The moderating role of organizational cynicism in the effect of proactive personality on intrapreneurship.
Emre Karasu, Demet Ünalan
PMID 41396790WHAT IT FOUND
Proactive personality was associated with higher workplace innovation among 330 healthcare workers, but the link weakened when organizational cynicism was high.
The design is correlational, so no causal claim can be made.
Key findings
01Proactive personality positively predicted intrapreneurial behavior (β = 0.044, p < 0.001), accounting for 17.8% of the variance in intrapreneurship scores.
02Organizational cynicism negatively predicted intrapreneurial behavior (β = −0.010, p = 0.001), accounting for 3.3% of the variance.
03The interaction between proactive personality and organizational cynicism was statistically significant (β = −0.062, p < 0.05), meaning the positive personality-innovation link was weaker at higher levels of cynicism.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional design means the relationships cannot be read as causal; a worker who is already cynical may also underreport their proactive tendencies, which could inflate the association. All three variables were measured by self-report on the same day, so shared method variance is a realistic concern. The sample comes from one province in Turkey and excludes anyone in a leadership role, so the findings may not transfer to other settings or to managers. The sample is predominantly educated (75.1% with a university degree or higher) and mid-career (mean age 35.17 years), which limits generalisability to early-career or less formally educated staff.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial support and no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the significant correlations as evidence that changing a worker's personality will increase innovation. The design is cross-sectional and entirely self-report, so the direction of the relationship cannot be established, and a cynical worker may simply understate their own initiative on the same questionnaire.