Proactive Personality, Employee Creativity, and Newcomer Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study

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Purpose To examine the relationship between proactive personality, employee creativity, and newcomer outcomes (i.e., career satisfaction and perceived insider status). Design/methodology/approach A survey was conducted using a 3-wave longitudinal design with 146 Hong Kong Chinese employees from various organizations. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses including the mediation effects. Findings Proactive personality was positively associated with employee creativity and employee creativity was positively associated with career satisfaction and perceived insider status. In addition, employee creativity fully mediated the relationships between proactive personality and career satisfaction and perceived insider status. Implications Based on self-reported responses, these data show that newcomers with a proactive personality shape their work environments in part through creative behavior, which in turn leads to feelings of career satisfaction and perceptions of being an organizational insider. Our study’s results also show that employee creativity is positively and significantly related to workers’ career satisfaction and perceived insider status, suggesting that employee creativity can improve employees’ attitudes toward their career and perceptions as valued and contributing organizational insiders. Future research may examine other possible variables that might mediate the relationship between proactive personality and individual outcomes. Originality/value One of the few studies that have examined the intervening mechanism by which proactive personality leads to employee outcomes and examined the effects of proactive personality on employee outcomes in Asian culture.