Although career proactivity has positive consequences for an individual's career success,
studies mostly examine objective measures of success within single countries.
This raises important questions about whether proactivity is equally beneficial for
different aspects of subjective career success, and the extent to which these benefits
extend across cultures. Drawing on Social Information Processing theory, we examined
the relationship between proactive career behaviors and two aspects of subjective
career success—financial success and work‐life balance—and the moderating role
of national culture. We tested our hypotheses using multilevel analyses on a largescale
sample of 11,892 employees from 22 countries covering nine of GLOBE's 10
cultural clusters. Although we found that proactive career behaviors were positively
related to subjective financial success, this relationship was not significant for worklife
balance. Furthermore, career proactivity was relatively more important for subjective
financial success in cultures with high in‐group collectivism, high power distance,
and low uncertainty avoidance. For work‐life balance, career proactivity was
relatively more important in cultures characterized by high in‐group collectivism and
humane orientation. Our findings underline the need to treat subjective career success
as a multidimensional construct and highlight the complex role of national culture
in shaping the outcomes of career proactivity.