The Role of Team–Member Exchange in Proactive Personality and Employees’ Proactive Behaviors: The Moderating Effect of Transformational Leadership

Abstract

This study conceptualizes team–member exchange as a mediator and transformational leadership as a moderator to understand the role of proactive personality in two types of proactive behaviors (affiliative and challenging). Considering the issue of common method variance, data were collected following a multitemporal and multisource research design, and the hypotheses were tested on a sample of 210 participants. The results showed that after controlling leader–member exchange, team–member exchange mediated the relationship between proactive personality and employees’ proactive behaviors. In addition, transformational leadership strengthened the positive relationship between the team–member exchange and challenging proactive behavior. Moreover, transformational leadership had a stronger moderating effect on challenging proactive behavior than affiliative proactive behavior. Strengths, limitations, practical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords

proactive personality team–member exchange (TMX)helping behavior voice transformational leadership

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