1606: Toward Understanding Employees’ Pro-Social and Pro-Self Reactions to Coworkers’ Proactive Behavior (17780)

Building on social-learning and self-enhancement theories, we develop and test a dual-path model that explains when and why observing coworkers’ team-oriented proactive behavior can trigger positive (i.e., pro-social behavior) and negative (i.e., unethical pro-self behavior) employee responses. We tested our model in three studies, including a multi-wave, multi-source study using a round-robin design (Study 1), a pre-registered experience sampling study (Study 2), and a pre-registered scenario experiment (Study 3). Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that when employees witnessed their co-workers engaging in team-oriented proactive behaviors, they experienced heightened pro-team motivation and, subsequently showed more team-oriented and citizenship behaviors. However, observing coworkers’ team-oriented proactive behavior was also positively related to employees’ self-enhancement motive, which enhanced their unethical pro-self behavior. Moreover, these effects depended on observers’ identification with their teams. Specifically, as employees’ team identification increased, the positive impact of coworkers’ team-oriented proactive behavior on pro-team motive (self-enhancement motive) was strengthened (weakened). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this new, observer-oriented perspective to proactive behavior.

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