Abstract: With the increasing environmental uncertainty, how to motivate knowledge workers' taking charge behavior has become a focus of researchers at home and abroad. Based on AMO theory and fsQCA method, this paper makes a two-stage survey of knowledge workers in 210 enterprises and explores the driving configuration of knowledge workers' taking charge behavior driven by multi-factors such as role breadth self-efficacy, prosocial motivation, empowering leadership, task significance and organizational support. It is found that the driving mechanism of knowledge workers' high taking charge behavior has six configurations, which can be summarized and integrated into three types: capability-driving based on leadership empowerment, capability-driving based on task guidance and motivation-driving based on leadership empowerment. The driving mechanism of knowledge workers' non high taking charge behavior has four configurations, which are divided into two types: self-efficacy deficiency and organizational support deficiency. And there is an asymmetric causal relationship with the driving configuration of high taking charge behavior. This paper reveals effective ways to motivate knowledge workers to take charge, which are helpful for enterprises to achieve sustainable development in the face of challenges and competition.

Key words: knowledge workers, taking charge, ability-motivation-opportunity theory, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis