Today, there is an increasingly aging workforce. Previous studies have examined whether aged people exhibit more positive attitudes, better health, and better performance. However, the relationship between age and proactive work behavior has seldom been examined, which is unfortunate since organizations need employee proactivity to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability. Based on socioemotional selectivity theory, we propose that age might be positively related to proactive work behavior through intrinsic motivation and emotional exhaustion because older people tend to manage their emotions and obtain intrinsic enjoyment. But age might be negatively related to proactive work behavior through career aspiration because older people focus less on future development. With a sample of 393 people, we revealed intrinsic motivation and career aspiration. The findings could help us better understand how age is related to organizational outcomes and individual differences in proactive work behavior. They could also further reduce age-related discrimination and encourage organizations to manage older people in wise and better ways.

To facilitate research on career insecurity, we develop and validate an eight-item short form of the 32-item original scale across three studies, namely the CI-S. In all studies, CI-S consistently showed high internal reliabilities and correlations with the full scale. Specifically, Study 1 finishes the preliminary item selection and makes an initial validation. Study 2 demonstrates that CI-S has a comparable criterion-related validity with the full scale. Study 3 examines a moderated mediation model of the relationship between career insecurity and workplace deviance and shows that using CI-S or the full scale does not change the results. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that CI-S is a psychometrically satisfying and practically useful measure of career insecurity that can be used with confidence in research and practice.

As proactivity becomes vital for organizational success, retaining proactive employees becomes increasingly important, making the relationship between a proactive personality and turnover intention a key research topic. While existing studies have largely depicted turnover as a consequence of dissatisfaction and have identified negative indirect relationships, this study seeks to challenge that perspective by proposing that, in today’s boundaryless career environment, people also engage in voluntary turnover for career advancement. Using a self-regulation career management model, we propose that proactive employees set ambitious career goals influenced by career aspirations, leading them to seek external opportunities and thus exhibit higher turnover intention. However, when organizations implement career management practices, this relationship weakens as proactive employees perceive opportunities to achieve their goals within their current organizations. We tested these hypotheses with a sample of 342 respondents using the SPSS macro PROCESS. The findings support our propositions, revealing a positive indirect effect through career aspirations, which diminishes when perceived organizational career management is strong.

Previous research has largely regarded psychological entitlement as detrimental to organizational effectiveness. In contrast, this study presents a more nuanced view by exploring its relationship with proactive work behavior. Drawing on the proactive motivation model, we propose that psychological entitlement influences proactive work behavior in both positive and negative ways, with need for uniqueness, role-breadth self-efficacy, and emotional exhaustion serving as mediators for the "reason to," "can do," and "energized to" states, respectively. Through a field study and an experiment, our results consistently showed that psychological entitlement had positive influences on proactive work behavior. Our study thus highlights that psychological entitlement should not be seen solely as problematic, sheds light on new mechanisms through which it influences work outcomes, and deepens our understanding of individual differences in proactive behavior at work.