The combined impact of ability, motivation, and opportunity factors on employees’ sustained workplace proactivity

TL;DR

This study explores how ability, motivation, and opportunity factors influence employees' proactive behavior at work, using data from China.

Contribution

The study reveals that motivation and opportunity factors have a stronger impact on workplace proactivity than ability factors, challenging the AMO framework's balance assumption.

Findings

Age, job tenure, and corporate training positively influence workplace proactivity.

Motivation factors like marriage, benefits, and promotion opportunities boost proactivity, while external career locus of control reduces it.

Perceived labor protection and internal career locus of control are core drivers of workplace proactivity.

Abstract

Employees’ workplace proactivity plays a critical role in organizational stability and sustainability.

Drawing on data from the 2021 wave of the Chinese General Social Survey, this study investigates the determinants of employees’ workplace proactivity within the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity framework.

The results indicate that, among ability-related factors, age, job tenure, and participation in corporate training positively influence workplace proactivity. At the motivation level, being married, access to non-monetary benefits, perceived promotion opportunities, life satisfaction, interpersonal relationship satisfaction, satisfaction with work pressure, and an internal career locus of control all exert positive effects, whereas an external career locus of control negatively affects workplace proactivity. At the opportunity level, ethnicity, on-site work arrangements, and perceived labor protection enhance workplace proactivity, while overtime hours reduce it. Among them, the perceived labor protection and internal career locus of control are two core variables driving workplace proactivity. Overall, the explanatory power of motivation dimension and the opportunity dimension substantially outweighs that of the ability dimension, challenging the conventional assumption in the AMO framework of relatively balanced contributions across its three dimensions. Heterogeneity analyses show that early adulthood (age 30–39) is the stage in which the influencing factors converge most intensively; moreover, interpersonal relationship satisfaction, internal career locus of control, and perceived labor protection function as stable, cross-age drivers. A series of robustness checks confirms the stability of the findings.

This study provides policy implications for organizations seeking to enhance employee vitality and reduce turnover risk through targeted interventions in ability development, motivational enhancement, and opportunity provision. The results offer both theoretical and practical value for sustainable human resource management in the post-pandemic era.