A Study of the Effect of Humble Leadership on R & D Employee Creativity

Abstract

As a new supportive leadership style, humble leadership has become one of the latest hotspots in leadership research, but its effectiveness research is still relatively scarce. As the main body of enterprise innovation, R & D employees require a higher level of autonomy and self fulfillment needs in their work. Therefore, the influence of humble leadership on R & D employee creativity is more prominent. This paper explores the influencing mechanism of humble leadership on employee creativity, and further examines the mediating role of employee psychological capital in the relationship between humble leadership & employee creativity and the moderating role of employee power distance in this relationship from the perspective of employees' self psychological cognition. Based on the data collected from a survey of 201 R & D employees, it uses structural equation model and hierarchical regression model to make the statistical analysis. It arrives at the results as follows:humble leadership is positively related to employee creativity; psychological capital plays a fully mediating role in the positive relationship between humble leadership and employee creativity; power distance negatively moderates the relationship between humble leadership and employee creativity, that is to say, the lower employee power distance is, the stronger the effect of humble leadership on employee creativity is. The findings enrich the scene effect mechanism of humble leadership effectiveness and provide a new insight for leaders to implement down-top humble leadership behavior to promote employee creativity in the context of Chinese organizations.