Proactive personality and employee outcomes: The moderating role of team autonomy

We used self-determination theory to investigate the effects of proactive personality on employees’ work engagement and helping behavior, as well as the moderating role of team autonomy in this relationship. Two-wave data were collected from 75 sales teams (75 team leaders and 464 team members) from a large private company in South China. Multilevel path model analysis was used to test our hypotheses. The impact of proactive personality was amplified in teams with a higher level of team autonomy. Our findings not only provide empirical support for self-determination theory, but also contribute to the proactive personality literature by revealing the critical boundary condition of the effectiveness of proactive personality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.