Dual-level Proactive Personality and ostracism

Abstract

Current literature remains largely mute regarding the effects of proactive personality on the dark side social behaviors, among which the undermining from peers is a typical one. This study fills in this gap by examining how an employee’s proactive personality influence his experienced ostracism from peers, and how such relationship is contingent on the whole team’s proactive personality. Further, we propose that team-member exchange (TMX) act as mediators in dual level relationships between proactive personality and ostracism/undermining, specifically, the effect of individual proactive personality on ostracism and the effect of team proactive personality on team undermining. Using data collected from service industry in China, we found that individual level TMX mediates the relationship between proactive personality and ostracism; team level TMX mediates the negative relationship between team proactive personality and team undermining; the positive effect of proactive personality on TMX and the negative effect of proactive personality on ostracism are both stronger under low team level proactive personality; the negative effect of TMX on ostracism is stronger under low level of team TMX.