The prevailing pandemic (COVID-19) has increased socioeconomic problems and caused psychological distress due to work uncertainty, specifically in emerging economies. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies have been severely affected. Particularly, work uncertainty is becoming a hindrance towards proactive work behaviour (PWB) that can be improved by an effective entrepreneurial leadership role and proactive personality attribute. Based on fortifying self-determination theory, this research answered the question to what extent proactive personality moderates the relationship between work uncertainty and PWB and strengthens the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and PWB. To empirically examine the study’s underlying theoretical framework, respondents were selected from SMEs working in Pakistan from the high-tech industry. Multisource data were accumulated from 420 workers and their leaders utilizing a two-wave, time-lagged research design. Conclusions revealed that entrepreneurial leadership first reduced individuals’ work uncertainty, which in turn, led to enhanced proactive work behaviour of employees. Furthermore, the results revealed that work uncertainty mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and proactive work behaviour. Moreover, proactive personality moderates the link concerning work uncertainty and proactive work behaviour, such that this association is significant only when proactive personality is low. Additionally, the moderated mediation analysis indicated that less proactive people, compared with their extraordinarily proactive colleagues, trusted entrepreneurial leadership to be more proactive in the workplace. These findings have important implications to induce PWB among employees.

This study aims to investigate a model that applies team support for innovation as a mediating mechanism for the association of team identification (TI) with task performance (TP) and proactive work behavior (PWB) in the software companies. The sample encompasses 92 teams working in software companies in Pakistan. Data were collected from two sources: team identification, team support for innovation (TSI), and task performance data were collected from employees, while PWB data were collected from the team supervisor. Multi-level data was analyzed using structural equation modelling technique through Mplus, AMOS and SPSS software. Findings of the study revealed that team support for innovation plays an intervening role between team identification and its outcomes (PWB and TP). This study proposes that team support for innovation can effectively encourage PWB and TP. Therefore, managers and leaders of software companies who aim to achieve PWB and TP need to encourage team identification among the team members. The present paper links a gap relating to factors and antecedents that impact proactive work behavior and task performance in a multi-level research design.