Attraction of the like: How does coworker proactive behavior stimulate employees’ motivation and job performance?

In the current age, employees are expected to work proactively in workplaces where the organizational structure is flatter and knowledge updating becomes faster than ever. There is a growing consensus on the importance of proactive behaviors from both scholars and practitioners. Proactive behavior, defined as “an anticipatory action that employees take to impact themselves and/or their environments” is thought to be self-initiated, future-oriented and change-oriented. Evidence showed that employees’ proactive behavior is beneficial for both individual performance and organizational competitiveness. Existing research regarding the impacts of proactive behavior mainly focuses on effectiveness of employees’ own proactive behaviors, such as promoting their job satisfaction or organizational commitment. However, no one is an isolated island. In a team or an organizational environment, employees’ attitudes and behaviors will inevitably be affected by their coworkers. Accordingly, this study focused on coworker proactive behavior and discussed its effectiveness in stimulating employees’ job performance. Drawing upon social learning theory, we hypothesized employee autonomous motivation will mediate the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee job performance. We further assumed that whether an employee possesses highly proactive personality determines the odds that employees might be motivated by their proactive coworkers. These hypotheses were tested with a field sample of supervisor-employee dyads and an experimental study. For the field study, we conducted a three-wave research design and achieved 209 valid samples from employees and their supervisors in two high-tech enterprises based in Beijing and Hebei provinces. At Time 1, employees assessed their proactive personality and their coworkers’ proactive behavior, and provided their demographic information. At Time 2 (one month after Time 1), employees were asked to report their autonomous motivation. At Time 3 (two months after Time 1), supervisors provided performance evaluation of employees who engaged in the survey. For the experimental study, we recruited 86 full-time workers from a high-tech company located in Hebei province via its internal communication channel. These respondents were separated into two groups randomly, namely coworkers with high proactive behaviors (N = 74) and coworkers with low proactive behaviors (N = 76). First, respondents were asked to finish a measure of their proactive personality and report their demographics. Then, they were given a scenario, one of which depicted a situation where coworkers were proactive (or not proactive). Finally, after reading the scenario, respondents finished a manipulation check of coworker proactive behavior and reported the degree of their autonomous motivation. We applied confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis and mixed model via SPSS 23 and Mplus 7.4 to analyze the data. Empirical results supported our hypotheses and indicated the following: (1) Coworker proactive behavior had a significant positive effect on employee autonomous motivation; (2) Employee autonomous motivation played a mediating role in the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee job performance; (3) Employee proactive personality played a moderating role in the relationship between coworker proactive behavior and employee autonomous motivation, such that coworker proactive behavior was positively related employee autonomous motivation when employees’ proactive personality was high, while such relationship became negative when employees’ proactive personality was low. This study makes several theoretical and managerial implications. First, by investigating the effectiveness of coworker proactive behavior, this study offers a new insight in proactive behavior research by incorporating the influence of coworker into consideration. Second, by examining the mediating role of employee autonomous motivation, this study enhances our understanding of how coworker proactive behavior translates into employee job performance. Third, by exploring the contingent role of employee proactive personality, this study shows the boundary condition under which employees are more likely to be motivated by their proactive coworkers.