How and When Employees’ Growth Mindset Promotes Proactive Behavior: Alleviating Workplace Anxiety Under Time Pressure

Abstract

Background: In increasingly dynamic and uncertain organizational environments, employees’ proactive behavior—characterized by self-initiation, future orientation, and change orientation—is critical for organizational adaptability and long-term competitiveness. Prior research has primarily examined how externally provided job resources stimulate proactive behavior. More recent work has begun to consider employees’ personal resources, but it largely adopts a capability level-based view, conceptualizing them as self-evaluations of individuals’ ability to control and influence their environment. This focus overlooks capability malleability-based personal resources that shape more fundamental beliefs about the malleability of human capability. Objective: Drawing on the job demands–resources (JD–R) model, this study investigates how employees’ growth mindset—reflecting beliefs that human capability can be developed—promotes proactive behavior by alleviating workplace anxiety, an anticipatory emotional state rooted in concerns about future work-related threats. We further examine time pressure as a key boundary condition. Method: A three-wave, multisource survey design was employed, collecting data from 326 employee–supervisor dyads. Results: The results show that employees’ growth mindset is negatively associated with workplace anxiety, which in turn positively predicts proactive behavior. Moreover, time pressure strengthens both the anxiety-buffering effect of growth mindset and the indirect effect of growth mindset on proactive behavior via workplace anxiety. Conclusions: By incorporating capability malleability-based personal resources into the JD–R model, this study advances understanding of the antecedents of proactive behavior beyond capability level-based self-evaluations toward deeper beliefs about the malleability of human capability. Applications: This study offers practical implications for managers seeking to cultivate employee proactivity.