Abstract: Personal initiative is a work behavior defined as self-starting and proactive, that overcomes barriers to achieve a goal and task, characterized by the following aspects: self-starting, proactive, and overcoming barriers. It can be measured both qualitatively and quantitatively, by incorporating behavioral interviews and self-report surveys. The core antecedents of personal initiative are differentiated into proximal and distal causes. Scholars have previously suggested that proximal causes—orientations—should be more predictive of personal initiative than the distal causes, and the distal causes may influence personal initiative through the proximal causes. Our study advancing future research into personal initiative will focus on the following aspects: (1) the impact mechanism of leadership variables on employee’s personal initiative; (2) the impact mechanism of the organizational variables on personal initiative; (3) examining the construct validity of the personal initiative scale, and developing more scientific and feasible measures; and (4) exploring the moderate variables between personal initiative and important performance

Key words: personal initiative, employee behavior, performance