Leader Humility, and Subordinates’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Withdrawal Behavior: Exploring the Mediating Mechanisms of Subordinates’ Psychological Capital

Qiang Jiang,Meijuan Zhang,Xiaoye Qian

doi:10.3390/ijerph17072544

Qiang Jiang, Meijuan Zhang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072544

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Abstract

As a bottom-up leadership style, leader humility has received considerable attention from researchers. Among the abundant studies revealing the positive impact of leader humility on employees’ work attitude and behaviors, there is less knowledge on how leader humility influences subordinates’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and withdrawal behavior. On the basis of the social information processing theory, this study proposed a cross-level mediation model and examined the direct impact of leader humility on subordinates’ OCB and withdrawal behavior. We also further explored the underlying psychological mechanism and examined the mediating effect of psychological capital on these relationships. Using a two-wave panel design and 274 employees’ questionnaire data, the empirical analysis found that: (1) leader humility was positively related to subordinates’ OCB and negatively related to subordinates’ withdrawal behavior; (2) leader humility was positively related to subordinates’ psychological capital; and (3) psychological capital played a cross-level mediating role in the leader humility-subordinates’ OCB relationship and the leader humility-subordinates’ withdrawal behavior relationship. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Highlights

The world is becoming increasingly complex and dynamic, with rapid changes in the political, economic, market, and technological environment, and “new thinking and new approaches have become necessary for organizations to survive and to create sustainable growth and development” [1].To achieve and maintain healthy development in such an environment, it is crucial for enterprises to have good leaders who can foster subordinates’ positive psychological strength, guide and motivate them to exhibit positive work behavior, and reduce negative work behaviors [2]
Behaviors, and negatively related to undesirable behaviors. Consistent with these arguments, we propose the idea that subordinates’ perceptions of leader humility may create positive work conditions necessary for subordinates’ psychological capital (PsyCap) to flourish, which, in turn, will promote subordinates to engage in more organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) [10,48] and fewer withdrawal behaviors [48]
Before testing the proposed hypotheses, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the discriminant validity of the four latent variables: leader humility, PsyCap, OCB, and withdrawal behavior

Summary

Introduction

To achieve and maintain healthy development in such an environment, it is crucial for enterprises to have good leaders who can foster subordinates’ positive psychological strength, guide and motivate them to exhibit positive work behavior (such as organizational citizenship behavior, OCB), and reduce negative work behaviors (such as withdrawal behavior) [2]. The literature on leadership in recent years has been focusing on leader humility. Leader humility may help foster subordinates’ positive psychological strength, as it is a bottom-up leadership style. This will influence the employees’ work behaviors. Owens and Hekman [4] believe that humble leaders are better able

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