Leader Humility Research Articles

Leader Sex and Employee Power Distance Orientation as Boundary Conditions of the Relationship between Leader Humility and Leader-Member Exchange

ABSTRACT This study draws upon social information processing theory to investigate two boundary conditions of the effect of leader humility on follower perceptions of leader-member exchange, namely, leader sex and employee power-distance orientations. Using 496 supervisor-employee dyads from China, we find a positive relationship between leader humility and follower perceptions of leader-member exchange, and confirm the moderating effects of leader sex and employee power-distance orientations. Specifically, the positive relationship between leader humility and follower perceptions of leader-member exchange is enhanced for male leaders but diminished for female leaders, and is also stronger for employees who have lower power-distance orientations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Leader Humility and Challenging and Supportive Voice: The Role of Different Motivation

Leader humility has recently emerged as an important topic for the development of organizations. Taking a motivational perspective, the present research investigates the motivational effects of leader humility, and uncovers how humble leaders influence subordinates’ different types of voicing behavior through triggering different motivations. By collecting data of 152 leader-subordinate dyads through survey method, the results revealed that, as predicted, leader humility was positively related with both employees’ prosocial motivation and organizational concern motivation. Meanwhile, these two motivations play mediating roles in explaining how leader humility can positively affect employee supportive voice and challenging voice. It is noteworthy that leader humility, which features interpersonal experience and highlighting value and strength of others, are more likely to trigger employees’ prosocial motivation and thus influence their voicing behavior. This research extends the theoretical understanding of leader humility, motivation and workplace voice. Practical implications and limitation of the results are also discussed.

How stakeholders’ CSR attribution is formed: The role of leader humility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research at the micro-level is receiving increased interest and attention in academic and managerial circles. However, much of the existing literature ignores an important factor in micro-CSR research—CSR attribution. In addition, compared with analyzing the influence of CSR attribution on stakeholders’ attitudes and behavior, understanding how stakeholders form different attributional explanations is not yet well understood. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the formation of stakeholders’ CSR attributions. Drawing upon social information processing theory and the literature on leader humility, this article aims to analyze how leader humility and stakeholders’ received CSR cues interactively influence the formation of stakeholders’ CSR attribution. Specifically, we propose that leader humility and stakeholders’ received CSR cues interactively influence their CSR attribution through underlying mechanism of perception of selflessness. This article extends existing research on literatures of CSR, CSR attribution and leader humility, and can help companies to manage stakeholdes’ scepticism more effectively.

How and when leader humility encourages follower leadership potential

Leader humility has received increasing attention in research and practice in recent years; however, little is known regarding whether leader humility can foster followers’ leadership potential. Drawing on expectation states theory and using data collected from 216 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we investigate how and when leader humility can foster followers’ leadership potential. Results indicate that leader humility promotes followers’ leadership potential (i.e., followers’ motivation to lead and taking-charge behaviors) via the followers’ perception of their own workplace status. However, the aforementioned effects occur only among those followers who are high in individualistic orientation. Our research offers novel theoretical and practical insights into consequences of leader humility.

Antecedents and outcomes of Follower Moqi: Leader Humility, Follower Humility, and Knowledge Hiding

Contrasted to most leadership research which treated followers either as non-existent or as passive entities, follower moqi enriches followership literature by stressing followers’ active role in co-creating leadership and outcomes with leaders. Given the effectiveness of follower moqi in the leadership process, we integrated social information processing theory to explore its antecedents and outcomes. Specifically, we hypothesized that leader humility is positively related to follower moqi; follower moqi, in turn, decreases knowledge hiding; this mechanism of follower moqi is moderated by follower humility so that leader humility increases more follower moqi with higher follower humility. Our results supported our hypotheses in a muti-wave time-lagged study of 315 leader-follower dyads. Overall, our research highlights that leader humility has a stronger effect on follower moqi under the context of higher follower humility. In addition, follower moqi in turn decreases knowledge hiding. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are presented and discussed.

How and When Does Leader Humility Enhance Employee Proactive Career Behavior

In this research, we drew upon implicit leadership theory to examine the joint effects of leader humility, follower power distance, and follower narcissism on proactive career behavior via perceived leader competence. Specifically, we proposed that leader humility would be perceived as more competent for the employees with lower power distance; we also proposed two competing predictions about the interactive effect of leader humility and follower narcissism on leader competence from two different theoretical perspectives (i.e., opposite-attraction perspective vs. similar-attraction perspective). We tested our hypotheses using a multi-waves and time-lagged survey with 281 subordinate-supervisor dyads from 87 teams. The results of our studies demonstrate that the followers with low power distance and low narcissism are more likely to perceive higher leader humility to be more competent and thus increase their proactive career behavior. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Humble Leadership and Team Innovation: a moderated mediation

Although there is growing scholarly attention towards the positive effects of leader humility on team outcomes, extent research has failed to consider whether and how humble leadership influences team innovation. In this research, we propose a moderated mediation model to explain the relationship between humble leadership and team innovation. Integrating social learning theory and leader humility literature, we hypothesize that when a humble leader leads a team, the team followers are more likely to reconsider their strategies, review past events with self-awareness, share diverse information and adapt to new ideas, which in turn promotes team innovative activities. Moreover, consistent with research emphasizing the inclusion of team culture in exploring leader-innovation relationships, we investigate the moderating role of expertise diversity in the above positive indirect effect. We test the model by using both survey and archival data that was collected from 135 teams of 25 medium-to -large -sized firms in the internet technology industry in China. Findings largely support our theoretical assertions, suggesting that humble leadership has important implications for team process and innovation.

Bringing Leading Back in Leadership: Behavioral Approaches to Leadership

This symposium seeks to highlight recent trends away from stylistic approaches to more concrete behavioral approaches of leadership (van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Papers in this symposium advance knowledge in this area through a methodologically inclusive lens by synthesizing major streams of research on how leaders’ blaming behavior affects followers, examining how leader awareness can affect organizational commitment, tackling the paradox of leader humility, expanding our understanding of how leaders can care for the well-being of others during times of suffering, and establishing ways leaders can increase their wise reasoning. The purpose of this symposium is to highlight emerging leadership research that utilizes behavioral approaches, with the aim of facilitating greater consideration of the possibilities and consequences around leadership behaviors and their implications for leadership development.

Leader Humility and Employees’ Accountability During The Pandemic

One way of achieving work effectivity is by making sure employees show accountability. Accountability is becoming even more important during the pandemic, where organizations are forced make their employees work from home. This study aims to identify the process of how leaders and organizations can shape accountability. This research argues that leader humility may enhance employee’s perceived organizational support which eventually shaped employee’s accountability. This study was conducted toward 145 employees from a state-owned company in Jabodebek area via an online survey. This study finds (1) leader humility positively affect employee’s accountability; (2) leader humility positively affects perceived organizational support; (3) perceived organizational support positively affect employee’s accountability; (4) perceived organizational support significantly mediated the relationship between leader humility and accountability. The mediation model predicts 27% of accountability’s variance and is able to provide contribution to accountability’s studies that leader and organizational aspects are essentials in affecting accountability.

Watching you descend, I help others rise: the influence of leader humility on prosocial motivation

AbstractThe fundamental nature of humility and prosocial motivation entails transcending self-interest to enact behaviors that benefit others. We theorize that leader humility may enact a self-transcendent contagion effect that will manifest in enhanced follower prosocial motivation. Due to the fundamental nature of humility, this construct holds great promise in understanding how contextual signals (i.e., leader behaviors) shape prosocial motivation in followers. In this study, we find that leader humility impacts follower prosocial motivation through followers' perception of work meaningfulness. Specifically, we found that leader humility is positively related to prosocial motivation. We also found that this relationship is mediated by followers' perception of work meaningfulness, and that this mediation is moderated by followers' perception of relational vitality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Humility in novice leaders: links to servant leadership and followers’ satisfaction with leadership

ABSTRACT Across two studies, we investigated connections between leader humility, servant leadership, and follower satisfaction. Leaders were resident and spiritual life advisors in on-campus housing at a university. In Study 1, we assessed leaders’ self-reported expressed humility, intellectual humility, and servant leadership at three times across six months. Leader humility did not change across time, but aspects of both forms of leader humility were positively associated with servant leadership. In Study 2, leaders were rated by their followers. Leaders reporting more respect for diverse viewpoints, a characteristic of intellectual humility, had followers who were more satisfied with their leaders’ interpersonal leadership and justice orientation. This research suggest potential benefits to cultivating humility among novice leaders in some contexts.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Exploring the Relationship Between Leader Humility and Unethical Behavior

Prior research on the effects of leader humility implies that the more humility the leader exhibits, the greater the positive effect on recipients (e.g., followers and teams). However, little or no attention has so far been paid to the effects on the actors (e.g., leaders), who espouse humble behavior. In response to recent calls to theorize and examine how humility impacts these actors, this research draws on moral licensing theory, adopting an actor-centric approach to examine the mechanisms through which leader humility can lead to unethical behavior, such as unethical behavior for an organization (pseudobeneficial) and unethical behavior toward the organization (detrimental). Ultimately, we propose leader relational accountability as a moderator to mitigate the moral licensing effect of humble leaders. Results from a survey study provide support for the proposed hypotheses.

Why and when do employees become more proactive under humble leaders? The roles of psychological need satisfaction and Chinese traditionality

PurposeDrawing on self-determination theory, this study explored how leader humility affected employees' proactive behavior through satisfying their psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Furthermore, based on a contingency view, this paper suggested Chinese traditionality as a significant boundary condition for the effects of leader humility.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 465 employees and 111 direct supervisors in China using a three-wave, two-source design. Hierarchical regression analyses and Hayes' PROCESS macro were applied to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicated that leader humility positively affected employee proactive behavior through the mediating mechanisms of psychological need satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness). Furthermore, these positive effects were stronger among employees with lower Chinese traditionality beliefs.Originality/valueAlthough prior research has examined the relationship between leadership and proactive behavior, most extant studies have focused on “top-down” leadership approaches, ignoring the effect of leader humility. Drawing on self-determination theory, the present study makes contributions to both the leader humility research and proactivity literature by identifying psychological need satisfaction as the mechanism and Chinese traditionality as the moderator.

Antecedents and consequences of follower moqi: leader humility, follower humility, and knowledge hiding

Antecedents and consequences of follower moqi: leader humility, follower humility, and knowledge hiding

Linking leader humility to employee creative performance: Work engagement as a mediator

In this study we identified leader humility as a critical leader characteristic relevant to promoting employee creative performance, and examined work engagement as a mediator of this relationship. Data were collected from 41 supervisors and 237 subordinates employed at 15 high-tech firms in China, who completed a survey. Structural equation modeling results revealed a partial mediation model in which leader humility was positively related to employee creative performance both directly and indirectly via work engagement. These results suggest that leaders of organizations should be encouraged to practice humility and that managerial interventions should be implemented to stimulate employees to feel engaged in their work.

Investigating the effect of leader humility on subordinates’ service creativity: a moderated dual path model

Investigating the effect of leader humility on subordinates’ service creativity: a moderated dual path model

리더 겸손이 구성원의 지식공유에 미치는 영향 - 리더에 대한 충성도의 매개역할과 리더 전문성의 조절역할 -

This study examined the factor that promote the subordinate’s knowledge sharing as a source of competitive advantage of organizations. This study was conducted with the following three research objectives. First, we would like to present the value of leader humility that promotes knowledge sharing by empirically confirming that relationship. Second, we investigated the mediating role of the loyalty to supervisor in the impact of leader humility on knowledge sharing. By doing so, we would like to find the specific process of influence of leader humility. Third, we examined the boundary conditions of leader humility effects by checking leader expertise as a factor that can control the impact of leader humility. A survey was collected data from military members in the Navy, Republic of Korea. A total of 196 matched dyadic data was used for analysis. Major findings of the study are as follows. First, based on the social exchange theory, the results showed the positive relationship between leader humility and knowledge sharing. Through this, we demonstrated the leadership function of leader humility. Second, based on social exchange theory and implicit leadership theory, the effect of leader humility on knowledge sharing was mediated by subordinates’ loyalty to supervisor. This results provided a lesson on why leaders should show humility to increase employee’s knowledge sharing. Finally, this results supported the moderated mediation hypothesis, verifying that the magnitude of the indirect effect was changed by the level of leader expertise. This suggests that leaders need to be both humble and competent to be effective. In the last section, we discuss the limitations and the future direction of the study.

Are Relationally Transparent Leaders More Receptive to the Relational Transparency of Others? An Authentic Dialog Perspective

Using a sample of 114 leaders (described by 516 team members), we show empirically that the association between leader relational transparency and leader receptiveness to relational transparency of team members is indirect (through leader respect) and conditional on leader humility. When a transparent leader expresses humility, he/she conveys respect to team members and is perceived as more receptive to the relational transparency of employees toward him/her. The indirect association between leader relational transparency and leader receptiveness to the relational transparency of team members is negative, however, when the leader is perceived as non-humble. Our paper contributes to discussion about the limits of relational transparency as an indicator of authentic leadership. We suggest that what is often described as relational transparency is no more than unidirectional transparency—from leaders to followers. We conclude that transparency (and authenticity) in leaders is relational only when it is bidirectional.

Humble leader behavior and team creativity: the team learning perspective

PurposeThis study argues that leader humility is an important facilitator of team creativity. Based on social learning theory, the study explores a new mechanism that links humble leader behavior to team creativity through a path of team learning.Design/methodology/approachData were collected in two private-owned technology companies located in South China. The two-time survey included 77 team leaders and 310 employees. An analysis of time-lagged, multisource data was conducted.FindingsEvidence shows that humble leader behavior promotes team learning behavior through a social learning process, with a subsequent increase in team creativity. This influence is also strengthened when leader effectiveness is high.Practical implicationsTeam creativity is an important determinant of organizational success. This research shows that humble leaders can motivate team creativity by acting as a role model. In addition, this research also reminds us that humble leader behavior loses its effect if the leader is incapable.Originality/valueThis research contributes to existing literature on humble leader behavior and team creativity, especially on the mechanisms and contingency effects between these factors.

Nurturing service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior among tourism employees through leader humility

Though the effectiveness of leader humility has been established, does leader humility activate followers to serve customers in the tourism sector beyond their assigned roles? Our study aims to address this question by drawing upon the conservation of resources theory to propose that leader humility promotes service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (service-oriented OCB) among tourism employees through the mediating role of their job crafting. Our study further assumes the moderating role of socially responsible human resource practices (SRHR practices) for the relationship between leader humility and employee job crafting. Utilizing a two-wave research design, the study garnered the data from 894 employees and 136 managers working in tour companies based in Vietnam. The analysis of the data via the multilevel structural equation modelling lent credence to the proposed research model. Our study not only advances the leadership humility literature in the tourism discipline but also provides a guideline for practitioners on how to optimally adopt leader humility in promoting service-oriented OCB among tourism employees.