What motivates leaders to engage in strategic renewal behavior? Examining effects of career development motive and strategy implementation motive

Organizations need to renew their strategy and transform to sustain their existence and stay competitive in the market (Urbano et al., 2022). The success of an organization's strategic renewal depends on many factors (Raoofian et al., 2025; Schmitt et al., 2018), although many strategic renewal initiatives encounter challenges because of a lack of information on individuals' motives to contribute to these initiatives (Hernández-Perlines et al., 2022). In particular, leader motives and behaviors are integral (Blanka, 2019), since leaders not only take an active role in organizational transformations (Stouten et al., 2018) but also influence and empower other employees to perform similar behaviors (Oreg and Berson, 2019; Zhang and Cui, 2022). Building on the literature that highlights the role of proactive behaviors (Parker et al., 2019), the proactive behaviors of change recipients are recognized as a particularly valuable driver of successful organizational change (Oreg et al., 2018). One such proactive behavior is termed strategic renewal behavior and is defined as “an employee's agentic and anticipatory behaviors aimed at enhancing an organization's ability to react to internal and external advancements” (Gawke et al., 2019, p. 808). Strategic renewal behavior involves developing and implementing ideas that result in organizational transformation (Gawke et al., 2019). Given the importance of these behaviors, understanding what makes leaders perform strategic renewal behavior is highly relevant and urgent.

The empirical studies in the organizational change literature have begun to examine proactive behaviors and motives behind them (Walk and Handy, 2018) by drawing on the proactive motivation model (Ling et al., 2024). The proactive motivation model (Parker et al., 2010) posits that individuals' proactive dispositions influence their proactive motivations, which ultimately shape their proactive behavior. For example, dispositionally proactive entrepreneurs tend to innovate through planning and acquiring social resources (Frese and Gielnik, 2023), and followers tend to learn from their mistakes (Deichmann and Ende, 2014). Such findings have advanced our understanding of entrepreneurs' and followers' characteristics and motives for developing such behaviors (e.g. Anderson et al., 2004; Hernández-Perlines et al., 2022; Parker et al., 2019). The model implicitly assumes that this linear and uniform trait-motive-behavior path functions identically across different organizational actors (Parker et al., 2010). This assumption of actor-context uniformity disregards differences in structural power and motivational complexity, which we will argue are important factors in the proactivity process. Such factors are backgrounded in the proactive behavior of entrepreneurs or followers but are foregrounded leader proactive behavior. Specifically, hierarchical organizations operate with rigid power structures characterized by centralized authority and a strict division of command (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Such concentration of especially strategic choices forces leaders to navigate established protocols that do not apply to independent entrepreneurs or followers (Bernacchio and Foss, 2024; Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Unlike entrepreneurs, leaders navigate formal organizational structures that constrain their agency (Pittino et al., 2018). Unlike followers, leaders hold authority and significantly more power in decision-making (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Furthermore, leaders' motives differ from those of followers because, as leaders advance in their careers within the organization, they eventually reach their career plateau inside the organization (Judge et al., 1999), while their extensive external networks provide diverse career opportunities outside the organization (Arthur et al., 2005). Thus, by studying leaders, we can challenge this assumption in the proactive motivation model (Parker et al., 2010), expanding its straightforward approach to the trait-motive-behavior process, by differentiating the proactivity process in relation to the organization-related contextual complexities.

Furthermore, adding another layer of complexity to this trait-motive-behavior link, we draw on an extension of the proactive motivation model, the wise proactivity approach, which describes how dispositionally proactive individuals regulate their trait-behavior process by considering the benefits that they could acquire as a result of their behaviors (Parker et al., 2019). This perspective aligns with the insights from the commitment literature, which highlights that individuals often hold multiple, sometimes conflicting, motives, which can lead them to act in ways that are misaligned with organizational goals and strategies (van Rossenberg et al., 2018). The complexities of leaders' regulation of their trait-behavior process become more tractable in the context of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, motives. Specifically, we posit that leaders have two motivational pathways, the self-oriented career development motive and the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive, which mediate their dispositional proactivity in strategic renewal behavior. For example, leaders' opportunistic motives regarding their career aspiration or organizational strategy achievement may influence their behaviors such that they deliberately take ineffective actions in order to not execute the organizational strategy (Hortovanyi et al., 2021).

In addition, this focus enables a leader to make appropriate decisions in light of the specific context, such as deciding whether it makes sense to adapt and perform strategic renewal behavior (Wang et al., 2025). Since perceived career success is closely linked to perceived employability (Jiang et al., 2023), which ultimately influences individuals' behaviors at work, we examine its regulatory role as a critical condition (Spurk et al., 2019). In the executive labor market, leaders' career success enhances their reputation and increases their market value, which eventually triggers a reputation protection dynamic (Withers et al., 2024; Wowak et al., 2017). As a result, leaders who perceive themselves as successful become risk-averse (Andrus et al., 2019), avoiding risky strategic decisions to protect their market value (Recendes et al., 2024; Withers et al., 2024). Perceived career success can amplify self-oriented career motives, such as protecting one's reputation (De Jong et al., 2019), advancing one's career, and recovering from setbacks (Lent and Brown, 1996). Accordingly, leaders' perceived career success may shape how their motives are expressed in strategic renewal behavior.

By focusing on leaders' motives, perceived career success, and strategic renewal behavior, we make three distinct contributions to the literature on proactive behavior in organizational change. First, we enrich the literature by centering the strategic renewal processes of leaders, not those of entrepreneurs and followers (Oreg et al., 2011; Samul, 2020; Zhang and Cui, 2022), thereby challenging the assumption of uniformity that proactivity functions identically across all organizational actors. By doing so, we address the fundamental differences in structural power and motivational complexity that distinguish leaders from entrepreneurs and followers. This focus moves beyond simplistic actor-context generalizations to theorize that hierarchical constraints and authority dynamics fundamentally shape the proactivity process. Second, we contribute to a more detailed understanding of the relationship between a leader's proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior by considering multiple motives using the wise proactivity approach (Parker et al., 2019). To do so, we consider leaders' deliberate and context-sensitive decision-making regarding whether their motives lead to strategic renewal behavior. This enables us to advance knowledge of the trait-behavior process by characterizing proactivity as a regulated, goal-driven process shaped by the interplay of diverse motives, which explains why certain leaders with a proactive personality may deliberately choose to enhance or withhold strategic renewal behavior (Oreg and Berson, 2019).

Third, we directly advance this understanding by identifying perceived career success as a boundary condition in the trait-behavior process since perceived career success is a source that individuals can use to shape their trait-behavior process by influencing how they channel their motives into behaviors, either reinforcing or constraining their engagement in strategic renewal activities depending on how successful they perceive their careers to be (Spurk et al., 2019). Rather than viewing motives as sole drivers of strategic renewal behavior, we demonstrate that their expression is regulated by the leader's perception of their career success. In a similar vein, perceived career success acts as a regulatory resource that shapes how leaders channel their motives into behaviors, either reinforcing engagement or prompting self-protective inertia depending on their specific career success perception. Examining the role of self- and organization-oriented motives in this trait-behavior process in combination with perceived career success is also relevant for practitioners. Organizations hire and promote based on individuals' personality traits (Wakkee et al., 2010), and they often assume that behaviors are strongly associated with traits and underestimate the role of different motives and contextual factors in their behaviors (Gonzalez et al., 2023). This study demonstrates the extent to which this assumption holds when accounting for the influence of motives and contextual factors, thereby enabling organizations to more accurately predict and foster strategic renewal behavior. In summary, this study aims to explain the relationship between leaders' proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior through self-oriented career development motive and organization-oriented strategy implementation motive, with consideration of leaders' perceived career success (Figure 1).

The proactive motivation model's foundational proposition is that individual differences and context influence motivational pathways (e.g. “reason to”, “can do”, and “energized to”), which in turn affect not only individuals' behaviors but also their future self or the situation through goal setting and striving (Parker et al., 2010). “Reason to” refers to the rationale or seeing the value of being proactive, “can do” emanates from individuals' self-efficacy, and “energized to” involves the activation of positive affective states that propel proactive behavior (Parker et al., 2010). Compared with other motivational states, the “reason to” motivational pathway is the most crucial and complicated factor in long-term goal pursuit (Cai et al., 2019). One of the complexities is individuals' multiple interests, which can either complement or conflict with one another (Parker et al., 2019). The wise proactivity approach elucidates this complexity by examining how individuals strategically prioritize certain motives to optimize the outcomes of their behaviors and regulate their trait-behavior processes across intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal interests (Parker et al., 2019). Intrapersonal interests refer to self-oriented regulatory motives, interpersonal interests refer to social and relational motives, and extrapersonal interests refer to organization-oriented task and strategy motives (Sternberg, 1998).

In this trait-behavior process, proactive personality, a disposition to actively seek opportunities, take initiative, and persist in action (Bateman and Crant, 1993), acts as a psychological resource (Hirschi, 2012). It is converted into proactive behaviors through “wise” decisions, e.g. refraining from proactive behavior even when one is dispositionally proactive if the potential benefits do not align with overarching personal objectives (Parker et al., 2019). For example, when an organization undergoes a change, individuals perceive this organizational change as either a risk or an opportunity, and on the basis of these individual perceptions, they recalibrate their proactive behaviors to maximize their benefits regardless of their dispositions (Oreg et al., 2018). The proactive behavior we investigate in this study is the strategic renewal behavior of leaders. Drawing on upper echelons theory, we posit that strategic renewal behavior is a reflection of the top managers' cognitive bases and values (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007). Since leaders filter complex strategic information through perceptual filters shaped by their personality traits, a proactive personality provides the psychological orientation necessary to perceive and initiate organizational change (Hambrick, 2007; Kurzhals et al., 2020). Leaders are often high in proactive personality (Zhang et al., 2012), but its translation into strategic renewal behavior depends on various factors and motives (Gawke et al., 2019). Their motives can vary significantly (Parker et al., 2019); for instance, they may pursue personal goals through intrapersonal motives and organizational goals through extrapersonal motives, reflecting two distinct paths of proactive motivation.

The wise proactivity approach emphasizes that the translation of a proactive personality into behavior involves evaluating whether change efforts align with task demands, contextual constraints, and personal or organizational goals and highlights the importance of discerning when to act, adapt, or hold back (Parker et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2025). In this framework, perceived career success functions as a contextual variable that shapes how leaders interpret the potential benefits or risks of proactive behaviors, influencing whether and how they act on their proactive personality. In this study, drawing on the proactive motivation model, we conceptualize proactive personality as the individual difference factor (Parker et al., 2010,Figure 1, Path E), self- and organization-oriented motives as two distinct “reason-to” motivational pathways (Figure 1, Path C), strategic renewal behavior as proactive goal-striving (Figure 1, Path A), and perceived career success as a key contextual influence shaping these pathways toward goal striving (Figure 1, Path D).

We examine two paths through which leaders' proactive personality influences their strategic renewal behavior: the self-oriented career development motive and the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive. Unlike followers, leaders' career advancement creates limited internal opportunities (Judge et al., 1999) but expands external prospects (Arthur et al., 2005). Furthermore, within the executive labor market, as leaders ascend the organizational hierarchy, their visibility increases, and their social and human capital become highly valued signals to both internal and external stakeholders (Withers et al., 2024). This heightened visibility creates a unique motivational pressure, as leaders must balance their internal standing with their broader marketability (Withers et al., 2024; Recendes et al., 2024).

When leaders concentrate on internal career growth, their self-oriented career development motive which is described as “commitment to the goal of pursuing a long and successful career in an organization” (Lapointe et al., 2019, p. 898), significantly shapes their actions and impacts organizational success (Smale et al., 2019). Dispositionally proactive individuals tend to behave proactively with respect to their careers (Parker and Collins, 2010), exhibit strong career motives (Messara and Dagher, 2010), and behave in alignment with their career goals (Creed et al., 2017) and attitudes (Gao-Urhahn et al., 2016). Their career attitudes influence their career motives, choices, and commitments (Lapointe et al., 2019). Leaders with a proactive personality often cultivate a self-oriented career development motive since they allocate resources to advancing in their careers (Zhang et al., 2012). As leaders ascend at the organizational level, maintaining a career within the organization can be advantageous, as career variety at higher levels extends the time required to ascend to the top (Schmid and Mitterreiter, 2021). Thus,

In addition to having self-oriented motives, leaders hold organization-oriented motives that pertain to their extrapersonal interests. Wise proactivity regarding those motives entails prioritizing the strategic interests and benefits of the organization (Parker et al., 2019). Since organizations are reflections of their leaders, the strategic choices made during renewal are heavily influenced by the extent to which leaders feel a volitional bond to the firm's strategic direction (Hambrick, 2007). The organization-oriented strategy implementation motive, which is “a volitional psychological bond reflecting dedication to and responsibility for the strategy implementation” (Klein et al., 2014, p. 137), profoundly influences the future trajectory of organizations because of the inherent demands of leaders' roles in making strategic choices (Oreg and Berson, 2019). Leaders driven by such a motive not only propose changes in organizational strategy regarding market conditions and company ambitions but also commit to actualizing these strategic shifts (Gonzalez et al., 2023; Oreg and Berson, 2019). Dispositionally proactive individuals feel responsible for the achievement of organizational change and are committed to organizational priorities (Fuller and Marler, 2009). With increased control over the organization's strategy, leaders with proactive personalities can develop motives to facilitate the organization's strategy implementation (Oreg and Berson, 2019). Hence,

Strategic renewal behavior, a form of proactive strategic behavior, requires opportunity-seeking behaviors to improve an organization's internal efficiency and external competitiveness (Gawke et al., 2019). For instance, individuals engaging in such proactive behavior contribute to the organization's internal interests by offering recommendations on existing products and services (Escrig-Tena et al., 2018) and to its external interests by fostering innovation within the organization (Nag et al., 2020). A proactive personality is a key antecedent of strategic renewal behavior (Gawke et al., 2019). Individuals with a highly proactive personality tend to perform proactive behaviors when contextual factors align (Tett and Guterman, 2000). While conventional understanding suggests a direct link between proactive personality and proactive motivation as well as between proactive motivation and proactive behavior (Parker and Collins, 2010), the wise proactivity approach contends that situational and motivational factors (Tett and Burnett, 2003) and expected outcomes (Hobfoll, 1989) shape these relationships (Parker et al., 2019).

Drawing on the wise proactivity approach, individuals with a self-oriented career development motive strategically allocate resources to maximize gains and protect against resource depletion (Parker et al., 2019). Those aiming for internal career advancement develop strong career-oriented motives with high organizational career commitment (Lapointe et al., 2019). Thus, leaders' proactive personality may not always translate into high performance, particularly when high performance entails risk to their motive (Glaser et al., 2016). In such instances, leaders may conserve resources for future opportunities (Hobfoll, 1989). We posit that strategic renewal behavior involves career risk for leaders (Gawke et al., 2019), as unsuccessful efforts may lead to negative evaluations, hinder career advancement, and even jeopardize their position. In such situations, when leaders perceive organizational change as a threat to their career standing, they tend to minimize exposure to the risk and reduce their proactive involvement in the change process (Gonzalez et al., 2023). When individuals are highly committed to their career advancement, they are less likely to engage in proactive behaviors that extend beyond their prescribed job and role expectations (Ok and Vandenberghe, 2016). Thus, drawing on the wise proactivity approach (Parker et al., 2019), we argue that leaders may not engage in strategic renewal behavior to mitigate such risks. Therefore,

Individuals develop multiple motives and thus respective commitments that can be complementary or conflicting in terms of their effects on individual- and organizational-level outcomes (van Rossenberg et al., 2018). For example, individuals commit to developing positive relationships with managers and coworkers, achieving organizational ambitions and financial goals, and pursuing activities that advance their own interests (Klein et al., 2021). These commitments can, at times, contradict one another, particularly when personal goals conflict with organizational priorities (Klein et al., 2022). When faced with such conflicts, individuals tend to prioritize commitments that offer the greatest personal benefit, focusing their efforts on tasks and projects that serve their own advancement while neglecting broader organizational objectives that do not directly align with their self-interest (Ali and Swart, 2025). Leaders who are committed to implementing the organizational strategy develop motives that foster a shared vision, effective communication strategies, and employee empowerment to support the strategy (Stouten et al., 2018). They engage in behaviors to drive strategy implementation (Hortovanyi et al., 2021). Thus, drawing on the wise proactivity approach (Parker et al., 2019), we argue that leaders with organization-oriented strategy implementation motive engage in strategic renewal behavior. Therefore,

The above hypotheses formalize two pathways through which proactive personality may influence strategic renewal behavior. Drawing on the proactive motivation model and the wise proactivity approach, contextual factors influence the likelihood of leaders translating their proactive personality and proactive motives into actual proactive behaviors (Parker et al., 2010; Cai et al., 2019). Leaders' strategic renewal behavior development process is more complicated because of their career motives and contextual circumstances (Auvinen et al., 2020). One such contextual factor is perceived career success, the extent to which individuals perceive themselves as successful in their careers (Turban and Dougherty, 1994). Unlike objective career success (e.g. salary, title), perceived career success is a subjective judgment (Spurk et al., 2019) and is linked to high life satisfaction (Choi and Nae, 2022) and low turnover intention (Salleh et al., 2020). While traditionally viewed as an outcome, studies consider it an antecedent of behaviors (Spurk et al., 2019). As a career resource, it facilitates goal attainment (Spurk et al., 2019) and strengthens dedication to career goals (Zhu et al., 2021). Individuals with high perceived career success exhibit a boundaryless career vision (Arthur et al., 2005). This means that they believe that they have career opportunities outside the organization, and they thus invest in their own career resources to increase their employability (Guan et al., 2019). In contrast, individuals lacking this resource adopt compensatory behaviors to mitigate potential losses (Retkowsky et al., 2023).

Given that proactive behaviors can be psychologically demanding, resource intensive, and potentially risky for the initiator (Bolino et al., 2010), the wise proactivity approach (Parker et al., 2019) emphasizes that leaders allocate their resources strategically to protect personal resources and maximize future benefits (Wang et al., 2025). As a source, perceived career success is strongly associated with perceived employability (Jiang et al., 2023). In the context of the executive labor market, high levels of perceived career success function as a critical intangible reward and a valuable reputational signal (Withers et al., 2024; Wowak et al., 2017). However, this success also triggers a reputation protection dynamic where leaders avoid risky strategic initiatives to safeguard their established marketability and individualized agency (Recendes et al., 2024; Withers et al., 2024). When leaders perceive themselves as highly successful, they become risk averse to avoid potential reputational shocks that could impair their standing (Andrus et al., 2019). For example, when leaders perceive themselves as successful, they may invest less in their organization, believing that they have external career options (Eby et al., 2003), or they may avoid risky decisions to protect resources if they are seeking internal promotion (Guan et al., 2019).

Conversely, leaders with low perceived career success face a different set of incentives. Perceiving fewer reputational resources to lose, they may view risky strategic renewal as an opportunity to signal their competence and value to the labor market, thereby attempting to recover their standing through high-stakes proactive action (Withers et al., 2024). Consequently, leaders with low perceived career success may be more motivated to make risky decisions (Lent and Brown, 1996), as they view strategic renewal as an opportunity to prove themselves and align their efforts with organizational success (Hortovanyi et al., 2021). Their lower perceived success means that they have fewer resources to protect, which causes them to have a higher risk tolerance than leaders with high perceived career success (Jiang et al., 2023). Such leaders perceive change-related uncertainty and risk as avenues for demonstrating competence and creating value, and they choose to channel their efforts into strategic initiatives that can simultaneously advance organizational change and strengthen their own career trajectories (Gonzalez et al., 2023). By successfully contributing to strategic renewal, these leaders aim to enhance their organizational standing and their career prospects (Spurk et al., 2019). By positioning perceived career success as a moderator, we capture how leaders' wise regulation of proactivity is shaped by their perceived standing within the opportunity structures of the executive labor market (Recendes et al., 2024). Thus,

As leaders ascend in their careers, they face intense stakeholder evaluation of their actions and characteristics (Recendes et al., 2024). Successful leaders build networks with influential organizational members and strengthen the skills required to progress toward their career goals (Teow et al., 2025). Highly successful leaders prioritize the preservation of their status over the personal enactment of risky renewal activities (Withers et al., 2024). They choose to delegate the implementation of risky strategic changes to followers to minimize their own personal exposure to potential failure and avoid a reputational shock (Andrus et al., 2019). Furthermore, leaders with a strong strategy implementation motive tend to allocate resources to empower followers to act proactively and minimize their own proactive role in the process (Chiu et al., 2023). As a result, followers perceive their leaders to engage less in strategic renewal behavior and rate their strategic renewal behavior accordingly.

In contrast, leaders who perceive low career success are willing to take more risk and invest their own resources in developing behaviors that contribute to the strategy's success (Gonzalez et al., 2023). Those leaders lack this reputational capital and utilize personal enactment as a primary signal of their effectiveness (Andrus et al., 2019). For these leaders, the strategy implementation motive results in direct involvement in strategic renewal as they seek to align their visible actions with organizational success to improve their marketability (Recendes et al., 2024). This suggests that leaders' perceived career success influences whether they personally enact strategic renewal behavior or delegate it to followers, which shapes how proactive efforts unfold within the organization (Fuller et al., 2015). This delegation mechanism does not apply in the case of self-oriented motive, as in H5, where a leader needs to perform the behavior herself to obtain a career reward. Hence,

This study's empirical context is a Dutch private organization with approximately 400 leaders in 2020. We collaborated with the human resources (HR) department and a consultancy company that collected the data from all the leaders, their direct reports and their peers via email. We ensured response confidentiality. We collected cross-sectional data from multiple data sources, including leaders, their direct reports and peers, to minimize single-informant bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). The leaders, who were responsible for executing strategic renewal, reported on predictor variables, including proactive personality, self- and organization-oriented motives, and perceived career success, as well as control variables. Their direct reports and peers evaluated the leaders' strategic renewal behavior. To encourage participation, we shared aggregate-level analysis results and employee development guidelines. A total of 288 leaders and 1886 direct reports and peers participated. After deleting incomplete responses, we obtained valid observations from 263 leaders and 1,296 direct reports and peers.

This organization represents a suitable research setting for several reasons. First, the Dutch context is underrepresented in empirical research exploring the intersection of proactivity, leadership, and career dynamics, particularly compared to other coordinated market economies, such as Germany, Belgium, and Austria (Andresen et al., 2023). Second, we used purposive sampling to target a specific group, leaders, while controlling for organization-related contextual variance by collecting data from a single organization. Controlling for contextual variance is crucial since different types of organizational change can act as confounding variables, influencing individuals in distinct ways (Oreg et al., 2011).

For academic and practical clarity, it is essential to identify the degree, mode, scope, and scale of the change (Gonzalez et al., 2023). The organization underwent a fundamental shift in its strategic orientation, moving from a globally diversified presence to a concentrated regional focus. This strategic renewal was executed through comprehensive operational simplification driven by digital integration and significant changes within the executive leadership team. These reconfigurations fundamentally reshaped internal technical structures and accelerated the adoption of agile working methodologies, shifting role expectations toward digital-first interactions and new administrative paths. Thus, we could conclude that the organization was undergoing radical (Rafferty and Griffin, 2006) and episodic change focused on renewing its strategic direction (Pettigrew et al., 2001). Since strategic renewal involves multiple interrelated initiatives that affect the entire organization, such change can be categorized as multidimensional (Kanitz et al., 2022) and organization-wide (Nadler and Tushman, 1989). Third, because change-related dispositions are activated more strongly during implementation than before implementation, we collected data during the strategic renewal phase across all divisions. This timing enabled us to capture leaders' actual strategic renewal behavior instead of relying on hypothetical assumptions, with sufficient variance in the study variables (Gonzalez et al., 2023).

The questionnaire was administered in English since one of the working languages of the organization is English. Unless otherwise stated, all the variables were assessed by a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Additionally, the Cronbach's alphas are reported in parentheses.

We measured the proactive personality of leaders by a 4-item proactive personality scale (Parker and Sprigg, 1999) which was derived from a 17-item proactive personality scale (Bateman and Crant, 1993) based on the loading of the items to prevent survey fatigue (Gosling et al., 2003). An example item is “No matter what the odds, if I believe in something, I will make it happen” (α = 0.60).

We assessed the self-oriented career development motive of leaders using a 5-item commitment to the organizational career scale (Lapointe et al., 2019). A sample item is “Having a career within this organization is really important to me” (α = 0.78).

We measured leaders' level of organization-oriented strategy implementation motive by a 4-item target-free commitment scale (Klein et al., 2014) by framing the target as strategy implementation. An example item is “How committed are you to your organization's strategy implementation?”. The items were rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) (α = 0.91).

We examined leaders' perceived career success by using a 4-item subjective career success scale (Turban and Dougherty, 1994). An example item is “How successful has your career been so far?” Responses were given on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) (α = 0.74).

To measure strategic renewal behavior, we asked the leaders' direct reports and peers to rate their specific leader's strategic renewal behaviors on an 8-item strategic renewal scale (Gawke et al., 2019). An example item is “[leader name] contributes ideas for strategic renewal for the organization”. Responses were given on a 5–point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always) (α = 0.90).

We controlled for sex on the basis of previous studies' recommendations that sex plays a mixed role in proactive behavior development (Kanfer et al., 2001). Sex is dummy coded as 0 = male and 1 = female, and 40% of the participants were female. Second, we controlled for employees' organizational tenure (Frese and Fay, 2001), age and title. The respondents were divided into 8 groups according to age, where 1 = 25–29 years old and 8 = above 60 years old. The majority of the leaders are distributed among age groups 4, 5 and 6 (20.2% between the ages of 40 and 44, 28.9% between the ages of 45 and 49, and 21.7% between the ages of 50 and 54). The respondents were divided into 4 categories according to the hierarchical level of their titles in ascending order, and the majority of the leaders (82.5%) held the most senior title (4). Finally, we controlled for the effect of change with a 1-item scale (Petrou et al., 2018) “To what extent have your work responsibilities changed by the organization's strategy implementation?”, and the item was rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely).

The outcome variable, strategic renewal behavior, was calculated by aggregating scores across multiple raters. Specifically, we averaged the responses from all raters, direct reports and peers, to create a single score for each item per participant. Missing value analyses were conducted, and the results revealed that the missing values were random (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013); thus, those items were replaced with the mean of the scale. On the basis of the reliability analysis, we decided to remove 1 item from the proactive personality scale. The resulting reliability of the proactive personality scale was α = 0.60, which is lower than the commonly accepted threshold value of 0.70 (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). Reviewing the proactivity literature and prior empirical studies, we found that low reliability is common for the short version of the proactive personality scale (Tims et al., 2012). Thus, we decided to use the proactive personality variable with 3 items. We centered all the variables before undertaking a multicollinearity check and found that all variance inflation scores were less than or equal to 2, which is lower than the recommended threshold level of 5 (Hair et al., 1998). Therefore, we concluded that multicollinearity was not a risk in this study. We examined the discriminant and convergent validity of the constructs by conducting CFA with maximum likelihood estimation procedures (Kline, 1998). As indicated in Table 1, our 5-factor model has a good fit (χ ² = 353.49, df = 239, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMR = 0.05) among the alternative models according to the commonly accepted cutoff points (Hair et al., 1998).

We tested our hypotheses using R version 4.3.3, using maximum-likelihood estimation procedures. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics. Table 3 demonstrates that leaders' proactive personality is positively associated with their self-oriented career development motive (β = 0.27, p < 0.001, 95%CI [0.155, 0.373]). Thus, H1 was supported. Furthermore, leaders' proactive personality is positively associated with their organization-oriented strategy implementation motive (β = 0.19, p = 0.001, 95%CI [0.076, 0.297]). Thus, H2 is supported.

To test Hypotheses 3 and 4, we applied mediation analysis by using bootstrapping procedures to draw 5,000 random samples with replacement from the full sample to construct 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals for the indirect effect (Shrout and Bolger, 2002). The self-oriented career development motive is only weakly related to strategic renewal behavior (β = −0.10, p = 0.146, 95%CI [−0.226, 0.030]). The indirect path from proactive personality through the self-oriented career motive is β = −0.03 (p = 0.161, 95%CI [−0.066, 0.008]), so H3 is not supported. The leader's organization-oriented strategy implementation motive is associated with strategic renewal behavior (β = 0.21, p = 0.001, 95%CI [0.082, 0.331]). The indirect path from proactive personality through the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive is β = 0.04 (p = 0.022, 95%CI [0.010, 0.080]), so H4 is supported.

To test H5 and H6, we conducted moderated mediation analyses by using the same aforementioned bootstrapping procedures (Shrout and Bolger, 2002). H5 tests whether the interaction of the self-oriented career development motive and perceived career success significantly predicts leaders' strategic renewal behavior. The interaction term is negative (β = −0.09, p = 0.082, 95%CI [−0.209, 0.010]), and for a high level of perceived career success (+1 SD), the mediator has a negative effect (β = −0.12, p < 0.001, 95%CI [−0.187, −0.066]). In contrast, for the low level of our moderator (−1 SD) (Cohen et al., 2003), the mediator is not significantly related to the outcome (β = −0.04, p = 0.207, 95%CI [−0.104, 0.017]). As demonstrated in Figure 2, H5 is supported.

H6 tests whether the interaction of the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive and perceived career success predicts leaders' strategic renewal behavior. The interaction term is negative and significant (β = −0.12, p = 0.028, 95%CI [−0.231, −0.006]). The mediator is more strongly positively related to the outcome for the low level of perceived career success (−1 SD) (Cohen et al., 2003) (β = 0.25, p < 0.001, 95%CI [0.192, 0.303]) than for the high level of perceived career success (+1 SD) (β = 0.15, p < 0.001, 95%CI [0.081, 0.213]), as presented in Figure 3 and indicated in Table 4. Therefore, H6 is supported.

In summary, we conclude that when perceived career success is low, the association between proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior operates through the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive (β = 0.05, p = 0.002, 95%CI [0.018, 0.008]) rather than the self-oriented career development motive (β = −0.01, p = 0.222, 95%CI [−0.030, 0.005]). On the other hand, when perceived career success is high, the association between proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior operates through both the self-oriented career development (β = −0.03, p = 0.001, 95%CI [−0.053, −0.016]) and the organization-oriented strategy implementation motive (β = 0.03, p = 0.008, 95%CI [0.009, 0.050]) in the reverse direction. Although H3 is not supported, the self-oriented career development motive mediates the relationship between leaders' proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior when perceived career success is high. The results of the hypothesis testing are summarized in Table 5.

Our results indicate that dispositionally proactive leaders demonstrate high self-oriented career development and organization-oriented strategy implementation motives. When leaders perceived themselves as successful in their careers, their motive to develop a career within the organization corresponded with a lower tendency to engage in strategic renewal behavior. On the other hand, when leaders perceive themselves as not successful, their motive to implement the new organizational strategy corresponds with greater strategic renewal behavior. Furthermore, we can conclude that leaders' low level of perceived career success indirectly contributed to their strategic renewal behavior by weakening the negative association between their self-oriented career development motive and strategic renewal behavior and strengthening the positive association between their organization-oriented strategy implementation motive and strategic renewal behavior.

This study enriches the literature on proactive behavior in organizational change by shifting the focus to the wise regulation of engaging in a proactive strategic behavior, namely, strategic renewal behavior among leaders (Gawke et al., 2019; Parker et al., 2019). By applying the premises of upper echelons theory, we position these leaders as strategic actors whose decisions reflect their individual dispositions (Hambrick, 2007) and drawing on the wise proactivity approach of the proactive motivation model (Parker et al., 2010), we argue that the trait-behavior process is dependent on their motives and bounded by their perception regarding their career success. A leader's proactive personality is positively associated with self-oriented career development motive (personal career growth within the organization) and organization-oriented strategy implementation motive (commitment to implement the company's long-term vision), which align with the previous dominant findings about entrepreneurs' (Blanka, 2019; Frese and Gielnik, 2023) and followers' (Parker et al., 2019) trait-motive processes and. Thus, the findings of the current study are consistent with the previous findings concerning entrepreneur-centric and follower-centric studies and aligned with the foundational trait-motive link of the proactive motivation model (Parker et al., 2010, 2019).

Depending on their perception of their career success, leaders may engage in strategic renewal behavior because of their self-oriented career development motive or organization-oriented strategy implementation motive. These findings align with the proposals of commitment system theory (Klein et al., 2022), which argues that individuals develop various forms of commitment and that these different commitments can influence behavior in synergistic, neutral, or conflicting ways. While prior work on motives has largely treated them as unitary constructs (van Rossenberg et al., 2018), this study emphasizes the distinct effects of these two motives and their potential interplay in shaping leaders' strategic renewal behaviors.

More specifically, the findings concerning the self-oriented career development motive align with research suggesting that leaders who are primarily focused on their career success may avoid engaging in risky strategic initiatives (Botelho, 2026; De Jong et al., 2019). Since risk-averse behaviors are associated with low levels of engagement with the features of uncertainty caused by organizational change, such leaders tend to refrain from engaging in strategic renewal behavior (Gonzalez et al., 2023). Although our empirical results indicated a negative association between the self-oriented career development motive and strategic renewal behavior, this direct relationship was not significant. This negative relationship only becomes significant for leaders with high levels of perceived career success. This negative relationship aligns with previous findings concerning followers' engagement in proactive behaviors when they are committed to their career (Ok and Vandenberghe, 2016). These results demonstrate that the motive-behavior process for leaders is not a linear or uniform path (Parker et al., 2010) and deviates from followers. This deviation occurs because leaders operate as strategic actors who filter their behavioral choices through their perception of their career success (Recendes et al., 2024). This suggests that leaders may prioritize the protection of their established marketability over risky strategic renewal behaviors regarding the challenges of the executive labor market (Recendes et al., 2024; Withers et al., 2024). This prioritization highlights how leaders wisely regulate their proactivity to manage their individualized standing and long-term career value (Wowak et al., 2017).

The findings concerning the organization-oriented motive are in line with the extant literature that individuals' dedication to organizational change influences their behaviors such that they are more likely to take proactive steps in organizational strategies (Dutton et al., 2001; Oreg et al., 2011; Oreg and Berson, 2019). Thus, taken together, these two motives counteract each other and create a cannibalization effect (Zhao et al., 2010) such that, had we not separately measured and jointly analyzed them, their opposing influences would have remained undetected. We conclude that leaders who are motivated by both career advancement within the organization and organizational change may face a psychological trade-off and balance their self- and organization-oriented motives. This counteractive effect aligns with recent findings suggesting that individuals often prioritize their own self-interests over organizational ambitions (Ali and Swart, 2025).

While our data capture a single organizational environment undergoing an organizational change, these findings illustrate how leaders navigate the subjective experience of the change through the regulation of competing motives (Parker et al., 2019). Our findings reveal how the process of proactive personality and strategic renewal behavior unfolds in leaders navigating competing motives. Specifically, we show that leaders' strategic renewal behavior is shaped not only by their proactive personality but also by how wisely they regulate their conflicting self-versus organization-oriented motives in light of perceived career success. These results support and extend the growing body of work on the wise proactivity approach (Wang et al., 2025) and support the argument that individuals thoughtfully consider contextual factors while transforming their proactive personality into motives and eventually engaging in corresponding proactive behaviors (Cai et al., 2019).

Perceived career success is typically studied as an outcome in research, although it significantly shapes attitudes and functions as a key mechanism (Shockley et al., 2016), yielding varied effects across different target populations (Akkermans and Kubasch, 2017). Therefore, studying perceived career success as a contextual variable in the form of a moderator and focusing on leaders as a specific target population advances the literature on career success and deepens our understanding of this issue. Although perceived career success is linked to positive organizational outcomes, such as employees' extrarole contributions (Teow et al., 2024), our findings suggest that leaders with low perceived career success also generate beneficial outcomes for their organizations. These leaders may engage in strategic renewal behavior to protect their reputation (De Jong et al., 2019) and to recover from career setbacks (Lent and Brown, 1996), channeling their efforts toward activities that support organizational change.

These findings offer several practical implications for leaders, managers and HR professionals. Consistent with prior research on the trait–behavior process (Tett et al., 2021), our results indicate that dispositionally proactive leaders are likely to engage in strategic renewal behavior. However, this process becomes more complex in organizational change contexts, where uncertainty and risk are inherent (Gonzalez et al., 2023). In such settings, leaders' self-oriented career development motive and organization-oriented strategy implementation motive play critical roles, as dispositional proactivity alone does not always translate into high levels of strategic renewal behavior. Given this complexity, organizations should be cautious when using personality assessments as the primary basis for hiring or promotion decisions, recognizing that situational and motivational factors substantially influence how proactive tendencies manifest in behavior.

Individuals who display strong career commitment often invest considerable effort in achieving their personal career goals (Zhu et al., 2021). However, this study demonstrated that leaders' career-oriented goals do not always require them to engage in strategic renewal behavior, as they may allocate their resources primarily toward advancing their own careers. To address this, HR professionals and managers should better align leaders' career development goals with the organization's strategic renewal objectives. When career progression is linked to successful participation in renewal activities, leaders may feel more motivated to contribute to organizational transformation (Rodrigues and Rebelo, 2023). Furthermore, the positive association between leaders' strategy implementation motive and their strategic renewal behavior suggests that reinforcing leaders' sense of responsibility for implementing organizational strategies through recognition systems, clear communication of strategic priorities, and participative decision-making can increase their engagement in renewal processes (Oreg and Berson, 2019).

While individuals with high perceived career success and self-esteem are often more visible and influential within the organization (Spurk et al., 2019), our findings indicate that leaders with low perceived career success may actually invest more effort in driving strategic renewal. Conversely, leaders who view themselves as highly successful are less inclined to engage in strategic renewal, as they seek to protect their established reputation and avoid the career risks associated with uncertain change processes (Botelho, 2026; Gonzalez et al., 2023). Therefore, managers and HR departments should recognize and reward the contributions of leaders with low perceived career success to ensure that their efforts are acknowledged and sustained while addressing the risk perceptions of highly successful leaders, for example, by fostering a psychologically safe environment and emphasizing collective success over individual exposure to risk (Bouckenooghe et al., 2021). Considering that leaders with high perceived career success are more likely to pursue boundaryless career vision (Spurk et al., 2019), HR professionals should integrate these tendencies into succession and talent management systems. Specifically, leaders' perceptions of their career success should inform job assignments and developmental planning, ensuring that those with strong organizational commitment and change-oriented motives are placed in roles that leverage their proactive potential (Oreg and Berson, 2019). By doing so, organizations can effectively channel leadership potential toward strategic renewal and ensure sustainable organizational change.

The context of this study is unique, as we targeted a single organization that is undergoing a radical, episodic, multidimensional and organization-wide changes (Gonzalez et al., 2023). Since the data were collected from one organization, the generalizability of the findings is limited (Podsakoff et al., 2003), which reduces external validity. Contextual factors strongly influence change recipients' motives and behaviors (Oreg et al., 2011); therefore, it is important to control these variables to prevent potential confounding effects (Hünermund et al., 2025). For this reason, and to enhance internal validity while minimizing survey fatigue (Podsakoff et al., 2003), we chose to collect data within a single organizational setting by compromising external validity. Future research should replicate and extend these findings by collecting data across organizations undergoing different types of change, such as incremental, continuous and narrow change, and operating in diverse cultural contexts. This would increase the generalizability of our findings and improve the external validity and robustness of the results.

Furthermore, the influence of context is visible in the results of the study. For example, we found a negative association between leaders' career development motive and their strategic renewal behavior, especially when they felt successful. However, in a different context, such as the healthcare sector in the Netherlands, employees' career commitment (the pursuit of career priorities) does not appear to foster personal initiative, as reported by the employees themselves, while their leaders perceive employees' career commitment as being associated with a decline in their personal initiative (Den Hartog and Belshak, 2007). Similarly, research conducted in Canada has demonstrated that career commitment among employees in various occupations hinders their proactive behaviors (Ok and Vandenberghe, 2016). These discrepancies underscore the importance of examining how contextual and sector-specific characteristics shape the relationship between career motives and proactive behaviors. Future research should therefore adopt a multi-context, cross-sector, and cross-cultural design to better understand how organizational environments, change types, and institutional logics influence these dynamics.

In addition, building on the theoretical foundation of the wise proactivity approach, future research should explore how leaders develop the capacity for wise proactivity over time and how their career perceptions influence this process. Since our data are cross-sectional, we cannot draw causal conclusions. Therefore, longitudinal designs would be particularly valuable to capture changes in leaders' motives, perceived career success, and strategic renewal behaviors, and to examine how these variables influence one another over time. Moreover, incorporating additional antecedents may further clarify these relationships. For example, Wang et al. (2025) identify wisdom and political skills as antecedents of wise proactivity; however, little is known about how these attributes manifest in strategic contexts or how they interact with career ambitions, organizational culture, and leadership development programs. Future studies could therefore investigate how leaders cultivate the ability to balance self-, other-, and context-oriented considerations and whether this capacity enhances their engagement in adaptive, high-impact strategic renewal behavior.

Since perceived career success plays an important role in explaining the relationships examined in this study, future research should adopt a more comprehensive approach with regard to this aspect. We suggest using multidimensional measures, such as the scale by Shockley et al. (2016), while balancing item length to minimize survey fatigue (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Although we considered this scale, we ultimately chose a shorter version (Turban and Dougherty, 1994) because of survey length constraints and leaders' time limitations. Given the critical role of perceived career success in shaping behavioral processes, future studies should further explore its moderating role. Furthermore, with the growing scholarly interest in perceived career success (Briscoe et al., 2021) and the evolution of career trajectories with respect to workplace transformations (Akkermans et al., 2020), the conceptualization of perceived career success has expanded. It incorporates personal life balance, growth and development, authenticity (Shockley et al., 2016), and extrinsic rewards (Pan and Zhou, 2015; Zhou et al., 2013). Cross-cultural comparisons (Briscoe et al., 2021) further emphasize the need to examine diverse aspects of career success. This highlights the need for future research to examine other aspects of career success in terms of the specific study focus and cultural context to ensure theoretical and empirical alignment.

Ethics Approval Reference number is: SBE6/26/2020son214.