that a competitive advantage
will come from having flexible employees who are actively engaged in broad
open-ended and interdependent roles, for example, employees who pro-
actively use their knowledge and display personal initiative (Frese, Kring,
Soose, & Zempel, 1996), and who have interpersonal skills and work cooper-
atively (Parker, Mullarkey, & Jackson, 1994; Borman & Motowidlo, 1993).
In the words of one UK manager, employees are required who ``think on
their feet not with them'' (Tailby & Turnbull, 1987, p. 17).
One solution to the need for this type of workforce is to recruit employees
with the appropriate skills, attitudes, abilities, and personalities. However,
it is clear that many organisations do not have the opportunity to select
their workforce carefully from scratch, especially when there are pressures
for downsizing. An alternative strategy is to develop the existing workforce.
This principle of development is at the heart of the concept of the learn-
ing organisation (Handy, 1992), and is a core principle of practices such as
empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995) and high involvement (Lawler, 1992).
However, with a few exceptions (described later), there has been little
systematic research attention concerning how to promote proactive attitudes
and behaviours amongst the workforce. The concept of proactivity, for
example, has more often been considered as a stable personality trait (Bate-
man & Crant, 1993) than as an outcome. Most motivational research that
evaluates the effect of interventions such as learning programmes or work
redesign uses objective measures such as performance and absence or, even
more typically, attitudinal and affective reactions such as job satisfaction
and affective organisational commitment. For example, a BIDS search1 of
psychology and management articles over the last five years suggested that
there were 5,893 work or job-related articles on job satisfaction, organis-
ational commitment, and job strain. Not all of these articles can be assumed
to be studies in which these variables are treated as outcomes, but even if
________________
1
PSCYHlit records from 1995 to 2000 were searched. The first search was: [job satisfaction
or organiz(s)ational commitment or affective commitment or stress or job strain or mental
health] and [job or work]. The second search was: [proactivity or proactive behavior/our or
proactive motivation or flexible role orientation or role breadth self-efficacy or personal
initiative or taking charge behavior/our or spontaneous behavior/our] and [job or work].
this figure is halved, it still contrasts sharply with the 17 articles that con-
sidered proactivity-related concepts (of which there were approximately five
unpublished studies and six published articles that considered these vari-
ables as work outcomes). Many researchers clearly focus on outcomes such
as job strain, job satisfaction, and organisational commitment, and this
research remains important. However, there is value in including motiva-
tional variables that are explicitly designed to assess proactive and flexible
aspects.
One of the reasons for a lack of research attention to proactivity and
related concepts stems from the unavailability of appropriate measures that
are reliable, valid, easy to use, and responsive to change. Two questionnaire-
based indicators of proactive motivation have recently been developed:
flexible role orientations (FRO; Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997) and role
breadth self-efficacy (RBSE, Parker, 1998). These concepts have been shown
to be distinct from related personality variables, such as proactive person-
ality. However, there is no evidence that these concepts are distinguishable
from outcome measures traditionally used in organisational research. To
encourage researchers to consider the inclusion of more proactive concepts
in their research, it is important to establish whether these variables are
distinct from those that are most commonly used. My aim in this article is to
investigate the discriminant validity of the concepts by investigating whether
FRO and RBSE can be differentiated from attitudinal and affective reaction
variables frequently used in organisational research, that is, job satisfaction,
organisational commitment, and job strain. I go on to describe the concepts
of FRO and RBSE and why they differ from traditional outcome measures.
I then outline the approach used to investigate discriminant validity.
(job autonomy) would be associated with all of the outcome variables, one
predictor (job security) would be associated particularly with the traditional
outcome variables, and that another predictor (change receptiveness) would
be associated most strongly with the proactive motivation variables.
Research has shown strong links between job autonomy (employees'
degree of discretion in their work) and all of the outcome variables; that is,
job satisfaction (Black & Gregersen, 1997; Parker & Wall, 1998) job strain
(e.g. Karasek & Theorell, 1990), organisational commitment (Mathieu &
Zajac, 1990), FROs (Parker et al., 1997) and RBSE (Parker, 1998). Job
security, an employee's sense of power to be able to maintain desired
continuity in a threatened job situation (Greenhalgh & Rosenblatt, 1984),
has been shown to be a strong determinant of job mental health, job
satisfaction, and commitment (Ashford, Lee, & Bobko, 1989; Jacobson, 1991;
Roskies & Louis-Guerin, 1990). However, there is no reason to expect a
strong link between the proactive motivation concepts and job security.
Finally, it is reasonable to expect that change receptiveness, the degree to
which an individual welcomes and copes well with change within the work-
place, will be related to the proactive motivation concepts. Individuals who
feel comfortable with and open to change are also likely to have a more
proactive role orientation and higher RBSE. More satisfied and committed
employees are perhaps also expected to be more receptive to change,
although it is anticipated that these relationships will be weaker than the
associations between change receptiveness and the proactive motivation
variables.
Method
Participants and Sample. The sample was 650 employees and managers
from a UK manufacturing company (the sample used the third wave of data
from the company described in Parker, 1998; this earlier study drew on the
first and second wave). All staff were given the opportunity to complete a
confidential questionnaire during work time in group sessions facilitated by
the researchers. The response rate was 80%.
Outcome Measures. FRO was assessed in two ways. The first measure was
the production ownership scale developed and validated by Parker et al.
(1997; a = 0.94). Employees were asked to indicate the extent to which they
would feel personal concern for a range of problems that might occur in
their work area on a scale from 1 (to no extent) to 5 (to a large extent). There
were three categories of problem types: production goals (e.g. slow delivery
times), operational efficiencies (e.g. large amount of rework), and team
cohesion and coordination (e.g. no coordination of efforts). The second
measure of role orientation assessed the extent to which employees recognise
Bobko, 1989). Respondents indicated how certain they felt about aspects of
their future job and career (e.g. ``whether your job skills will be valued five
years from now?'') on a six-point response scale from 1 (very uncertain) to 6
(very certain).
Change receptiveness was assessed by four items (a = 0.71). Participants
indicated their extent of agreement with statements such as ``I am most
comfortable with a stable work environment in which things tend to stay the
same'' (reverse scored), and ``I like being in a work environment where there
is a lot of change occurring''.
Results
Factor Analyses. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the job
satisfaction, organisational commitment, job strain, RBSE, ownership, and
PIPK items using maximum likelihood extraction and oblimin rotation. The
case to item ratio was approximately 12, which exceeds the recommended
minimum ratio of five (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989) and means that factor
analysis was appropriate. Nine factors were extracted from the solution,
accounting for 56.3% of the variance in the items. However, this solution
had two factors with no items loadings greater than 0.40. I repeated the
factor analysis with a criterion of seven factors. The results of the seven
factor solution, which accounted for 54% of the variance in the items, are
shown in Table 1. The loadings approximated a simple structure; that is,
most items had high loadings on only one factor and each factor had some
items with high loadings and some items with low loadings. RBSE,
perceived importance of production knowledge, job strain, and organis-
ational commitment items all loaded on single discrete factors. Production
ownership loaded on two factors: one was the goal achievement and
operational inefficiency items, and the second factor was the team
coordination and cooperation items. Most job satisfaction items loaded
on a single factor, except for satisfaction with management and job security
(which loaded on the organisational commitment factor) and satisfaction
with salary (which had no high loadings on any factor). It is interesting to
note that this factor analysis did not suggest it was necessary to distinguish
between the anxiety±contentment and depression±enthusiasm subscales of
job strain (Warr, 1990), nor the intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of job
satisfaction.
F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7
F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7
a
Loadings less than .3 are not shown. indicates item is reverse-scored.
TABLE 2
Pattern Matrix Factor Loadings for Second-order Factor Analysis of Scales Using
Maximum Likelihood Extraction and Oblimin Rotation
Factor 1 Factor 2
459
**P5.01, * P5.01
460 PARKER
Results of the factor analysis of items show that the concepts of RBSE
and role orientation are distinct from each other and distinct from the other
outcome measures. A second-order factor analysis using the scales as
variables was then conducted to determine whether there was a higher order
structure. Two factors were extracted, accounting for 46% of scale variance
(see Table 2 for the loadings). The proactive motivation scales factored on a
single factor, and the other outcome variables factored on the second factor.
There was a small positive loading of organisational commitment on the
first factor suggesting some shared variance between this concept and the
proactive motivation outcomes. This second-order factor analysis supports
the idea that proactive motivation variables can be differentiated from those
outcomes traditionally used in organisational research.
Consistent with the second-order factor analysis, inspection of the cor-
relations between the scales derived from the factor analysis2 (see Table 3)
showed that proactive motivation variables had moderate to high inter-
correlations with each other, as did the traditional outcome variables, but
the correlations between the proactive motivation concepts and the tradi-
ional outcome variables were low to moderate. Job satisfaction had small
positive associations with perceived importance of production knowledge,
RBSE, goal ownership and team ownership; organisational commitment
had small positive associations with these variables; and job strain had a
small positive association with team ownership, but nonsignificant associ-
ations with the other proactive motivation variables.
________________
2
These scales were the same as described in the method, except I created a separate scale for
team ownership (team ownership items) and goal ownership scale (goal and operational
ownership items), and I excluded the three items from the job satisfaction scale that loaded on
other factors.
the other variables in the structural equation model. The same pattern of
results was obtained, with the only exception being that job autonomy no longer
had a significant link with perceived importance of production knowledge.
carrying out interpersonal skills central to team working), the concepts are
operationalised at the individual level. If team proactivity is the outcome of
interest (e.g. Tesluk & Mathieu, 1999), then it could make more sense to
compare teams' mean levels, and variations, on the proactive motivation
variables. For example, teams that have a moderate but homogenous level
of aggregated RBSE could differ from teams that have a moderate level of
aggregated RBSE but much heterogeneity.
A second way the concepts could be developed for teams is to assess
employees' perceptions of their team's RBSE and orientation. For example,
rather than asking employees how confident they feel about making
suggestions to management, employees could be asked how capable they
feel their team is in these respects. This approach would be similar to that
used to assess ``collective self-efficacy'' (e.g. Jex & Gudanowski, 1992), but
it would be a more specific approach. The latter concept usually focuses
on employees' perceptions about the general performance capability of the
team (e.g. ``The department I work for has above average ability'', Jex &
Gudanowski, 1992).
The proactive motivation concepts can also potentially be applied to
other domains. For example, the author and colleagues are currently
developing these variables in relation to safety (a proactive orientation
towards safety); and in today's increasingly uncertain world, one could also
see the value of developing a flexible career orientation.
A further research need relates to the question posed at the outset of
this paper concerning how flexible and proactive attitudes and behaviours
can be facilitated. Existing research has pointed to the importance of job
autonomy (e.g. Parker et al., 1997), job complexity (e.g. Speier & Frese,
1997) and, in the case of RBSE, high quality communication (Parker, 1998).
It is important to investigate these interventions further. For example, job
redesigns that enhance job autonomy also often involve other supporting
changes, such as participative goal setting, clearer feedback, a coaching style
of supervision, and skill-based payment systems. Job autonomy without
these supportive changes could be worse than no change in autonomy, or it
might be ineffective. Moreover, where employees have had long-term sim-
plified jobs, and hence are likely to have become passive as a result, preparatory
interventions that help employees to take advantage of the autonomy afforded
to them might be needed. In a recent study, we found that job autonomy
predicted RBSE for very proactive employees, but was a weaker predictor
for passive employees, especially in situations of high demand (Parker &
Sprigg, 1999). We concluded from this finding that employees who are
passive could be trained or coached to deal more effectively with common
job demands as a precursor to job design interventions.
A further potentially important facilitator of proactive motivation is
transformational leadership. Transformational leaders are leaders who
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