Enhancing Team Member Proactivity Through Career Calling and Mentoring: A Time-Lagged Study

Team member proactivity has become increasingly important for contemporary teams that seek to improve how they function. However, for team members, this proactive team-oriented behavior requires risk taking and a great amount of effort; therefore, organizations must encourage persistence in this behavior. This is the first study to propose that organizations can enhance team member proactivity when they help team members live out their individual callings by offering them mentoring. Our hypotheses are tested by using a multi-source and time-lagged study design with a sample of 296 Chinese employees and their direct supervisors. The results demonstrate the importance of adding career calling constructs as antecedents to the team member proactivity literature and suggest that organizational resources such as mentoring are needed to facilitate the link between team member proactivity and career calling."