Proactive yet Reflective? Materializing Proactive Personality into Creative Performance

Drawing on the agentic perspective of social cognitive theory and self- regulation model, this research examines how proactive personality relates to employee creative performance through task-related self-reflective processes and positive affective reactions. The authors define task-related self-reflection as the self-reflective processes about oneself and one’s performance at work and the causes behind, which can be differentiated into two types: self- reflection on successes and self-reflection on failures. Based on a multi-wave, multi-source field study, our findings show that proactive employees engage in both self-reflection on successes and self-reflection on failures; self- reflection on successes breeds joviality whereas self-reflection on failures arouses attentiveness; joviality and attentiveness–both of which are positive affective states–give rise to high creativity. In addition, proactive personality has a positive relationship with creativity via the serial mediating effects of self-reflect...