Personal initiative is a proactive and goal-oriented mindset, characterized by long-term focus and persistence in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Such a mindset is action-oriented, planful, and anticipatory: quickly turning goals into actions, with back-up plans ready just in case. Personal initiative is associated with goal achievement and well-being. Both personal initiative and happiness are greater when people have a sense of control, purpose, progress, and competence. Internal and external factors influence one’s sense of control, purpose, progress, and competence, e.g., personality and societal constraints/opportunities.
Years ago I visited several eastern European countries, whose economic systems were still of the Communist "command and control" variety. One thing that struck me was how sullen and disengaged the workers in these countries seemed to be. They looked depressed - just going through the motions of their jobs with zero enthusiasm, much like the stereotype of a DMV worker (but worse). What was going on? What had squelched the spirit of these workers?
Some clues are in this sketch of working conditions in East Germany during the bad ol' days:
"In East Germany's 40 years of bureaucratic socialism, people had little chance to express initiative at work. Behavior by and within companies was highly regulated by central planning. Middle- and low-level management and workers had little input into how things were produced. Because there was no feedback via the market, there was little pressure to change things at workplace. As there was no competition with other companies, there was little incentive to develop high-level goals. The company goal was not to reach a high productivity level but to not make mistakes. Managers in the East were by and large more conventional and risk-avoidant than managers in the West, and they showed little independent thinking or achievement orientation. For these reasons, managers were not interested in workers' initiative and even imposed negative sanctions." Frese et al (1996) p. 40
Let's go back to happiness, personal initiative and their overlapping feeder streams, which include:
Sense of control: you can actually change a situation, allowing you to set goals
Sense of purpose: you're motivated to achieve your goals
Self-efficacy: you're pretty confident you can do what's needed to get closer to your goals
Sense of progress: you are moving forward and getting closer to your goals
In bureaucratic systems like the one described above, workers are hemmed in by rules, procedures, and protocols. Going above and beyond the call of duty is not rewarded and may even be punished. There's not much workers can do to improve their situation; they're cogs in a machine, with little sense of purpose but to get through the day and avoid trouble.
Ah… but isn’t democratic socialism different than the now-discredited communist system? Not really. Democratic socialism would just replace one type of “command-and-control” system (highly centralized) with another (more distributed). David Kotz, author of Socialism and Innovation, indicates that under “democratic planned participatory socialism” there would still be companies of a sort, but their resource allocation decisions would be made by industry boards and committees representing workers, consumers, suppliers, the local community, and “cause” groups such as environmentalists, job safety activists, feminists, etc. These bodies would arrive at decisions through compromise among the interests represented on them. Kotz claims the “democratic, participatory institutions of that system would empower the population to demand innovations aimed at its own benefit”* but acknowledges that the basic institutions of such a “participatory democracy” would not necessarily “provide sufficient opportunities for creative individuals to work out new economically relevant ideas. More generally, there would be a danger that the decision-making boards …would tend to represent existing ways of doing things and offer resistance to innovation” (Kotz 2002, p. 104)**.
Tom Boothe, co-founder of a food co-op based in Brooklyn, is more succinct about the problem with participatory socialism: “Pure democracy can be an invitation to little dictators.” Note that the Democratic Socialists of America (of which I am a former member) advocate for just this sort of participatory socialism. Just think what all those little dictators would do to personal initiative. The more timid workers would just keep their heads down, do their jobs and not think too much. That disease would eventually spread to more and more workers. Who wants to incur the wrath of little dictators? Who wants to wait years for powerful interest groups and committee members to support or simply encourage experimentation with new ways of thinking and doing?
Too much focus on avoiding bad things (e.g., the wrath of the righteous), not enough focus on approaching good things: yet another recipe for diminished well-being.
There's plenty of research to bear out the ill-effects of focusing too much on avoiding undesired outcomes. Individuals who favor "avoidance goals" tend to feel less in control, less satisfied with their progress, and less competent than individuals with lots of "approach goals". In other words, their happiness feeder streams have become mere trickles. No wonder all those Eastern European workers so seemed depressed - they probably were depressed, or at least unhappy.
Good government seeks to foster conditions conducive to the well-being of its people. This mission is not all that different from that of a parent: provide a secure base while encouraging the child to leave the zone of safety to explore the world. There’s still a secure base to return to in case you lose your way - a solid safety net - but you’re free to wander, experiment, fail, get up again, and pursue happiness on your own terms.
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(Updated December 10, 2019)
* Note that innovation is not always a response to customer demand but the outcome of crazy ideas by creative people willing to take crazy risks. Case in point: Steve Jobs.
** Another reason special interest groups and committees of the righteous would likely resist innovation: the fruits of innovation may not be obvious and could take decades to realize. PerThe Economist,
“Innovation, though glorified by businessmen and policymakers, adds nothing to an economy’s productivity until it is widely adopted. As Paul David of Stanford University long ago pointed out, it was not until the 1920s, four decades after Thomas Edison’s first power station, that manufacturers embraced a killer app for electricity, designing factories to accommodate dynamo-powered assembly lines…. Genuine innovations are inherently difficult to spot in advance. So the game is more about creating the right conditions for companies to press ahead and to seize on breakthroughs when they arrive.” Asian-tiger governments are steering their economies with a lighter touch
References:
Argyleand, M. & Martin, M. (1991) The psychological causes of happiness. Chapter 5 in Subjective well-being: an interdisciplinary perspective Fritz Strack, Michael Argyle, Norbert Schwarz (Eds.) Oxford: Pergamon Press, 77-100.
Elliot, A. J. & Friedman, R. (2007). Approach-avoidance: A central characteristic of personal goals. In B. R. Little, K. Salmela-Aro, & S. D. Phillips (Eds.), Personal project pursuit: Goals, actions, and human flourishing (pp. 97-118). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Frese, M., Kring, W., Soose, A. and Zempel,J. Personal initiative at work: Differences between East and West Germany. Acad. Manage. J. 39, 37–63 (1996). doi:10.2307/256630
Jostmann, N. B., S. L. Koole, et al. (2005). "Subliminal Affect Regulation." European Psychologist 10(3): 209-217.
Kotz, David M. (2002) Socialism and Innovation. Science & Society: Vol. 66, Special Issue: Building Socialism Theoretically: Alternatives to Capitalism and the Invisible Hand, pp. 94-108. https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.66.1.94.21007
Pychyl, Timothy A Approaching Success, Avoiding the Undesired: Does Goal Type Matter? https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200902/approaching-success-avoiding-the-undesired-does-goal-type-matter Accessed at 5:05pm on 09/28/2017.