Research On The Formation And Effect Of Humble Leadership

In recent years,because leader arrogance and blind overconfidence have been identified as reasons leading to organization moral scandal and wrong decision-making,which impel managers and researchers to shift their focus to the leader's behaviors of knowing themselves objectively,admitting their mistakes and limitations.Meanwhile,along with the arrival of internet plus times,the limited of leader's knowledge and ability gradually become an obstacle to the development of the organization.Under this condition,leader needs to be more depended on employee's ability and keep study modestly to effectively cope with changes in the external environment.Humble leadership(HL)is the form of leaderships that leader spotlights follower strengths,acknowledges personal limits,faults and mistakes,and learns modestly,which can prevent the extremes of leader behaviors,and improve leader's and follower's mutual development and growth.Although scholars have begun to launch researches on the HL,those researches have mainly focus on the effects of HL,the existing knowledge on the formation mechanism of the HL remains incomplete in Chinese organizational context.At the same time,in the research of the effectiveness of HL,on one hand,a small body of research has discussed the benefits of HL in stimulating team distal output.However,the importance of team innovation in improving the innovation of organizations is widely recognized in the era of internet plus,which is benefit for coping with the pressure of organization innovation and reforming.Thus,it is necessary to explore the effects of the HL on team creativity under the perspective of “model of learning”.On the other hand,a significant body of research has explored the relationship between HL and employee's attitudes and behaviors,while no studies have examined the effect of HL on employee performance at the individual level.In fact,as opposed to other employee output,employee performance is an important factor that can directly measure the effectiveness of leadership behavior,which has impact on the acquisition of organizational competitive advantage.Therefore,it is necessary for us to make a systematic analysis of the influencing mechanism of HL on employee performance.On the basis of previous research on HL,firstly,this study constructs the framework of the formation mechanism of the HL based on trait activation theory.Secondly,this study establishes the concept model of humble leadership's effectiveness mechanism at the team level drawing on social information processing theory.Finally,this study builds the theoretical model of humble leadership's effectiveness mechanism at the individual level using self-determination theory.Through these three theoretical models,we solve three unresolved questions,such as(1)the cause of HL,namely,exploring the antecedents and formation mechanism of the HL(the third chapter);(2)humble leadership's effectiveness mechanism at the team level,namely,examining the impact of HL on team creativity(the fourth chapter);(3)humble leadership's effectiveness mechanism at the individual level,namely,analyzing the influencing mechanism of HL on employee performance(the fifth chapter).Specifically,this study consists of three logical and closely related sub-issues.Study1 examined the antecedents and formation mechanism of the HL.Combining with the essential element(model of learning)of HL,this study analyzed the relationship between leader traits(openness to experience,learning goal orientation and proactive personality)and HL,by exploring the moderating role of climate for inclusion at the team level.Then,a field study was conducted to test the hypothesis.Results from study showed that leader's openness to experience and learning goal orientation were positively related to HL,In addition,the climate for inclusion had adjusting effect on the relationship between the leader's openness to experience,learning goal orientation and HL: the higher the level of climate for inclusion,the stronger the relationship between leader's traits(openness to experience,learning goal orientation)and HL.Study2 explored the impact of HL on team creativity.Taking as the theoretical basis of the social information processing theory,we probed the mechanism of the influence of the HL on team creativity,in particular,the mediating role of team member's common perception and the moderating role of task characteristics and employee's perception.After that,Results from multisource surveys from 2 time points(three months)shows that(1)team learning climate mediated the relationship between HL and team creativity.(2)Leaders' perceived emotional sincerity moderated the relationships between HL and team learning climate.(3)Task complexity moderated the relationship between HL and team learning climate,and team learning climate mediated the relationship between HL and team creativity when task complexity is much higher.Study3 investigated how HL enhanced employee performance.Firstly,according to self-determination theory,this paper argued the mediating role of the three psychological needs(autonomy need,competence need,relatedness need)satisfaction,as well as the moderating role of the work unit structure.Secondly,this study conducted experimental(sub-study 1)to validate the causal relationship between HL and three psychological needs satisfaction,and the moderating role of work unit structure.Thirdly,multisource survey design(sub-study 2)was used to examine the mediating role of three psychological needs satisfaction,and the moderated mediation effects.Finally,two studies revealed that(1)HL was positively related to three types of psychological need satisfaction.(2)The need for competence fulfillment only mediated the relationship between HL and employee task performance,all three needs mediated the relationship between HL and employee creative performance.(3)Work unit structure moderated the relationships between HL and autonomy need satisfaction,competence need satisfaction,relatedness need satisfaction,respectively,such that the relationships were stronger in organic than in mechanistic work unit structures.(4)Autonomy need satisfaction,relatedness need satisfaction and competence need satisfaction mediated the relationships more significantly between HL and employee task performance and creative performance when work unit structures were more organic.Accordingly,our study makes several theoretical contributions.First,this study is among the first to synthesize the leader traits(openness to experience,learning goal orientation,proactive personality)and HL by using trait activation theory to identify team inclusion climate as a potential boundary condition for the leader traits in stimulating HL,which aim to contribute to a better understanding of the contextual and trait antecedents of HL.Second,by identifying team learning climate as influence channels of team-focused HL,our study addresses the need for research on team-level mechanism that connect HL to team creativity based on social information processing theory,and contributes to the broader literature on HL with regard to the team level.Besides,it provides a more comprehensive understanding of how task characteristics and employee's perception can foster the conditions that promote team learning climate,which enriches the boundary conditions of HL.Third,this study examines the differential effects of basic psychological needs in linking HL to different kinds of employee performance,which may provides valuable insights into why HL can be linked to such a wide variety of desirable employee outcomes and contribute to the outcomes of HL at the individual level.Futheremore,Oc et al.(2015)called for research on possible moderators on HL,and we answer Oc et al.'s(2015)calls by introducing the influence of work unit structure on the emergence and impact of employee performance.In doing so,we complement existing research on HL to show how its associated processes are amplified,bounded,or neutralized by a ubiquitous feature of the organizational context.