To act or avoid: unpacking the dual pathways of perceived leader perfectionism shaping employee proactivity through distinct error orientations

Employee proactive behaviour is critical for organizational adaptation and increasingly expected in today’s workplaces. Yet little is known about how perceived leader perfectionism shapes employees’ willingness to act proactively. Drawing on the error orientation model, we propose that perceived leader perfectionism has dual effects on proactivity through two error orientations: a learning-from-error orientation that promotes initiative and an error strain orientation that inhibits it. We further examine growth mindset as a boundary condition that may strengthen the learning pathway and reduce the strain pathway. Across a scenario-based experiment with 355 employees and a three-wave field study with 741 logistics employees, perceived leader perfectionism was positively associated with both learning-from-error and error strain orientations, which had opposing implications for proactivity. Growth mindset consistently strengthened the positive pathway through learning from errors, whereas its buffering effect on the strain pathway emerged only in the experiment. These findings reveal when perceived leader perfectionism can both motivate and discourage employee proactivity.