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When and why employees take charge in the Workplace: the roles of learning goal orientation, role-breadth self-efficacy and co-worker support

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Abstract

Adopting an interactionist perspective and drawing on the proactive-motivation model, this study examines whether rolebreadth self-efficacy mediates the relationship between employees learning goal orientation and taking charge. Additionally, we examine whether the proposed mediation is strengthened underconditions of high co-worker support. Empirical data was drawn from 193 full-time employees across five service sector organizations in Malaysia. Process Macro was used to test our proposed hypothesis and the moderated-mediation model. The paper found rolebreadth self-efficacy to fully mediate the relationship between employees learning goal orientation and taking charge. Contrary to expectations, co-worker support was found not to moderate the relationship between learning goal orientation and rolebreadth self-efficacy, nor was the moderated-mediation relationship was stronger under conditions of high co-worker support. This study builds a contingent model that extends the effect of learning goal orientation on taking charge and thereby the nomological network of both learning goal orientation and taking charge literatures. Additionally, this study enriches our understanding on how learning goal orientation leads to taking charge behavior by exploring whether a contextual factor, co-worker support, moderates our proposed mediating model. Doing so, we extend the existing proactive motivation model.

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Correspondence to Michael J. Mustafa.

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Ngo, M., Mustafa, M.J. & Butt, M.M. When and why employees take charge in the Workplace: the roles of learning goal orientation, role-breadth self-efficacy and co-worker support. Rev Manag Sci 17, 1681–1702 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-022-00568-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-022-00568-y

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