A Review and Prospects of Literature on Proactivity

Proactivity refers to the tendency of individuals to proactively promote the meaning of others and/or the environment, such as employees proactively proposing solutions, actively seeking job feedback, and actively innovating. Proactivity is very important for the development of employees and organizations. Since the domestic scholars Liu Mi and others and Hu Qing and others have reviewed the relevant research on employee’s proactive personality and proactive behavior in 2007 and 2011 respectively, other domestic scholars have published relevant employees in well-known journals at home and abroad. Dozens of proactive research are based on different theoretical perspectives. This paper firstly reviews the development of proactivity’s construction, measurement and research methods, then analyzes the formation and mechanism of proactivity based on two perspectives of personal characteristics and behavior process, and further proposes the direction and prospect of future research.