Investigation Of The Effects Of Humble Leadership On The Employees' Silence Behavior

Employee silence hinders the timely transmission of management information,reduces the efficiency and decision-making quality of organizations,and causes irreparable losses to organizations' long-term development.It has become a huge barrier for the process of organizational change.To adapt to the complicate and changeable environment,Chinese enterprises must consider the silence of employees as an important issue that has to be addressed.Employees,who are directly responsible for the organization' s potential defects,have the right of voicing in the improvement of organizational issues.Leaders are the problem solvers,the defenders of potential problems and the deciders of their staff' s career development.Leaders' attitude directly affects employees' willingness to open their hearts and break the silence.Plenty of works have been done to study humble Leadership,but few studies focus on the impact of humble leadership on employee silence.So the purpose of this study is to explore the mechanism of how humble leadership influences employee silence,which is mediated by psychological safety under the circumstance of power distance.This paper firstly sorted out the existing literature of humble leadership,psychological safety,employee silence,power distance,and formed the research framework based on social exchange theory,leadership theory and affective events theory.Secondly,this paper focused on the mechanism of how humble leadership affects employee silence,which is mediated by psychological safety under the circumstance of power distance.And then we put forward the hypotheses and research model.Thirdly,this paper obtained the formal questionnaire through compiling and modifying the initial questionnaire,and then carried out the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.Finally,the tests of the reliability,validity,variance,correlation and hierarchical regression had been used to validate the hypotheses and exam the research model.Research results show that control variables differently affect humble leadership,psychological safety,employee silence and power distance.Humble leadership has significantly negative effect on employee silence,and psychological safety has significantly negative effect on employee silence.Psychological safety partially mediates the relationship between humble leadership and employee silence.Power distance has a moderating effect on the relationship between humble leadership and employee silence.Finally,according to the results of empirical research,the paper puts forward several managerial suggestions in cultivating the humble qualities of leaders,improving the employee' s psychological security and view individual characteristics contingently.