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Proactive behaviour
In what way does supportive leadership influence the perception of personal
initiative, moderated by trust between employees?
Marloes van der Zande 10188118 Thesis seminar Business Studies Supervisor: Renske van Geffen Academic year: 2014-2015 Semester 2, block 3 Amsterdam, 29 Jun. 15
2 This document is written by Student Marloes van der Zande who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is
original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of
3 Abstract
A lot of research has been conducted on proactive behaviour. In the competitive environment of the modern day, firms need to do more to hold their positions. Proactive behaviour of employees can be a helpful tool to aid this. Proactive behaviour consists of 4 components. In this study the focus will be on personal initiative. This can be stimulated by managers. While the effects of some leadership styles have been researched, others styles have not got any attention yet. In this study, a deeper look will be taken into supportive leadership and if it has a positive influence on personal initiative. Results confirm that supportive leadership does have a positive effect on personal initiative and that it is moderated by trust. These results may be helpful for managers who are struggling to make their employees behave proactive.
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Table of Content
1.Introduction 5 2. Literature review 8 2.1 Personal initiative 8 2.2 Supportive leadership 10 2.3 Trust 11 2.4 Conclusion 13 3. Methodology 14 3.1 Design 14 3.2 Sample 16 3.3 Data collection 17 3.4 Measurements 18 4. Results 19 4.1 Descriptive statics 19 4.2 Correlation 21 4.3 Regression 21 5. Discussion 23 5.1 Summary results 235.2 Reliability, validity & generalisability 25
5.3 Limitations of the survey 26
5.3 Practical implications 26
5.4 Managerial implications 27
5.5 Recommendations for further research 27
6. Conclusion 29
7. Bibliography 30
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1. Introduction
“Think of something you want to achieve that is really important to you.
Now imagine having achieved it. You’re basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? What does it feel like? How do you feel?
The ONLY way in which you will experience the joy, beauty, and fulfilment that will come by achieving this goal is if you use your personal initiative. It won’t happen without it” ( Smith, 2010).
Todd Smith wrote a book about personal initiative; while he focuses on personal initiative in your private life, personal initiative at work is getting more attention. Companies need to change their way of doing business to keep up with the competition. The working environment is changing and accordingly, a change expected from employees. As work becomes more dynamic and decentralized, proactive behaviour and personal initiative become even more critical determinants of organizational success (Crant, 2000). People do not go to work to wait for their boss to tell them what to do. Companies expect employees to work independently and give them more freedom without continuous supervision. However, this is not the end, we expect more and more from employees nowadays. Simply conducting your job well is not enough anymore. Organizations want employees to behave proactively.
It has had a lot of attention in recent years but still there is not a clear definition of the meaning of proactive behaviour. Crant came up with a definition that captures the most important antecedents named earlier by the other researchers in his article ‘Proactive behaviour in organizations’ (2000). The definition that Crant came up with will be used in this thesis as well:
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“Proactive behaviour is taking initiative in improving current circumstances or creating new ones; it involves challenging the status quo rather than passively adapting to present conditions.” (Crant, 2000)
A lot of research has been done on proactive behaviour since companies have acknowledged this can help them to perform better. There are two antecedents of proactive behaviour; personality and work environment (Parket et al., 2006). In this study the focus will be on work environment influences, which includes job autonomy, management support and organizational culture. Management support will be discussed in this study. Leadership styles that have been discussed in combination with proactive behaviour are usually charismatic or transformational leadership. Supportive leadership in combination with proactive behaviour has not received much attention. It is however suggested that the support and safety of a system are important determinants of innovation and that the most important factor of support is the supervisor (West, 1990; Amabile et al., 1996). However, previous research (Frese, Teng & Wijnen, 1999; Parket et al., 2006) testing the influence of supportive leadership on proactivity has not confirmed the theories. They did recommend further research since there were signs of a relationship between supportive leadership and proactive behaviour. This study tries to build on previous studies, which will be done using the following research question:
In what way does supportive leadership influence the perception of proactive behaviour,
moderated by trust between employees?
To find an answer to this research question, a dyad study will be done among Dutch-speaking employees. This study hopes to provide some additional insight into personal initiative. Moreover, this study hopes to find a relationship between personal initiative and supportive leadership.
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This paper will follow up with a literature review, discussing the existing literature and leading to the hypotheses to test the research question. Accordingly, the methodology and research design will be explained. Finally, this paper will end with the results from the study and is naturally followed by a discussion of the results and a short conclusion.
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2. Literature review
This section discusses the research that has been conducted into proactive behaviour, supportive leadership and trust in order to more precisely define the research topic. First, these three parts will be discussed separately followed by a conclusion that will touch on all three of them.
2.1 Proactive behaviour
As covered in the previous section, the definition of Proactive behaviour is “taking initiative in improving current circumstances or creating new ones; it involves challenging the status quo rather than passively adapting to present conditions” (Crant, 2000, p. 346).
Proactive employees do more than is required from them. Despite the shared emphasis on active rather than passive behaviour at work, there is yet to be agreed on what the best way is to measure and conceptualize proactivity (Crant, 2000). Some researchers, such as Bateman & Crant and Frese et al., focused their research on the personalities of people and how this can affect proactivity (1993; 1997). These can be divided into four constructs that take a general approach towards the conceptualization and measurement of proactive behaviour. The four constructs are proactive personality, personal initiative, role breadth self-efficacy, and taking charge. Proactive personality entails that the person is relatively unconstrained by situational forces and they affect environmental change (Bateman & Crant, 1993). According to Parker (1998), role breadth- self-efficacy refers to employees' perceived capability to carry out a broader and more proactive set of tasks; tasks that extend beyond the requirements. “Taking charge involves voluntary and productive efforts to affect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, unlike other forms of extra role behaviour taking charge focuses on change and improvement” (Morrison & Phelps, 1999, p. 403). In this paper the focus will be on personal initiative as this is growing rapidly in importance in today’s working environment. Companies are interested in personal initiative because it increases the overall performance. New management forms are introduced which
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consist of less supervision (Frese et al., 1997). Since personal initiative is seen as one of the most important factors of performance, companies have an interest in how they can optimize this.
“Personal initiative is a behavioural pattern whereby individuals take an active, self-starting approach to work and go beyond formal job requirements” (Frese et al., 1997, p.140). Personal initiative consists of 3 aspects: proactivity, persistence and self-starting (Frese & Fray, 2001). Proactivity means that people have a long-term focus and take action before problems occur. They anticipate the situation and react accordingly. When people take initiative, it often means something will change. People tend to be afraid of change, therefore a person taking initiative needs to be persistent, thus overcoming other people’s resistance against the change. Lastly, self-starting means that people do something without waiting for instructions, they see what needs to be done without little to no guidance. Employees that take personal initiative have some common characteristics; such as that most of them are very energetic. They are not the managers with a lot of power, instead they are the employees who are actually not interested in having power. The employees are adaptable, think logical, and want to solve problems. While they are loyal to their organization, they do have the courage to question that status quo (Frohman, 1997).
Frese and Fray have done a lot of research about personal initiative. They have focused on what personal initiative exactly means, if it affects performance, and why it is important. As good as no research has been conducted into the relationship between personal initiative and leadership. Personal initiative can be affected not only by personal factors but also by environmental factors such as leadership. This study will look at supportive leadership to test if this has an influence on personal initiative. Because companies want to maximize personal initiative from employees, it is important to test which kind of leadership realises this goal most successfully.
10 2.2 Supportive leadership
While all leaders in Frohman’s research argue that they value proactive behaviour, it does not show in their behaviour (1997). Leaders set rules, high bureaucracy, and a lot of procedures that prevent employees from taking initiative. Leaders need to make a change in their style to promote personal initiative. There is no ultimate definition of leadership but the majority of definitions reflect some basic elements, including “group”, “influence” and “goal” (Bryman, 1992; Yukl, 2002). The definition of leadership that will be used in this study is:
“Leadership is defined in terms of a process of social influence whereby a leader steers members of a group towards a goal” (Bryman, 1992, p.276).
Leadership has been an interesting topic for research, especially transformational and transactional leadership have been popular topics leading to an incredible amount of research. These leaderships have also been discussed in combination with proactive behaviour. In this study however, the focus will be on supportive leadership because there has not been a lot of research conducted into this kind of supportive leadership, especially in combination with proactive behaviour. This is remarkable since it is suggested that supportiveness has a positive influence on innovative and proactive behaviour (West, 1990). Since companies want to maximize personal initiative, supportive leadership might be a good leadership style to encourage employees to do exactly that, take initiative. “Supportive leadership is defined as helping facilitate goal accomplishment by guiding subordinates to be effective and learn in their roles” (Banai & Reisel, 2007, p. 466).
Leadership is affected by the cultural expectations from employees, which differs in various organizations and countries. This study focuses on the Netherlands, which can be seen as an individualistic country according to Hofstede (2001). Individualistic countries focus more on personal growth and autonomy, which can be linked to supportive leadership (Banai &
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Reisel, 2007). Supportive leaders help employees to not only succeed, but overachieve at their place of employment. This suggests that supportive leaders give employees the breathing room they need to come up with their own ideas for improvements for example; thus being proactive. A supportive leader is like a football coach; he or she helps you improve yourself and guides you, instead of enforcing strict rules. A supportive leader encourages the empowerment and development of his employees (Schyns et al., 2009). This leads to hypothesis 1: supportive
leadership has a positive effect on personal initiative.
To encourage this development of employees it is important that managers create a trusted work environment. Moreover, when the level of supportive leadership in an organization is high, this has a positive influence on job satisfaction, and people who are satisfied are usually more committed (Schyns et al., 2009).
Supportive leadership has only been studied in combination with proactive behaviour a few times (Frese, Teng & Wijnen, 1999; Parker et al., 2006). The results of these studies differed about the effect of supportive leadership on proactive behaviour. This may be caused by the different definitions used for supportive leadership and the use of different research techniques. Manz and Sims have showed that supportive leadership can lead to employees being aware of their own performance and can therefore aid employees in improving themselves (1987). However, others argued that if managers support employees, this might encourage passivity (Parker et al., 2006). Still, managers do have a huge influence on the work environment and the employees’ overall performance. Supportive leaders need to create a work environment where there is trust to encourage employees to improve themselves.
2.3 Trust
In every organization people need to work together. This means that people depend on one another to achieve their own goals and they need to have the feeling that others will help them
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if needed (Mayer et al., 1995). Trust plays a crucial role in this. Trust results in higher levels of cooperation and better team performance (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001). Yet while everyone is using trust there is no coherence about the definition of trust and not many people have tried to come up with one. Mayer et al. are a few of the researchers who took a look at the definition and importance of trust (1995). Trust comes back at almost all disciplines such as communication, leadership, and negotiation. The definition they came up with tries to cover all parts of trust and is the one that will be used in this study as well: “Trust is the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” ( Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712).
Trust is a factor that can have a lot of influence on other aspects. In organizations it predicts innovative behaviour from employees (Baer & Frese, 2003). When employees feel trust from their colleagues, they are more likely to take risks, since they have the feeling they can make mistakes. It also results in positive attitudes though, namely more cooperation and effectiveness (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001). Accordingly, it can be concluded that trust has a positive effect on the performance of organizations. When people feel safe in their working environment they have more confidence in speaking up and taking risks. Employees need to feel confident enough to take initiative and know it is okay to make mistakes (Costigan et al., 1998). Therefore it is important that employees feel trust in order to take initiative. People in leadership roles have a big influence on this, they need to make sure their employees feel comfortable in the organization. Employees need to trust each other so a supervisor can help them to step out of their comfort zone and take initiative. For this reason, hypothesis 2 is: trust positively
13 2.4 Conclusion
There is a lot of knowledge about personal initiative, supportive leadership and trust. However, little is known about if and in which way they influence each other. There has been one research project that studied proactive behaviour and the factors that influence it. Parker et al. did a study that took a look at supportive leadership and trust as well (2006). They found a positive relationship between trust and proactive behaviour but not between supportive leadership and proactive behaviour. Parker et al. only conducted brief research as they studied many factors influencing proactive behaviour. They did not focus on one antecedent of proactive behaviour but instead looked at the overall picture. They recommend further research into the relationship between supportive leadership and proactive behaviour. There could be a difference between the relationship of different antecedents of proactive behaviour and supportive leadership. In this study supportive leadership will be looked at together with personal initiative.
The goal is to find out if trust strengthens the effect of supportive leadership on the perception of personal initiative. This will be done by testing the hypotheses mentioned above. In the next section it will be explained in what way these hypotheses will be tested.
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3. Methodology
The previous sections explained the importance of this topic and the research question. The methodology will be discussed in this section. First, the research design will be discussed. Then the sample, and the data collection. Last, the measures will be discussed.
3.1 Design
To test the hypotheses proposed in the conceptual framework, a survey, or more specifically a questionnaire-based survey, is used. As this study uses existing literature to formulate the research question and hypotheses to formulate a framework to help the analysis, this study uses a deductive approach (Saunders et al., 2012). A proper research method associated with a deductive study is the use of a survey.
For this research, a dyad survey is used in order to collect the data used to test the hypotheses. A survey was chosen as the approach since it allows the collection of standardised data from a sizeable population in an efficient way, allowing easy comparison (Saunders et al., 2012,). In addition, a survey strategy is useful to check for possible reasons why a relationship between variables exists (Saunders et al., 2012,). This is important since the hypotheses are used to find out if and in what way the variables influence each other. In order to test this, quite a large sample of people with different characteristics is needed to provide reliable results, a survey makes it easier to reach a lot of people in a quick and affordable way (Saunders et al., 2012,). Moreover, a survey is useful for standardising the questions so that every respondent gets the same questions. This is done in order to compare the answers of different respondents in a statistical setting and to make sure these comparisons are reliable and as unbiased as possible ( Saunders et al., 2012).
“A dyad study investigates what two actors in a dyad have in common or opinions they share about a topic. In dyad analysis, the dyad respondents to related questions based on the
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their relationship with each other”(Watnee & Brennan, 2012, p.2). One of the only investigations that has used some form of dyad study is the one from Ohly & Fritz (2007). They asked co-workers to give their opinion about different work motivations and the influence on personal initiative. Since dyad studies are not very common in research yet, it is interesting to compare the answers to different studies. It is not objective when you only take a look at what people say about themselves, it is instead more interesting to find out if what people say about themselves is confirmed by others. This also ensures more reliability.
There are some limitations to this research design. First of all, there is a limit to the number of questions that any questionnaire can contain to prevent people from quitting halfway through it (Saunders at al., 2012,). We will try to keep the questionnaire as short as possible and I hope to gain some goodwill when mentioning that the survey is for my thesis. Another limitation is the fact you can only make your survey once so it has to be done properly. You cannot change the questions as is theoretically possible in a qualitative study when some questions are not achieving the results you are seeking for (Saunders et al., 2012,). Therefore, it is important to take a careful look at the questions. Since some of the survey questions from previous studies will be used, the chances of un-useful questions will be reduced. Lastly, using a dyad study asks respondents to involve another person to answer some questions about them. In this specific survey, respondents are asked to involve a colleague, this can cause rejection from respondents because it is possible they do not feel comfortable asking a colleague.
The questions are about trust, supportive leadership and personal initiative. The questions about trust are about co-worker trust; do employees trust their colleagues? The questions about supportive leadership focus on the way employees feel their supervisor supports them. Personal initiative is about employees themselves, if and how often they take initiative. The colleague gets questions only about personal initiative, their questions are about the amount of initiative the employee takes.
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The survey will be self-completed questionnaires. This means that they are completed by the respondents themselves and they will sent them back after completion (Saunders et al., 2012,). The questionnaires will be Internet-mediated, since this saves time and costs (Saunders et al., 2012). Another advantage of Internet-mediated is that the respondents will not see the interviewer, which reduces participant bias.
3.2 Sample
Since the aim of this study is to find out if supportive leadership and trust between employees have a positive effect on personal initiative, it is important to know the opinions of employees. Therefore this study will focus on employed people in organizations. Since we will ask the respondents to send the questionnaires to a colleague to fill in some questions about them, it is important that the respondents have colleagues that can do this. Because the survey will be spread by 5 different people it is easier to reach multiple and various sectors. This is good for the overall generalisability because proactivity might differ in different sectors as taking initiative might be easier in some sectors than others. The age of the participants needs to be recorded because it is possible that this influences the rate of proactivity. Young people who have less experience might act differently than older people with more work experience. The last variable which might influence the results is gender; men reported higher on entrepreneurial intentions than women did, which is a direct cause of the proactive personality scale according to Crant (1996). It can therefore be expected that men take more personal initiative than women do.
To make sure the results are reliable, we will try to include at least 80 people, preferably half men and half women. According to Saunders et al. (2012) you need at least a respondent rate of 30 people to make sure results will be normally distributed.
17 3.3 Data collection
As has been mentioned in previous sections, we will use a self-completed questionnaire which will be provided by the internet. The website www.qualtrics.com is used to develop the questionnaire because it provides a lot of options for different types of questions and is easy to use for respondents. The questionnaire will be sent out by email as this is the easiest way to reach a large geographical area. There is however a limitation in the collection of data through the Internet, as the Internet can lead to a systematic bias because people can choose whether they want to participate or ignore the invitation (Wright, 2005).
The questionnaire will be sent to people from my personal network and my parents’ personal network, hoping to get respondents from different ages. The questionnaire will not only contain questions used for this study but also for the studies of 4 others. The questionnaire consists of questions we all need for our studies. Spreading the questionnaire with 5 people can be helpful to reach more respondents. A disadvantage is that the questionnaire will be longer which can influence the willingness to participate. The questionnaire will be spread by the use of convenience sampling, which is a form of haphazard sampling (Saunders et al., 2012). This is used since it is the easiest way to reach a lot of people. Systematic bias can occur since people can decide themselves whether or not they wish to fill in the questionnaire.
The questionnaire will be written in Dutch since the questionnaire will only be sent to people living in the Netherlands. The questionnaire will be accompanied by a cover letter that explains the purpose of the study. This usually affects the response rate (Saunders et al., 2012 p. 446). A careful look will be taken at the layout of the questionnaire and there will be a closing letter at the end of the survey. All of this is done to increase the response rate and to confirm the anonymity of the respondents (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 449).
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Unfortunately, because of time constraints, the questionnaire will not be pilot tested. The advantage of pilot testing is that it can be used to check for validity and reliability (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 451). It also helps to make sure respondents will not have any problems answering the questions. Because the questions from the questionnaire have been used in earlier studies, the expectation is that these problems will not arise.
3.4 Measures
The questionnaire starts with an open question to come up with a code word so it is possible to match the surveys from the employee and their colleague. Next, the questionnaire consists of general questions about the respondent such as gender, age, and the sector they work in. All other questions will be closed. A seven-point likert scale will be used, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), which is the most frequently used rating question form (Saunders et al., 2012). The respondent is asked to fill in how strongly they agree or disagree with a statement. An odd number of points is chosen so respondents can always choose a neutral answer.
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4. Results
In this part, the results will be discussed. First, descriptive statistics of the sample will be discussed followed by a reliability analysis with the use of Cronbach’s alpha. Subsequently, the correlations will be shown and then a regression model will be created to test the hypotheses.
4.1 Descriptive statics
This section will provide some general characteristics of the respondents and a description of the data that was collected. The questionnaire was filled in by 115 employees. 101 have finished the questionnaire, which is a percentage of 88.87. A total of 82 colleagues completed the survey. This is a percentage of 94. Some respondents used the same code word which made it hard to combine the questionnaires. It was tried with the use of the sector they work in but this was not possible for all of them. Some employees and colleagues filled in the same questionnaires, accordingly they needed to be removed. A few questionnaires could not be linked to one another because some questionnaires were only filled in by the employee and not by a colleague. These questionnaires were useless and needed to be removed. Removing all the useless questionnaires left us with 73 matched and useful questionnaires. The finale sample (N=73) consisted of 37 (50.7%) women and 36 (49.3%) men. This is a good replication of the Dutch population, as there is an estimated spread of 50.5% women and 49.5% men in the Netherlands (CBS, 2014).The sample contains a large portion (64.4%) of respondents aged between 20 and 30 years old. This is not as comparable to the Dutch population since the Dutch population has a much more varied and equal spread (CBS, 2014). This is probably due to convenience choices by the students conducting the survey. The level of education of the respondents is fairly high; the percentage of respondents with an HBO or university degree are respectively 31.5% and 54.8%. The Dutch population consists largely of people with a MBO degree. This difference
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can be explained due to the fact that the survey was conducted by people who are all university students. The descriptive statistics are shown in the tables below.
Table 1a: Gender sample
Male Female
Sample ( N=73) 49,3 % 50,7%
Table 1b: Age sample
< 20 20 – 30 31 - 40 41 – 50 51- 60
Sample ( N=73) 9,6% 63% 9,6% 5,5% 12,3%
Table 1c: Education sample Secondary Education
MBO HBO WO
Sample ( N=73) 8,2% 5,5% 31,5% 54,8%
Before analysing the results, they need to be tested for reliability. To test this, Cronbach’s alpha is used since this is the most commonly used method (Field, 2009). A good alpha is > 0.800, a reasonable alpha is between 0.600 and 0.800 and below 0.600 is insufficient. The alpha for personal initiative is 0.563, the alpha for trust is 0.619, and the alpha for supportive leadership is 0.873. The alpha for personal initiative from the colleagues responses is 0.825. The alpha is good for both personal initiative from the colleagues responses and for
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supportive leadership. It is sufficient for trust but it is insufficient for personal initiative. To get the right alpha for trust, two questions needed to be recoded because these were negatively formulated. Removing a question would lead to better alphas for personal initiative and trust but since these differences are not significant this is not done.
4.2 Correlation
Before testing the hypotheses, the correlations between the variables will be discussed. This is an indicator used to show to what extent two variables are related to each other. It has a value from -1 to 1; the closer to 1, the stronger the relationship. A correlation of 0 means that there is no correlation. There is a statistically significant and strong positive relationship between supportive leadership and personal initiative (r (73)= 0.333, p < 0.05). This means that when there is more supportive leadership, employees take more personal initiative. There is also a statistically significant positive relationship between supportive leadership and personal initiative due to a colleague, r (73) = 0.239, p < 0.05. This means that when there is more supportive leadership, employees take more personal initiative according to their colleagues. Between trust and personal initiative there is no correlation (r (73) = 0.024). This implies that when employees feel more trust, they do not necessarily take more personal initiative.
4.3 Regression
The next step in this research is to carry out a regression analysis to test the main effects between the dependent variable (personal initiative) and the independent variables (supportive leadership and trust) and the interaction variable (trust * supportive leadership). The effects of supportive leadership on personal initiative are B= 0.117, p < 0.1, R2 = 0.027. The effects of trust on personal initiative are B = -.001, ns. This means that supportive leadership does have a direct effect on personal initiative but trust does not. Since supportive leadership has a positive effect on personal initiative, hypothesis 1 can be confirmed. There was also one interaction
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variable created. Another linear regression analysis was carried out to test if this interaction variable has a moderating effect on personal initiative. As expected, the interaction variable has a positive moderating effect on personal initiative, B = 0.197 p < 0.1, R2 = 0.052. When there is a lot of trust, this makes the effect of supportive leadership on personal initiative larger, so hypothesis 2 can also be confirmed.
Surprisingly, when supportive leadership and trust are both low, personal initiative is high as well which is the opposite of what hypothesis 2 suggests.
B = 0.197 B = -0.001 B = 0.027 Personal initiative Supportive leadership Trust Supportive leadership Trust Personal initiative
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Figure 2: two-way interaction effects for standardized tables. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Low leadership High leadership
De p en d en t var iab le Low trust High trust
24 5. Discussion
In this part, the results from the previous section will be discussed. Reliability, validity, and generalisability will be discussed. Following that there will be a brief review of limitations concerning the survey, the managerial implications, and lastly there will be recommendations for further research.
5.1 Summary of results
The goal of this paper is to answer the question: in what way does supportive leadership
influence the perception of proactive behaviour, moderated by trust between employees? To
answer this question, a dyad study was conducted. The idea of a dyad study is to take in charge not only the respondents’ opinions but also the opinion of colleagues of these respondents. This was done in order to get more reliable data. Supportive leadership has a positive influence on personal initiative. This was expected from hypothesis 1 and so this is confirmed. Employees who have a supportive leader take more initiative. Employees who trust their colleagues do not necessarily take more initiative. However, employees who have a supportive leader and feel trust from their colleagues do tend to take more initiative than employees who only have a supportive leader. So the hypothesis that trust moderates the perception of personal initiative is confirmed.
As mentioned in the results, there is a surprising outcome from the interaction variable which can be seen in figure 2. Hypothesis 2 is confirmed, but when supportive leadership and trust are both low, personal initiative is high as well. When supportive leadership is high and trust low, or the other way around then personal initiative is low. It was not expected that when both are low, personal initiative would be high. There might be an explanation for this; employees who do not trust their colleagues might want to do everything on their own. They do not leave anything for others and accordingly do more than is required of them. Employees
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can also have a leader who is the opposite of a supportive leader, for example a laissez-faire leader. “The laissez-faire leader is one who believes in freedom of choice for the employees, leaving them alone so they can do as they want”(Goodnight, 2004, p.822) . This encourages employees to take initiative since they have to do everything by themselves. This might be an explanation, but further research should be undertaken to invest this.
Our results contradict the research conducted by Parker et al. who did not find a relationship between supportive leadership and personal initiative. Parker et al. studied several factors that they thought influenced proactive behaviour. Since different results are found, further research should be undertaken to find out what could cause the differences in results.
5.2 Reliability, validity and generalisability
Reliability is the extent to which data collection techniques will yield the same findings and if there is transparency about the collection of data (Saunders et al., 2012). Threats to reliability are participant error, participant bias, researcher error and researcher bias. Because this investigation used a self-completed questionnaire with closed questions that could be completed at any time, anonymously, the aforementioned issues could be avoided.
Validity is the extent to which the data collection methods accurately measure what they were intended to measure and the findings are about what they profess to be about (Saunders et al., 2012). It is hard to be sure that your questions represent the subjects you want to measure. The questions used in this study have been used in earlier research, and thus it is expected that they are reliable.
Generalisability is the extent to which the findings of the study are applicable to other settings (Saunders et al., 2012). This study can be linked to many of the aforementioned studies. The respondent rate is quite low, which means more research must be conducted to check if the
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results will still be the same for a higher respondent rate. This study has different kinds of respondents which suggests findings will be the same in other settings.
5.3 Limitations of the survey
The first limitation of the questionnaire was the cover letter. Although it was implemented to explain the aim of the study and what was expected from the respondents, they did not always understand it and some forgot to send the survey to their colleagues. They also needed to use of a code word; while it was expected that no one would come up with the same code word, it did happen a few times which made it hard to link the questionnaires.
Two factors that were not taken into account in the survey but could have an influence on the level of personal initiative are the working hours per week and the time that employees have been working at the organization. There could be a difference in the level of proactivity between employees working fulltime and part-time. Similarly, employees who just started their job might take less initiative than employees who have a lot of experience and have a lot of knowledge of the organization.
Lastly, the number of respondents need to be higher to draw a more reliable conclusion. A dyad study is a good way to make results more reliable about employees’ proactivity but it is a difficult approach if one wishes to collect a lot of data. The goal was to reach at least 80 questionnaires, which was not achieved since there are only 73 completed questionnaires. The data collection should be done in a different way. Reaching people by e-mail, which was the primary method used, was not the most productive way. An idea would be to go to organizations and ask them to fill in the questionnaire face to face.
5.4 Theoretical implications
This study adds to the literature about proactive behaviour. It provides some new insights. This is because unlike previous studies, our hypothesis that supportive leadership has a positive
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influence on personal initiative has been confirmed. This can be interesting to take into account in next studies. This study is the first that has tested for personal initiative with trust as a moderator. Since it was confirmed that trust does moderate, this can have influence on other studies as well. It might be interesting to see which other factors can also affect personal initiative or to find out if trust is a moderator at other antecedents of proactive behaviour.
An interesting result from our survey is that the colleagues ranked personal initiative much higher than the employees did. This could be due to the fact that people might be harder on themselves but it could also be because of other unknown reasons. Other recommendations for further research can be found in the next section.
5.5 Managerial implications
This study has some interesting managerial implications. Managers should take a critique look at the style of leadership they are implementing. Supportive leadership can help them get their employees to take more personal initiative. It can be hard to change one’s style of leadership but it should be considered if one wants employees to act more proactive. Creating trust between employees is something managers need to look out for as well. When they make sure employees trust each other, their supportive leadership style will be of more use. This study did not take a look at supportive leadership in comparison to other leadership styles. We do not know which style is most effective, this is something managers must keep in mind. It is not argued that supportive leadership is the best way, it is simply one of the possibly many effective ways to lead.
5.6 Recommendations for further study
In this study it became clear supportive leadership has a positive influence on personal initiative. Trust itself does not have an influence on personal initiative but as a moderator it does. However, in other studies it was proven that trust can have an effect on its own. As this
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investigation only covered the trust between colleagues direct colleagues, nothing can be said about the effect of trust between an employee and his manager which might have an influence on proactive behaviour as well. Furthermore, trust was only tested by use of 4 questions in the survey. More questions might lead to different or more solid outcomes.
An interesting goal for further research would be to compare the effects that different styles of leadership have on personal initiative. Research on the effects of transformational leadership and charismatic leadership on proactive behaviour have been conducted. (Den Hartog & Belschak, 2012; Crant & Bateman, 2000). These have a positive influence on proactive behaviour as well. It can be interesting to find out which leadership style has the most influence or in which situation a leadership style is most effective.
Since there were some surprising results it might be interesting to investigate this further. Supportive leadership and trust only interact positively when they are both high. It might be possible that for some leadership styles it does not matter if there is a high or low level of trust. Another possibility is that it does not matter what leadership style there is, a low or high level of trust might always have the same influence. It is clear that the role of trust is still vague and it might be interesting to investigate this further.
Two factors which were not looked into in this study but can have an influence are the time employees work already at the organization and whether they are fulltime or part time. No research has been done to test this yet but it can be interesting to see if there are differences in people who just started working in an organization and people who already have a career at the organization for 10 years. It is assumed that part timers feel less committed to their job but research from Jacobsen suggest otherwise (2000). They found that part timers do feel committed. Commitment can have an influence on the level of proactivity so it can be interesting to see if the level of proactivity differs among full-timers and part timers.
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6. Conclusion
The research question in this study was: in what way does supportive leadership influence the
perception of proactive behaviour, moderated by trust between employees? Proactive behaviour
has 4 antecedents and in this study the focus was on personal initiative. In order to answer the research question two hypotheses were set; first it was tested if supportive leadership has a positive influence on personal initiative and second it was tested if this was moderated by trust. Both hypotheses were confirmed, thus it can be said that supportive leadership has a positive influence on personal initiative and that this influence is stronger when there is trust between employees.
This study strives to add new insights into proactive behaviour. There is some research about the effects of leadership on proactive behaviour, but almost no research has been done about the effects of supportive leadership on proactive behaviour. Furthermore, trust was never used as a moderator before. This study can be helpful for managers who want to stimulate more initiative from their employees. It is not argued this is the best way to reach initiative, but it is a way.
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8. Appendix
Appendix 1
Questions from the survey
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.
Helemaal
oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal eens Mijn collega pakt
problemen actief aan. Wanneer er iets misgaat, zoekt mijn collega meteen een oplossing.
Als mijn collega een kans ziet ergens actief bij betrokken te worden, dan grijp hij/zij die.
34
Helemaal
oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal eens Mijn collega
neemt initiatief, zelfs als anderen dat niet doen.
Mijn collega grijpt snel zijn/haar kansen om
zijn/haar doelen te bereiken.
Mijn collega doet meestal meer dan er van hem/haar gevraagd wordt.
Mijn collega is erg goed in het
realiseren van ideeën.
35
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.
Helemaal
Oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal Eens Als ik het voor het
zeggen had, zou ik mijn collega geen invloed gunnen op de zaken die voor mij belangrijk zijn
Ik zou gerust mijn collega volledige controle over mijn toekomst in deze organisatie geven
Ik zou willen dat ik een manier had om mijn collega goed in de gaten te kunnen houden
Ik zou zonder aarzelen een belangrijke taak of probleem uit handen geven aan mijn collega, zelfs als dat zou
betekenen dat ik
36
Helemaal
Oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal Eens zijn/haar handelingen
niet kan controleren
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.
Helemaal
Oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal Eens Mijn leidinggevende
motiveert ons om veel van onszelf te
verwachten
Mijn leidinggevende motiveert ons om doelen te zetten voor onze prestaties
Mijn leidinggevende motiveert ons om elkaar te complimenteren
Mijn leidinggevende motiveert ons om goed te kijken naar onze eigen prestaties
37
Helemaal
Oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal Eens Mijn leidinggevende
houd rekening met mijn persoonlijke gevoelens wanneer er acties ondernemen worden die betrekking op mij hebben
Mijn leidinggevende houd rekening met wat ik persoonlijk nodig heb
Er hangt een cultuur in de organisatie van vertrouwen en respect om risico te nemen
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.
Helemaal
oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal eens Ik pak problemen actief
aan.
38
Helemaal
oneens Oneens Neutraal Eens
Helemaal eens Wanneer er iets mis
gaat, zoek ik meteen een oplossing.
Als ik een kans zie om ergens actief bij betrokken te worden, dan grijp ik die.
Ik neem initiatief, zelfs als anderen dat niet doen.
Ik grijp snel mijn kansen om mijn doelen te bereiken.
Ik doe meestal meer dan er van mij gevraagd wordt.
Ik ben erg goed in het realiseren van ideeën.
39 Appendix 2 SPSS output Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha N of Items ,873 7 Item Statistics Mean Std. Deviation N Geef aan in welke mate
de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn
leidinggevende
motiveert ons om veel van onszelf te
verwachten
40
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn
leidinggevende motiveert ons om doelen te zetten voor onze prestaties
3,41 1,103 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn leidinggevende motiveert ons om elkaar te complimenteren 3,08 ,983 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn
leidinggevende
motiveert ons om goed te kijken naar onze eigen prestaties
41
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn
leidinggevende houd rekening met mijn persoonlijke gevoelens wanneer er acties ondernemen worden die betrekking op mij hebben
3,41 ,984 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Mijn
leidinggevende houd rekening met wat ik persoonlijk nodig heb
42
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Er hangt een cultuur in de organisatie van vertrouwen en respect om risico te nemen 3,47 ,929 73 Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha N of Items ,563 7 Item Statistics Mean Std. Deviation N Geef aan in welke mate
de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Ik pak problemen actief aan.
43
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Wanneer er iets mis gaat, zoek ik meteen een oplossing.
4,14 ,585 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Als ik een kans zie om ergens actief bij betrokken te worden, dan grijp ik die.
3,77 ,773 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Ik neem initiatief, zelfs als anderen dat niet doen.
3,96 ,789 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Ik grijp snel mijn kansen om mijn doelen te bereiken.
44
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Ik doe meestal meer dan er van mij gevraagd wordt.
3,78 ,886 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn. -Ik ben erg goed in het realiseren van ideeën. 3,70 ,617 73 Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha N of Items ,619 4 Item Statistics Mean Std. Deviation N trust_1r 3,5205 ,88364 73
45
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Ik zou gerust mijn collega volledige controle over mijn toekomst in deze organisatie geven
2,4521 ,98659 73
trust_3r 3,7945 ,88127 73
Geef aan in welke mate de volgende stellingen op uzelf van toepassing zijn.-Ik zou zonder aarzelen een belangrijke taak of probleem uit handen geven aan mijn collega, zelfs als dat zou
betekenen dat ik zijn/haar handelingen niet kan controleren
46 Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 ,233a ,054 ,027 ,36626 2 ,303b ,092 ,052 ,36158 a. Predictors: (Constant), leadership, trust
b. Predictors: (Constant), leadership, trust, interactief
ANOVAa
Model
Sum of
Squares df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression ,541 2 ,270 2,016 ,141b Residual 9,390 70 ,134 Total 9,931 72 2 Regression ,910 3 ,303 2,320 ,083c Residual 9,021 69 ,131 Total 9,931 72 a. Dependent Variable: personal
b. Predictors: (Constant), leadership, trust
47 Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) 3,484 ,316 11,027 ,000 trust -,001 ,101 -,001 -,007 ,994 leadership ,117 ,059 ,233 1,997 ,050 2 (Constant) 5,151 1,040 4,953 ,000 trust -,621 ,382 -,721 -1,624 ,109 leadership -,414 ,321 -,825 -1,288 ,202 interactief ,197 ,117 1,357 1,680 ,097 a. Dependent Variable: personal
Excluded Variablesa
Model Beta In t Sig.
Partial Correlation Collinearity Statistics Tolerance 1 interactie f 1,357b 1,680 ,097 ,198 ,020
a. Dependent Variable: personal
48 Correlations
proc_colg personal leadership trust proc_colg Pearson Correlation 1 ,166 ,239* ,206 Sig. (2-tailed) ,160 ,042 ,081 N 73 73 73 73 personal Pearson Correlation ,166 1 ,233* ,024 Sig. (2-tailed) ,160 ,047 ,839 N 73 73 73 73 leadership Pearson Correlation ,239* ,233* 1 ,107 Sig. (2-tailed) ,042 ,047 ,367 N 73 73 73 73 trust Pearson Correlation ,206 ,024 ,107 1 Sig. (2-tailed) ,081 ,839 ,367 N 73 73 73 73
