Abstract
The Taking Charge scale, developed by Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Corey C. Phelps in 1999, is a widely recognized 10-item psychometric instrument designed to measure change-oriented, proactive employee behavior in organizational settings. Taking charge is conceptualized as voluntary, constructive, and discretionary behavior aimed at initiating functional workplace change to improve processes, work methods, and organizational performance. Unlike traditional affiliative forms of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that seek to preserve the status quo (e.g., altruism, courtesy, compliance), taking charge inherently challenges existing procedures and seeks revision of dysfunctional or suboptimal practices. The instrument uses a 5-point Likert-type frequency response scale ranging from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). Although originally designed for peer evaluation by co-workers to reduce common method variance, it has also been utilized in supervisor-rated and self-report contexts across diverse organizational environments. Psychometric evaluations consistently demonstrate that the scale is unidimensional, exhibiting exceptional internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients between .93 and .95). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirm its strong discriminant validity from in-role performance, civic virtue, and altruism. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric overview of the Taking Charge scale, examining its theoretical foundations, structural validity, reliability parameters, administration protocols, and research implications.
Keywords
Taking Charge scale, proactive behavior, organizational citizenship behavior, change-oriented behavior, employee voice, innovation, felt responsibility, self-efficacy, Morrison and Phelps, psychometrics
Authors
The scale was developed and validated by:
- Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison, Ph.D. — Professor of Management and Organizations, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY, USA. Her research focuses on employee voice, silence, proactivity, and organizational justice.
- Corey C. Phelps, Ph.D. — Professor of Strategy and Organization, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada (formerly at the Stern School of Business, New York University). His scholarship explores corporate strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and organizational change.
Purpose
Modern organizations operate in dynamic, volatile, and highly competitive environments that demand continuous innovation, adaptation, and process optimization. Traditional conceptualizations of employee performance frequently bifurcated job behaviors into strict in-role requirements (task performance mandated by job descriptions) and standard extra-role citizenship behaviors that are largely affiliative, cooperative, and status-quo preserving. Morrison and Phelps (1999) recognized that existing psychometric tools failed to capture employee behaviors explicitly dedicated to challenging, revising, and improving current organizational realities. The primary purpose of the Taking Charge scale is to quantify an individual employee’s proactive, self-directed efforts to bring about functional workplace improvement.
From an applied organizational perspective, identifying employees who take charge enables leadership to identify catalysts for organizational innovation and operational efficiency. The scale serves critical diagnostic and developmental functions in both research and human resource management:
- Empirical Research on Proactivity: It provides organizational behavior researchers with a validated, robust measure to examine antecedents (e.g., transformational leadership, psychological safety, job autonomy, felt responsibility) and consequences (e.g., team innovation, promotional velocity, managerial burnout) of change-oriented extra-role performance.
- Leadership and Succession Planning: The tool assists organizations in identifying future leaders who possess the initiative and courage required to challenge ineffective legacy practices rather than passively conforming to institutional inertia.
- Intervention Evaluation: It functions as a pre- and post-intervention assessment tool to determine whether organizational development programs, job redesign initiatives, or empowerment workshops successfully foster continuous improvement mindsets among staff.
Psychological Construct
Taking charge is defined psychometrically as voluntary, constructive effort by individual employees to effect functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or broader organizations (Morrison & Phelps, 1999). The construct is delineated by several defining features:
- Discretionary / Extra-Role Nature: The behavior is not explicitly codified within formal job descriptions or enforceable role expectations. Employees choose to engage in these actions voluntarily, recognizing that such efforts go beyond minimum contractual obligations.
- Change-Oriented Directionality: Whereas conventional citizenship behaviors (such as helping a colleague or exhibiting sportsmanship) reinforce existing interpersonal dynamics and operational patterns, taking charge directly targets modification of the status quo. It is fundamentally revisionist and disruptive to existing workflows.
- Constructive and Functional Intent: Taking charge is distinguished from counterproductive workplace behaviors, organizational misbehavior, or unauthorized insubordination by its benevolent, functional intent. The actor initiates change specifically to enhance organizational effectiveness, eliminate systemic redundancies, solve pressing problems, and streamline operations.
- Multi-Level Operational Scope: The behaviors operationalized by the scale span multiple organizational levels, ranging from individual task execution (e.g., adopting improved procedures for one’s own job) to unit-level coordination (e.g., introducing new methods for the department) and organization-wide governance (e.g., challenging nonproductive organizational rules and policies).
The construct differs sharply from related constructs such as proactive personality, which represents a generalized, cross-situational disposition toward agency (Bateman & Crant, 1993). In contrast, taking charge is an observable, context-dependent behavioral pattern. It is likewise distinct from employee voice (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), which predominantly involves oral or written communication of ideas and critiques; taking charge requires tangible behavioral execution and direct implementation of corrective solutions.
Theoretical Framework
The conceptual framework underpinning the Taking Charge scale synthesizes perspectives from social cognitive theory, expectancy motivation models, and role theory.
Social Cognitive Theory and Self-Efficacy
Drawing on Albert Bandura‘s (1997) Social Cognitive Theory, Morrison and Phelps posited that initiating organizational change carries substantial interpersonal and professional risk. Challenging established norms can evoke resistance from peers, defensive reactions from supervisors, and potential reputational costs if changes fail. Consequently, individuals do not initiate change-oriented actions without a strong belief in their personal capabilities. The authors demonstrated that general self-efficacy is a vital psychological catalyst, providing the cognitive resilience and performance confidence necessary to persist in the face of inevitable bureaucratic or interpersonal friction.
Expectancy Theory and Psychological Calculus
According to Vroom’s Expectancy Theory (1964), individuals engage in behaviors when they perceive a probability that their efforts will lead to successful performance (expectancy) and that such performance will yield valued outcomes (instrumentality and valence). Taking charge involves a deliberate cognitive calculus regarding two key psychological states:
- Felt Responsibility for Change: An internalized psychological obligation to initiate constructive change. Employees who score high on felt responsibility view organizational improvement not merely as a managerial duty, but as a personal moral imperative.
- Perceived Organizational Support and Management Openness: Employees assess whether leadership is receptive to change. When top management displays openness to ideas, employees calculate that the likelihood of successful implementation is high and the likelihood of punitive retribution is low.
Role Theory and Flexible Role Boundaries
Classical role theory suggests that individuals adhere to prescribed behavioral norms governed by organizational scripts. However, modern proactive work frameworks demonstrate that high-performing individuals possess expanded role definitions (Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 2006). The Taking Charge scale assumes that employees cognitively redefine their role boundaries, viewing proactive problem-solving and institutional redesign as integral facets of their professional identity.
Validity
The psychometric validity of the Taking Charge scale has been rigorously documented across multiple empirical investigations.
Construct and Structural Validity
In the foundational investigation conducted by Morrison and Phelps (1999) across a sample of 275 professional and managerial employees in a major commercial financial institution, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) demonstrated strong structural validity. All 10 items converged cleanly onto a single, dominant factor explaining a major proportion of shared variance, with no significant secondary cross-loadings. Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses in organizational literature consistently establish that a unidimensional model provides an excellent fit to observed data across diverse industries.
Discriminant Validity
A crucial empirical milestone was establishing that taking charge is distinct from established performance dimensions. Morrison and Phelps (1999) conducted joint factor analyses incorporating items assessing in-role performance, civic virtue (e.g., attending non-mandatory meetings), and altruism (e.g., helping colleagues with heavy workloads). Taking charge items consistently separated into an independent factor, confirming that challenging the status quo is psychometrically distinct from traditional, affiliative organizational citizenship behaviors (Organ, 1988).
Nomological and Convergent Validity
The scale demonstrates robust relationships with theoretical antecedents and correlates:
- General Self-Efficacy: Substantial positive correlation, confirming that confidence in one’s agentic capability drives proactive intervention.
- Felt Responsibility for Change: Strong, significant positive correlation, serving as the primary cognitive mediator between organizational climate variables and proactive behavior.
- Top Management Openness: Significant positive association with environmental receptivity, indicating that taking charge thrives in psychologically safe climates.
- Expert Power and Organizational Level: Positively correlated with an employee’s hierarchical rank and specialized technical competence, indicating that behavioral initiation is enabled by organizational standing and cognitive resources.
Reliability
The Taking Charge scale demonstrates outstanding reliability parameters across varied administrative configurations:
Internal Consistency
The internal consistency of the 10-item measure is consistently high across independent samples. In the original validation studies by Morrison and Phelps (1999), coefficient alpha (α) values ranged from .93 to .95. Subsequent studies across public and private sectors worldwide regularly report Cronbach’s alpha values exceeding .90, demonstrating high item homogeneity and minimal measurement error.
Inter-Rater Reliability (Multi-Source Assessment)
Because taking charge was primarily designed to be assessed via other-reports (such as peers or supervisors) to mitigate common method bias, Morrison and Phelps evaluated multi-rater convergence. In instances where multiple co-workers provided ratings for a single focal employee, the authors computed intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). The median ICC across employee evaluations was .36. While an ICC of .36 reflects moderate agreement—typical of peer evaluation contexts where individual raters observe focal individuals across differing work scenarios—aggregating multiple rater assessments produces an inter-rater reliability coefficient (Spearman-Brown corrected) that exceeds standard psychometric thresholds for applied research.
Factor Analysis
Empirical evaluations of the latent factor structure of the 10-item Taking Charge scale have repeatedly supported a single-factor (unidimensional) structure.
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
In the seminal 1999 study, an unconstrained principal axis factor analysis with oblique rotation was conducted on the 10 items. A single factor emerged with an eigenvalue substantially exceeding unity (eigenvalue > 5.0), accounting for the overwhelming majority of total variance. Factor loadings for individual items were uniform and high, spanning from approximately .70 to .88, with no meaningful secondary cross-loadings. The items effectively indexed actions ranging from micro-level job modifications to macro-level structural adjustments, all driven by a common latent proactivity factor.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
Subsequent investigations employing Confirmatory Factor Analysis in structural equation modeling frameworks (e.g., Parker & Collins, 2010; Grant & Ashford, 2008) have compared the baseline one-factor model against multi-factor alternatives. Typical goodness-of-fit indices for the unidimensional model demonstrate strong data fit:
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Typically ≥ .94 to .98
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically ≥ .93 to .97
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Typically ≤ .05 to .07
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Typically ≤ .03 to .05
Comparative model testing against multidimensional specifications (such as separating individual-oriented change from organization-oriented change) confirms that the parsimonious single-factor model remains the most statistically justifiable and theoretically coherent representation.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The Taking Charge scale is an observer-report or self-report psychometric instrument designed for rapid, reliable assessment of proactive change behavior.
- Test Type: Psychometric behavioral rating scale (Other-report / Peer-report standard; Self-report and Supervisor-report adapted).
- Item Count: 10 items.
- Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type frequency scale:
- 1 = very infrequently
- 2 = infrequently
- 3 = sometimes
- 4 = frequently
- 5 = very frequently
- Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
- Scoring Protocol: All 10 items are positively worded; there are no reverse-scored items. A composite score is calculated by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean of all 10 responses (sum of items divided by 10). Higher composite scores (ranging from 1.00 to 5.00) reflect higher frequencies of taking charge behavior.
- Administrative Practice: When utilizing peer evaluations, obtaining ratings from at least two to three co-workers per focal employee and computing the mean is recommended to ensure robust measurement reliability.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Taking Charge scale was developed and published in 1999 by Elizabeth W. Morrison and Corey C. Phelps. The scale items originally appeared in the Academy of Management Journal (Vol. 42, No. 4, Table 1, p. 410).
The copyright is held by the Academy of Management. For non-commercial academic research and scholarly educational purposes, researchers routinely access and utilize the scale provided appropriate bibliographic citation is maintained. Commercial applications, inclusion in published test batteries, or organizational consulting programs requiring formal reproduction often require formal copyright clearance through the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) or the Academy of Management permissions office.
References
- Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
- Bateman, T. S., & Crant, J. M. (1993). The proactive component of organizational behavior: A measure and correlates. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14(2), 103–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030140202
- Grant, A. M., & Ashford, S. J. (2008). The dynamics of proactivity at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 28, 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2008.04.002
- Morrison, E. W., & Phelps, C. C. (1999). Taking charge at work: Extra-role efforts to initiate workplace change. Academy of Management Journal, 42(4), 403–419. https://doi.org/10.2307/256939
- Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington Books.
- Parker, S. K., & Collins, C. G. (2010). Taking stock: Integrating and differentiating multiple proactive behaviors. Journal of Management, 36(3), 633–662. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206308321554
- Parker, S. K., Wall, T. D., & Jackson, P. R. (2006). “That’s not my job”: Developing flexible employee work orientations. Academy of Management Journal, 40(4), 899–929. https://doi.org/10.5465/256952
- Van Dyne, L., & LePine, J. A. (1998). Helping and voice extra-role behaviors: Evidence of construct and predict validity. Academy of Management Journal, 41(1), 108–119. https://doi.org/10.2307/256902
- Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. John Wiley & Sons.