46 Chapter 2 GENERAL DISCUSSION In this paper, we introduced proactive vitality management as individual, goaloriented behavior aimed at managing physical and mental energy to promote optimal functioning at work. We developed a reliable scale to measure proactive vitality management, and the results of multiple (multilevel) factor analyses provided strong support for a one-factor model, both on general and daily level. The findings suggest that people who engage in proactive vitality management may sometimes use workrelated strategies and micro-breaks at work (Fritz et al., 2011; Zacher et al., 2014). In addition, we found support for convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity on both a general and the day level. Our findings suggest that people may influence their own well-being and work performance by proactively managing their levels of physical and mental energy. Proactive individuals and people with greater self-insight seem more likely to manage their vitality for work, and people who use proactive vitality management are more likely to engage in job crafting at work and relaxing experiences after work (i.e., convergent validity). Furthermore, proactive vitality management was unrelated to decreasing hindering demands and to psychological detachment (nonsignificant, close to zero relationships), which supports the discriminant validity of our construct. Finally, we provided support for the relationship between proactive vitality management on the one hand, and well-being and work outcomes on the other hand (i.e., criterion validity), as proactive vitality management related negatively to exhaustion/fatigue, and positively to work engagement/vigor, cognitive liveliness, inrole work performance, creative work performance, and cognitive performance. Theoretical Contributions Our research on proactive vitality management as a specific type of self-regulatory behavior may make an important contribution to the literature. Combining literatures on proactivity and energy at work allowed us to introduce proactive vitalitymanagement as a bottom-up, goal-oriented behavior that may complement top-down approaches to promote employee vitality. Moreover, other proactive approaches, such as job crafting (Tims et al., 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) or voice (LePine & Van Dyne, 1998), focus mainly on changing aspects of the job or the work environment. In contrast, proactive vitality management involves a focus on the self, or more specifically, a focus on (managing) physical and mental energy in order to promote optimal functioning
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