The Relationships between Workplace Uncertainty and Employee Proactivity

Abstract This chapter provides a review of the relationships between uncertainty and employee proactive behavior in organizations. The authors suggest that uncertainty deserves more attention because it influences employees’ proactivity in complex ways. The authors also discuss the implications of employee proactivity in influencing uncertainty and propose a feedback-loop model. Specifically, the feedback-loop model suggests that exogenous uncertainty impacts endogenous uncertainty and leads to an increase or reduction in the motivational states related to proactivity, thereby shaping employees’ engagement in proactive behavior. The feedback-loop model further suggests that proactive behavior can take two forms, opportunity-creating and problem-fixing, which have different implications for uncertainty. The authors argue that in the short run, opportunity-creating proactive behavior promotes endogenous uncertainty, whereas problem-fixing proactive behavior reduces endogenous uncertainty. In the long run, both two types of proactive behavior have the potential to reduce exogenous uncertainty.