When Leaders Act as Role Models of Proactive Behavior

While proactive work behavior is proposed to be valuable to organizations as it can improve performance and decision making, our understanding of the range of consequences of proactivity and their contingencies is still limited. Here we explore when proactive behavior is contagious and relates to proactivity of observers. We take a role modeling perspective and investigate when leaders form role models for their followers when showing proactive behavior at work. In particular, we test the role of proactive motivational states (“reason to,” that is outcome expectations/expectancies, “can do,” that is self-efficacy expectations, and “energized to,” that is positive affect) as moderators of the leader proactivity—follower proactivity relationship. Results from two multi-source field studies among Dutch employees from a wide range of industries and professional
backgrounds support the idea that leaders form role models of proactive behavior for their followers and suggest that followers’ positive affect and self-efficacy act as moderators of the relationship between leader and follower proactive behavior. While positive affect strengthens the relationship between leader and follower proactivity, self-efficacy acts as a substitute for leadership as role modeling is only found for followers low on self-efficacy. With regard to expectancies, role modeling effects of leader proactivity only occurred when both expectancies and positive affect were high (three-way interaction).