How prosocial is proactive: developing and validating a scale and process model of knowledge-based proactive helping

Abstract

The knowledge exchanges literature considered all types of knowledge exchanges as reactive. The present study develops the conceptual framework and the measure of knowledge-based proactive helping that was missing in earlier literature. The measure was validated across multiple population. Proactive helping was manifested in the scale items effectively, to the extent that at first, initially chosen five dimensions merged to form two factors: professional development and problem mitigation and; subsequent analysis revealed that the factors represented the same underlying construct of proactive helping. The nomological network, a process model highlighting the psychosocial causes and benefits of proactive helping based upon social exchange theory and social motivation theory was also proposed. The significance of the study was in bringing the prosocial, proactive exchanges at the forefront of knowledge exchanges, which predominantly focussed on reactive exchanges.