Stay hungry, stay foolish: A novel perspective on needs satisfaction and personal initiative

Abstract

In a workforce marked by telecommuting, decentralization, and automation, the need for employees to take personal initiative (PI) is greater than ever before. The model of proactive motivation suggests that people need to experience proactive motivational states to engage in PI. Self-determination theory suggests that people must have their needs satisfied to engage in PI. In this work, we combine these two perspectives by considering if sometimes needs thwarting can improve the relationship between proactive motivational states and PI. Analyses of multi-source and multi-wave data indicated that individuals with high “can do” proactive motivation in the form of self-efficacy took more PI when their need for competence was not met. Likewise, individuals with high “energized to” proactive motivation in the form of activated positive affect took more PI when their need for relatedness was not met. Further, PI mediated the relationships between individual proactive motivation states and individual promotability (which benefits the self) and OCB towards coworkers (which benefits others). This reinforces the important role of PI as a constituent of individuals' in-role and extra-role performance at a time of increasing flexibility and collaboration at work.