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PurposeProactive personality is believed to relate to greater interpersonal helping and lower turnover intentions. Accrued social capital should play a mediating role in this relationship. This paper seeks to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used structural equation modeling to analyze the longitudinal data collected from 174 individuals at three points in time. Two dimensions of social capital, i.e. the resource dimension as indicated by information exchange and the relational dimension as indicated by trust relationships were specified.FindingsAfter controlling for the Big Five personality dispositions, information exchange and then trust relationships sequentially mediated the relationship of proactive personality with helping and turnover intentions.Research limitations/implicationsThe research highlights the importance of understanding proactive personality through the social capital perspective. Multiple source data collection method is recommended for further validation of the results.Practical implicationsThe research highlights the importance of recruiting individuals high on proactivity, and the importance of further developing and motivating these individuals by cultivating meaningful interactions and nurturing trustful relationships at work. Then, proactive employees would be more likely to engage in helping behavior and to stay with the company.Originality/valueThe paper takes the social capital approach in examining the outcomes of proactive personality. It reveals that resource‐ and relation‐related social capital constructs mediate, in sequence, the relationships of proactive personality with outcomes.

How does diversity of social ties influence creativity? Moving beyond the information argument, we theorize creative self-efficacy as a motivational explanation for the relationship between diversity of social ties and creativity. We further posit tie strength as a boundary condition for this mechanism. We collected social ties data from 309 employees and creativity data from 98 direct supervisors. Results showed that diversity of social ties had a direct positive relationship with creative self-efficacy and an indirect positive relationship with employee creativity via creative self-efficacy. These direct and indirect relationships were fortified when tie strength was reinforced. We contribute to and advance theory development by identifying and testing creative self-efficacy as a motivational mechanism for diversity of social ties. We show the importance of diversity of social ties and tie strength and their synergistic role in the motivational process linking social ties to creativity.

Findings from prior research on the relationship between functional diversity and team innovation have been inconclusive. This study aims to reconcile the mixed findings in the literature by investigating how functional diversity may influence team innovation and when such influence may or may not occur. The view of teams as information processors suggests that functionally diverse teams may capitalize on their knowledge benefits to produce innovations through knowledge sharing. However, knowledge sharing and subsequent team innovation do not necessarily occur in functionally diverse teams. Drawing on the motivated information processing in groups theory, we propose that affect-based trust in a team moderates the effects of functional diversity on team innovation (via knowledge sharing). The results based on a sample of 96 research and development teams indicate that functional diversity had a negative indirect relationship with team innovation via knowledge sharing when affect-based trust in a team was low, and this relationship became less negative as the level of affect-based trust in a team increased. The relationship was not significant when affect-based trust in a team was high.