Time pressure and proactive work behaviour: A week‐level study on intraindividual fluctuations and reciprocal relationships

Abstract

Recent research on proactive work behaviours (PWBs) pointed out that these behaviours can have negative consequences for the proactive individual. We add to this perspective by showing that PWBs may be a source of strain at work and result in elevated time pressure. Challenging the view of time pressure as a challenge stressor, we hypothesize that over the course of work weeks, time pressure will result in less (rather than more) PWB. We investigate these reciprocal effects as within‐person, week‐level fluctuations of time pressure and PWB based on experience sampling data (N = 52 participants, k = 274 observations). Over the course of three consecutive work weeks, results show a positive lagged effect of PWB in the first week on experiencing time pressure in the second week; in turn, time pressure in the second week had a negative lagged effect on PWB in the third week. Results further suggest that PWB is lowest in work weeks of low time pressure when following a week of high time pressure, indicating a conservation of resources interpretation of the results.Practitioner points Above and beyond the many positive effects of employees’ proactive work behaviour (PWB), organizations need to be aware that these behaviours can have costs for employees, for example, in increasing their experience of time pressure. Over consecutive work weeks, time pressure seems to impede rather than facilitate employees’ PWBs. When work weeks characterized by high time pressure were followed by work weeks of low time pressure, employees used the latter to ‘recharge their batteries’ instead of engaging in more PWB.