Effect of proactive personality on employees' pro-social rule breaking: the role of promotion focus and psychological safety climate.

In the VUCA era, organizations that are bound by rigid regulations often find themselves lagging behind in their ability to adapt to the dynamic external environment, consequently missing out on potential opportunities. Organizational innovation often stems from employees' proactive and spontaneous pro-social rule breaking behavior. This study, based on situation-strength theory under the framework of trait activation, investigates the impact of proactive personality on employees' pro-social rule breaking behavior and its underlying mechanisms through a scenario experiment and a questionnaire survey. The results reveal that proactive personality is not significant for pro-social rule breaking behavior, with one positive and one negative effect counteracting each other. Proactive personality positively influences promotion focus, but it also negatively affects pro-social rule breaking behavior through promotion focus. Moreover, psychological safety climate plays a weakening moderating role between promotion focus and pro-social rule breaking behavior. With an increase in the level of psychological safety climate, the negative effect of proactive personality on prosocial rule-breaking behavior through promotion focus gradually attenuates. This study offers novel insights for a more comprehensive comprehension of the role of proactive personality on favorable organizational behavior and deepens the understanding of the effect mechanisms and boundary conditions in the association between proactive personality and pro-social rule-breaking behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]