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Researchers have studied supervisors’ proactive personality in its relationship with employees’ attitudes. However, little attention has been given to how employees react to instances of supervisors’ proactive behavior. Drawing from P-E fit theory, we propose that the relationship between supervisor weekly taking charge behavior (TCB, the quintessential proactive behavior) and employees’ weekly job attitudes depends on employees’ proactive personality.

Utilizing a diary study, we investigate how employees’ proactive personality moderates the within-person relationship between supervisor TCB and employees’ attitudes (measured as job satisfaction and affective commitment). We surveyed 39 employees ten times over ten weeks.

Multi-level analyses partially supported our predictions on the differential effects of weekly supervisor TCB on employees’ job attitudes. Supervisors’ above-average TCB was significantly related to higher levels of employees’ job satisfaction and marginally related to affective commitment for employees with high proactive personality, but not for those with low proactive personality. Supplemental analyses revealed that our results are unique to supervisor TCB and not to supervisor helping behavior.

Our study is among the first to utilize a dynamic approach to understand the consequences of supervisors’ proactive work behavior in the context of P-E fit research. Our findings will open several fruitful avenues for future research that continue to understand the powerful effects of supervisors’ proactivity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the use of humor in one-shot online negotiations affects the chance that the target of the humor will accept the offer. This study/paper proposes two competing hypotheses in this specific context: humor could be perceived as impertinent and thus decrease offer acceptance, or it could be perceived as friendly and thus increase offer acceptance.

To test these hypotheses, this study/paper conducted an experimental scenario study among 589 participants in a negotiation about selling a wardrobe on an online marketplace. Participants took the perspective of the seller, and this study/paper compared a condition in which the buyer used a joke versus a condition in which the buyer did not use a joke.

The use of humor by a buyer significantly increased the chance of offer acceptance by the seller. Without humor, 62% of sellers accepted the buyer’s offer. With humor, 82% of sellers accepted the offer. Further analysis suggests this is explained by the buyer being perceived as friendlier in the humor condition relative to the no humor condition. There were no effects on perceptions of buyer’s impertinence.

The findings indicate that humor is beneficial for buyers in a one-shot online negotiation. On the flipside, this implies that sellers should be cautious about being manipulated into accepting inferior deals by buyers who use humor in one-shot online negotiations.

The significant increase in the number of transactions on online marketplaces (such as AliExpress or eBay) justifies having a fresh look at the role of humor in one-shot online negotiations that are at the core of such transactions. Research in this domain is relatively scarce. In particular, there is no study that specifically tests whether humor is beneficial or detrimental in one-shot online negotiations. This study/paper extends the existing literature to the area of one-shot online interactions characterized by psychological distance.