Abstract
The relationship between the leadership behavior of a chief executive officer (CEO) and start-up enterprise performance is key to effecting the survival and development of start-ups in the era of the internet economy. Currently, most studies on this topic focus more on the role of leadership effectiveness but rarely explore the CEO’s humility in leadership and the mechanism of its behavior affecting enterprise performance and its sustainable development. Based on leadership theory and upper-echelon theory, we build a research model of CEO’s humble leadership behavior, top management team’s (TMT’s) transactive memory system, and start-up enterprise performance, as well as the moderating roles exerted by strategic flexibility. Further, to validate the hypothesis, 400 valid questionnaires are obtained. Based on those data, the empirical results show humility, as a virtue, not only can significantly and positively improve start-up firm performance but also can promote the firm’s sustainable development in the long run by providing a trustworthiness climate for TMT members. Moreover, TMT’s transactive memory systems play a partial mediating role in the relationship between CEO’s humble leadership behavior and start-up enterprise performance. Meanwhile, strategic flexibility significantly and positively moderates the relationship between CEO’s humble leadership behavior and startup entrepreneurial performance. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.
Highlights
We explore the how chief executive officer (CEO) humility affects a start-up firm’s performance with top management team (TMT)’s transactive memory system (TMS) and strategic flexibility as intervening variable
The conclusions of this study are as follows: (1) The present study shows the mechanism where CEO’s humble leadership behavior has a positive effect on start-up enterprise performance
The humble CEO creates an inclusive organizational learning climate within the organization, which is conducive to the improvement of start-up enterprise performance and provides the foundation for firm sustainable development
Summary
With the development of the global internet economy and a rapidly changing business environment, sustainable development in enterprise has been of great interest among corporate leaders. Under the complex and volatile business environment, start-up corporation are facing huge risks and challenges in the process of innovation and sustainable development [1]. Recent studies have manifested that CEO’s demographic characteristics including gender, age, and education background and the CEO’s psychological traits such as overconfident personality, humility, and optimism have direct or indirect effects on decision-making, which would further influence the firm’s sustainable performance [2,3,4]. Humility is considered as the one of virtues that effectively facilitate the transition to a more sustainable economic mode to face complex environmental and social challenges [5]. In the case of a start-up, it is possible that a humble CEO could promote the firm’s financial performance in the short run and facilitate the firm’s sustainable development performance in the long run
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