Abstract:
Proactive work behaviour is a key determinant of organisational success; however, there is a
lack of clarity regarding the personal consequences of employees who exert this behaviour –
particularly for more effortful types of proactive behaviours such as personal initiative.
Although the benefits of personal initiative are prevalent, employees who display personal
initiative may unintentionally cause harm to themselves. We aim to advance this field by
examining why and when personal initiative may influence employees’ experiences in the
home domain. We hypothesised that personal initiative would simultaneously lead to work-
family enrichment and work-family conflict, mediated by work engagement and emotional
exhaustion, respectively. We also tested perceptions of social support at work as a moderator
for the relationship of personal initiative with work engagement and emotional exhaustion.
We conducted a daily diary study assessing participants (N = 156) from a broad range of
industries in New Zealand across five working days to analyse whether personal initiative at
work may positively and negatively spillover to the home domain. Our results supported only
two of our hypotheses: personal initiative positively predicted work engagement, and
emotional exhaustion positively predicted work-family conflict (as well as negatively related
to work-family enrichment). Our findings suggest that personal initiative may not be as
detrimental to employee well-being as previously indicated, particularly when controlling for
age, gender, and the number of children at home.
