Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Humble Leadership On Employees' Helping Behavior

In recent years,traditional authoritarian leadership has gradually been incapable in adapting to the changes of organizational management environment.Humble leadership which emphasizes more on employees' opinions and development has received widespread attention.Being more tolerant of employees' mistakes and willing to take into account the employees' interests,humble leadership is likely to promote more prosocial helping behavior among employees.As one type of extra-role behavior that meets organizational expectations,helping behavior is beneficial to improve collaboration and work performance especially in a more complicated work setting.Based on the social exchange theory,this paper examines the mediating role of trust in supervisor between humble leadership and employees' helping behavior,as well as the moderating role of perceived organizational support.Humble leaders are willing to admit their inadequacy,recognize the strengths and contributions of employees,and attach importance to employees' development rather than blaming them for mistakes.Accordingly,employees are more likely to trust in humble leaders and tend to build a high-quality social exchange with the leaders.Based on the principle of reciprocity,employees thus would be more willing to engage in helping behaviors so as to enhance organizational functionality and reduce the burden for their leaders.Meanwhile,the employees' perceived organizational support works as contextual cues that might influence employees' decision of whether to help or not,and plays a moderating role in the process of humble leadership's effect on employees' helping behavior.The present study adopted a three-wave survey design,with one month interval between each wave.A total of 257 valid questionnaires were collected in this study and are tested to have good reliability and validity,and has no serious problem of common method bias.Results suggested that trust in supervisor mediates the positive relationship between humble leadership and employees' helping behavior.Moreover,employees' perceived organizational support moderates the impacts of employees' trust in supervisor on employees' helping behavior.Finally,employees' perceived organizational support moderates the indirect effect of trust in supervisor between humble leadership and proactive helping,whereas does not significantly moderate the indirect effect of humble leadership on reactive helping via trust in supervisor.This study has main theoretical and practical contributions include three aspects.First,revealing the mediating mechanism of trust in supervisor in the process of humble leadership influencing employees' helping behaviors,so as to expand the discussion of mechanism of humble leadership on employees' helping behaviors,and provide reference about how to promote employees to help colleagues.Second,this study helps to deepen the understanding of the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of humble leadership and clarify how perceived organizational support could promote or inhibit leadership effectiveness.Third,this study helps to increase the attention of enterprises in cultivating a humble leadership style and building an organizational support and trust atmosphere.