Making things happen : a model of proactive motivation

Being proactive is about making things happen, anticipating and preventing problems, and seizing opportunities. It involves self-initiated efforts to bring about change in the work environment and/or oneself to achieve a different future. The authors develop existing perspectives on this topic by identifying proactivity as a goal-driven process involving both the setting of a proactive goal (proactive goal generation) and striving to achieve that proactive goal (proactive goal striving). The authors identify a range of proactive goals that individuals can pursue in organizations. These vary on two dimensions: the future they aim to bring about (achieving a better personal fit within one’s work environment, improving the organization’s internal functioning, or enhancing the organization’s strategic fit with its environment) and whether the self or situation is being changed. The authors then identify “can do,” “reason to,” and “energized to” motivational states that prompt proactive goal generation and sustain goal striving. Can do motivation arises from perceptions of self-efficacy, control, and (low) cost. Reason to motivation relates to why someone is proactive, including reasons flowing from intrinsic, integrated, and identified motivation. Energized to motivation refers to activated positive affective states that prompt proactive goal processes. The authors suggest more distal antecedents, including individual differences (e.g., personality, values, knowledge and ability) as well as contextual variations in leadership, work design, and interpersonal climate, that influence the proactive motivational states and thereby boost or inhibit proactive goal processes. Finally, the authors summarize priorities for future researc

Human Resource Flexibility as a Mediating Variable Between High Performance Work Systems and Performance

Much of the human resource management literature has demonstrated the impact of high performance work systems (HPWS) on organizational performance. A new generation of studies is emerging in this literature that recommends the inclusion of mediating variables between HPWS and organizational performance. The increasing rate of dynamism in competitive environments suggests that measures of employee adaptability should be included as a mechanism that may explain the relevance of HPWS to firm competitiveness. On a sample of 226 Spanish firms, the study’s results confirm that HPWS influences performance through its impact on the firm’s human resource (HR) flexibility

Measuring Success in Family Businesses: The Concept of Configurational Fit

The problems associated with measuring success in small businesses are primarily caused by a lack of comparable data due to the ambiguity of success and by subjective biases. Success evaluation is dominated by the estimates of business owners, who tend to overestimate overall success and internal strengths. However, reliable success measurement instruments would be useful for small business owners/managers as well as small business policymakers. The main purposes of this article are to compare various measures of success, to explore the differences in their outcomes, and to analyze whether a model of success measurement using configurational fit can be used to overcome subjective biases. The study is based on a recent survey of 103 small family-owned businesses in the eastern Austrian border region. Our analysis of the data confirmed the existence of the measurement problems mentioned above. While some individual indicators show significant biases as well as effects due to company age, size and industry, the aggregated indicator based on the concept of configurational fit seems to be an appropriate means of overcoming most of these drawbacks.(author's abstract