The Dark Side of Proactive Behavior: When Being Proactive May Hurt Oneself, Others, or the Organization

Proactive employees engage in anticipatory, self-directed, future-focused behavior that seeks to bring forth change in themselves or the work environment in a positive way (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000; Grant & Ashford, 2008; Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010). Thus, proactive behavior includes acts like modifying a job to t one’s skills and abilities, seeking feedback, taking charge, voicing concerns, preventing problems, selling issues, scanning the environment, and so forth. Over the past twenty years, researchers have developed dierent ways of conceptualizing and categorizing the various proactive behaviors that have been identied in the literature (e.g., Grant & Ashford, 2008; Parker & Collins, 2010; Tornau & Frese, 2013). In this chapter, we adopt the categorization scheme developed by Parker and Collins (2010), which suggests that there are three principal forms of proactive behavior: proactive work behavior, which includes taking charge, voice, individual innovation, and problem prevention; proactive personenvironment (PE) fit behavior, which includes feedback inquiry/monitoring, job change negotiation, and career initiative; and proactive strategic behavior, which includes strategic scanning and issue-selling credibility/willingness.