Imagine you are running a marathon. You started at a nice, steady pace, but the speed just kept increasing. You must compete with the others in the race but they keep sprinting forward. And more and more people keep joining the race. Not only that, but things are now being thrown at you from all...

Proactivity is a type of goal-directed work behavior in which individuals actively take charge of situations to bring about future change in themselves or their organization. In this chapter, we draw on goal-regulation research to review conceptual and empirical evidence that elucidates some of...

Much research shows it is possible to design motivating work, which has positive consequences for individuals and their organizations. This article reviews research that adopts this motivational perspective on work design, and it emphasizes that it is important to continue to refine motivational...

Scholars have argued that different forms of proactive behaviors (e.g., career initiative, feedback seeking, and taking charge) all involve employees’ self-initiated and future-focused efforts to bring about change in a situation ( Parker et al., 2006 ). There are at least three important...