What Makes You Proactive Can Burn You Out: The Downside of Proactive Skill-Building

Abstract

It is generally assumed that proactivity at work is motivated by positive motivational states and has positive outcomes for employees. However, recent perspectives suggest a downside to proactive behavior, as it may be driven by negative emotions and experienced by employees as depleting. Building on self-determination and discrete emotions theories, we argue that perceived financial precarity starts a motivational chain that leads employees to proactively learn new skills out of fear, and that proactivity driven by precarity and fear creates feelings of burnout. We further argue that the effect of proactivity on burnout will be particularly strong for employees with high impression management motives. We test our hypotheses in a four-wave study of 1,315 employees at a large university in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees’ concerns about their finances were heightened and many felt the need to learn new skills. Theoretically, our findings shed light on both the antecedents and consequences of the downside of proactivity. Practically, our findings help to understand both how employees proactively adapt to financial precarity and how those proactive efforts are experienced as draining.