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How Humble Leadership Fosters Employee Innovation Behavior – A
Two-Way Perspective on the Leader-Employee Interaction
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the relationship between humble leadership
and employee innovation behavior and to investigate the mediating effects of core
self-evaluation and the moderating effects of leader political skill in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire data from a sample of 169
employee-leader dyads from technology enterprises in China were employed in this
research.
Findings – The results show that humble leadership positively affects employee
innovation behavior; moreover, employee core self-evaluation and leader political
skills play partial mediating and moderating roles, respectively, in the relationship
between humble leadership and employee innovation behavior.
Research limitations/implications – This study considered only the positive role of
humble leadership and not its negative effects in extreme cases, such as the perceived
weakness and inferiority of a humble leader, which may inhibit leadership
effectiveness. Future research may examine the excessive and/or negative effects of
humble leadership in an organization.
Practical implications – The findings of this study suggest that leaders should
maintain humility, develop certain political skills, and enhance employee core
self-evaluation to stimulate employee innovation behavior.
Originality value – Although humility has been understood as the core trait of
servant leadership, level-five leadership and participative leadership, humble
leadership as a new type of independent leadership style has yet to be thoroughly
investigated. In particular, there is limited empirical research examining the link
between humble leadership and employee innovation behavior.
Keywords: humble leadership; leader political skill; core self-evaluation; employee
innovation behavior
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1 Introduction
In Good to Great, Jim Collins surveyed companies that have maintained high
growth performance over the past century and showed that organizations with
sustainable high performance have something in common: that their leaders are truly
humble and focus on the interests of the organization (Collins, 2001). In practice,
entrepreneurs with humility typically exhibit good performance in managing their
companies. For the organization as a whole, leadership humility means not only
embodying certain personal qualities but also recognizing and appreciating
knowledge and guidance from the superego (Standish, 2007). The previous literature
also suggests that humble leadership can not only ensure leadership effectiveness by
deeply impacting employee identification but also maintain and promote the
organization's overall performance by enhancing solidarity among the
top management team (TMT) (Ou et al., 2014).
However, the literature on humble leadership and employee innovation remains
sparse and the linkage mechanism has not been well examined (Jeung and Yoon,
2016). Although humility has been acknowledged as the core trait of servant
leadership, level-five leadership and participative leadership, humble leadership as a
new type of independent leadership has not been the focus of academic interest over
an extended period (Owens et al., 2011). The purpose of this study was to investigate
whether humble leaders significantly improve the level of followers’ core
self-evaluation and to identify the conditions under which humble leadership is more
or less effective. We sought to investigate whether humble leaders operated differently
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in association with the moderation of leader political skill. The componential theory
of creativity posits that a staff's professional ability and internal motivations are the
dominant factors that inspire employee innovation behavior (Amabile and Mueller,
2008). Humble leaders admit their own shortcomings, appreciate the advantages of
and contributions made by their subordinates and learn from others. These features of
humble leadership will reduce a staff's psychological burden of innovation failure and
result in more psychological freedom, which may foster idea generation and
innovation behavior (Hennessey and Amabile, 2010).
This study contributes to the literature on humility in two fundamental ways.
First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the relationship
between humble leadership and core self-evaluation. In such an endeavor, we
highlight how humble leader behaviors link to intrinsic motivational aspects of
employee innovation. Further, we examine the moderating effects of leader-based
contingency factors in the humility-innovation relationship. Exploring contingencies
and identifying the underlying logic expand the present spectrum for humble
leadership.
2 Literature review and hypothesis
2.1 Literature review
2.1.1 Humble leadership
Humility is a stable and lasting positive human quality whose core characteristic
is its “other-enhancing” orientation (Chancellor and Lyubomirsky, 2013). In the past,
humility was perceived as a personal weakness (Morris, Brotheridge, & Urbanski,
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2005) and associated with “shyness, lack of ambition, passivity, or lack of
confidence” (Vera & Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004, p. 393). This emphasis on the negative
aspects of individuals shifted to positive organizational psychology, which highlights
the positive strength of individuals. Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez (2004) consider
humility “a critical strength for leaders and organizations possessing it, and a
dangerous weakness for those lacking it.” Nielsen, Marrone and Slay (2010) defined
the concept of humility as a “desirable personal quality that is an understanding of
oneself through awareness of personal identities, strengths, and limitations” (p. 34).
Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell (2013) defined “humility” as an inter-personal
characteristic that connotes (a) a willingness to view oneself accurately; (b) an
appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions; and (c) teachability, or openness
to new ideas and feedback (p. 1518). Owens and Hekman (2012) generalized three
categories of humble leader behavior: acknowledging limitations and mistakes,
recognizing followers’ strengths and contributions, and modeling teachability.
In summary, humble leadership is unique due to its focus on leaders’
transparency about their own developmental processes. Humble Leadership is a
bottom-up leadership approach that involves listening, observing others and learning
by doing. Empirical research on leader humility has emerged, suggesting that leader
humility fosters supportive organizational contexts, reinforces employee learning
orientation, job satisfaction, work engagement, and retention (Owens et al., 2013),
and tempers the ill effects of leader narcissism, leading to positive follower outcomes
(Owens, Wallace, & Waldman, 2015).
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2.1.2 Leader political skill
Political skills were first introduced into the organizational analysis by Preffer
(1981), who thought that individual political skills were directly related to the
organization’s acquisition and effective use of limited resources and were also
necessary for an individual’s organizational success. However, the study of political
skills as an important research field in organizational politics began only recently.
Western scholars such as Ferris have conducted pioneering research and have
proposed that political skills are effective in helping to better understand and
influence others and can thereby be used to realize both individual and organizational
objectives (Ferris et al., 2005). Leadership political skills can also help managers with
social acuity, behavioral flexibility, and behavioral adaptability, in addition to helping
improve staff performance and behavior, thus affecting the team atmosphere (Ahearn
et al., 2004). Leadership political skills are not meant as a derogatory term but are
instead neutral and even partly reassuring. Previous empirical research has suggested
that leadership political skills can not only help increase employee job satisfaction and
improve employee organizational commitment but also promote team performance
(Yang and Zhang, 2014).
2.1.3 Employee core self-evaluation
The concept of core self-evaluation (CSE) is closely related to appraisal theory,
which posits that emotion is perceived by individuals based on their own values,
needs or commitment and is a form of subconscious evaluation of objects, the self or
events. CSE is the basic evaluation of an individual’s potential value, efficiency and
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ability and is also a core trait that covers four dimensions, including self-esteem,
self-efficacy, neuroticism and the locus of control (Judge et al., 2003). The previous
literature has also suggested that CSE better predicts the relationship between
personality traits and work behavior. An individual with high CSE tends to be
characterized by strong internal motivation, positive cognition and coping style and
good abilities, in addition to more positive emotions, attitudes and reaction behaviors
(Chang et al., 2012).
2.2 Theoretical development and researchframework
The follower-centric approaches to leadership and self-expansion theory (Aron &
Aron, 1986) provided solid theory to explain how a humble leader fosters and
interacts with followers. The follower-centric approaches to leadership argued that
followers play an active role, activating a certain regulatory focus among leaders, thus
affecting a leaders’ behavior. Followers will behave properly to meet their leaders’
hopes and expectations (Uhl - Bien et al., 2014). In this way, followers are often
active, powerful players in the proper leadership process. In this study, humble
leadership is regarded as one specific kind of follower-centered leadership. Humble
leadership refers to a bottom-up leadership approach that considers followers as equal
and valuable partners (Owens & Hekman, 2012). Such leaders would develop
followers by promoting their performance and providing direction, support and
empowerment. Moreover, humble leaders pass success on to their subordinates
(Morris et al., 2005; Van Dierendonck, 2011). A leader’s humility, as perceived by
subordinates, affects his relationships, communications and level of trust with
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employees and management (Nielsen et al., 2010). These factors can in turn affect
employee commitment, engagement and performance.
Self-expansion theory (SET) reveals the inherent social-psychological nature of
leaders and followers (Dansereau et al., 2013). When humble leaders reallocate
resources and share similar perspectives, subordinates are more likely to incorporate
their leaders into the self. As such, an interpersonal inclusion will result in greater
self-efficacy and an enhanced sense of the self (Lewandowski & Ackerman, 2006).
Drawing from SET, we proposed and examined a theoretical model in which leader
humility would trigger followers' self-expansion process through their inclusion of
leader in self. This psychological change in followers would then enhance their core
self-efficacy and eventually benefit their innovation performance. The componential
theory of creativity also posits that employee internal innovation motivation is the
third factor that drives innovation (Amabile and Mueller, 2008). Therefore, this paper
would explore CSE as a mediator of the relationship between humble leadership and
employee innovation. Moreover, we also anticipated that the relationship between
leader humility and follower inclusion of leader in self would be strengthened when
the leaders have high political skill. To summarize the above analysis, the research
model employed in this study is shown in Figure 1.
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Insert Figure 1 about here
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2.3 Humble leadership and employee innovation behavior
A leader can express his immediate influence by directing and evaluating the
employees’ work and controlling their access to resources and information (Gupta &
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Singh, 2013). The essence of leadership in general lies in its ability to influence
employees’ willingness to engage in creative endeavors by creating a work context
(Anderson et al., 2004). Humble leaders can be regarded as one form of ambient
stimulus, and this stimulus exists widely in the whole organization and is recognized
by subordinates (Walters & Diab, 2016). Several factors have been found to be
beneficial for creativity, such as autonomy in work, challenging work tasks, support
for innovation, appreciation for creative work, feedback and treating employees as
partners by involving them in decision-making (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007). All
these factors are likely conducted by humble leaders because they acknowledge their
own limitations, appreciating follower’s strengths and modeling teachability.
First, when leaders acknowledge their own limitations (Owens & Hekman, 2012),
they signal to the team that it is human to not be perfect. Then, the subordinates feel
more safety with risk taking and perform innovative behavior, contribute creative
ideas, and question suggestions and decisions (Burke et al., 2006). Humble leadership
was also found to lead to a perceived legitimization of the employees’ developmental
journey that increases the psychological freedom and engagement of employees
(Owens & Hekman, 2012). Furthermore, employees’ perception of psychological
freedom was found by other researchers to be related to creativity and innovation (De
Jong & Den Hartog, 2007; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). Together, these factors
might stimulate more in-depth processing and innovative behaviors. Second, by
spotlighting and appreciating follower’s strengths, leaders foster a development
orientation and continuous small changes within the organization. Humble leaders
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who recognize and appreciate their employees’ knowledge and expertise are more
likely to appreciate employees’ creative efforts. This leadership style allows
employees to solve a problem or task because it is interesting or challenging to do so
rather than for external rewards (Owens & Hekman, 2012, p. 804). Third, modeling
teachability by showing an openness towards learning, by being a model for followers
and by considering alternative views is described as being most important for
followers to perceive uncertainty as less threatening (Owens & Hekman, 2012). This
leader behavior is a demonstration to the employees that their expertise is valued by
their leader and signals a degree of participation and involvement. Incorporating
subordinates’ ideas and suggestions into decisions leads to idea generation and
innovative output within the organization (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007, p. 49).
In short, humble leaders accept new things with an open mind, admit their own
defects and insufficiencies and are eager to learn from others, and humble leadership
has a significant impact on the process and results associated with organizational
learning (Owens and Hekman, 2012). Furthermore, humble leadership can lead to an
open mind that accepts criticism, creating an inclusive organizational atmosphere
(Delbecq, 2006). In turn, humble leadership makes it is easier to show supportive
behavior toward employee innovation. Thus, this study proposed the following
hypothesis:
H1: Humble leadership has a direct positive influence on employee innovation
behavior.
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2.4 Mediating role of employee core self-evaluation
CSE is the core component of employee self-concept and an advanced
personality concept that seeks to integrate the previous literature regarding personality
tendencies. Although studies have not yet systematically clarified the relationship
between employee CSE and innovation behavior, approach/avoidance theoretical
frameworks suggest that there might exist direct linkages between these factors.
Generally, CSE may have a direct effect on outcomes through a process of emotional
generalization, wherein positive self-views spill over to influence other outcomes (Joo
& Jo, 2017). First, high levels of CSE are associated with a strong approach
temperament and weak avoidance temperament (Ferris et al., 2011), which are
thought to drive the relation between personality traits and innovation behavior. For
example, high levels of CSE influence the extent to which people focus on positive
information, adopt goals directed toward approaching the unconventional and perform
innovative behaviors (Judge, Bono, Erez, & Locke, 2005). Second, CSE may affect
innovation behavior by influencing the cognitions people possess and the appraisals
they make regarding different attributes. Employees with high CSE have a more
positive self-concept and psychological resources; they are willing to keep learning
and to challenge themselves – traits closely associated with employee innovation
behavior. Therefore, such employees will set high goals for themselves and expend
greater efforts to achieve these goals (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2009). Third, CSE
may directly affect innovation behavior by influencing the actions in which
individuals engage (e.g., persisting in tasks). Individuals with high CSE have positive
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emotions that can affect personal interests in other matters and make them more
willing to accept challenging tasks and choose more creative solutions (Judge et al.,
2005; Chiang et al., 2014).
We also draw upon social interdependence theory, which states that people’s
beliefs about how their goals are related determine the way in which people interact.
Tarricone and Luca (2002) have found that positive interdependence between humble
leaders and their followers would motivate people to work towards the achievement
of goals. A leader’s humility, as perceived by subordinates, affects his relationships,
communications and level of trust with employees and management (Jeung and Yoon,
2016). These factors can in turn affect employee commitment, engagement and
performance. Tischler et al., (2016) regards humility as the core content of servant
leadership and verified the positive relationship between servant leadership and
employee CSE. Therefore, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
H2: Employee core self-evaluation plays a mediation role between humble
leadership and employee innovation behavior.
2.5 The moderation effect of leadership political skills
Leaders' political skills play a vital role in their management and organizational
decisions (Ferris et al., 2007). Politically adept leaders are highly competent in
manipulating stakeholders to ensure that their preferred strategic developments are
undertaken (Nwankwo & Richardson, 1996). As the political skill construct itself
involves interpersonal skills and social influence, supervisors' use of their political
skill could allow them to be very influential over their subordinates and other
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organization members and to ingratiate themselves in ways that do not appear
ingratiating but rather “appear sincere.” Indeed, Zaccaro (2002) argued that
‘‘. . .successful social influence by the leader requires the mastery of a range of skills
and the ability to select and apply them to the appropriate situation’’ (p. 45).
Drawing upon social interdependence theory and self-expansion theory, this
paper considers that the bidirectional influence between humble leaders and their
followers can be moderated by leaders’ political skills. First, leaders with high levels
of political skills are more likely to have highly developed interpersonal social skills
in terms of establishing friendships and building effective alliances (Rucker et al.,
2011). Humble leaders with highly developed political skills are more likely to gain
their employees' trust and recognition, and employees will be more willing to share
their new ideas and solutions with such a leader (Ferris et al., 2005). Second, leaders
with highly developed political skills generally have good communication and can
offer employees their understanding. In particular, such leaders can clearly understand
employee innovation intentions and give explicit feedback and timely praise, which
will better motivate employee innovation behavior (Tang et al., 2013). In addition,
humble leaders with better political skills can provide the necessary knowledge and
resources for employee innovation through their extensive social networks and can
provide the required support and help by means of their (outstanding) interpersonal
abilities (Treadway et al., 2004). To heighten the recognition of employees' innovation
behavior and to improve its promotion within the organization, humble leaders with
highly developed political skills present earlier stages of innovation work to more
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senior management (Bysted and Jespersen, 2014). In the aspect of empirical research,
Williams et al. (2017) found that servant leaders impact employee creativity by
fostering an environment that promotes workplace spirituality, and this relationship is
strengthened when leaders possesses high levels of political skills. Thus, this paper
proposed the following hypothesis:
H3: Leadership political skills moderate the relationship between humble
leadership and employee innovation behavior.
3 Research methodology
3.1 Data collection and sample characteristics
This paper collected data via questionnaire, primarily from knowledge workers
at 15 companies in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces in China. The enterprise
types include research and development, communication, electronics, biological
medicine, software and other industries. These types of enterprises are ideal samples
because their staff members must master certain types of knowledge and skills, have
strong autonomy and be involved in generating innovation. Before the survey, the
study’s research assistant communicated with the person in charge of the enterprise,
determined the department and staff list for data collection and then formulated codes
to ensure that the supervisor data matched those of their subordinates. In the process
of enterprise field investigation, the research group gathered the questionnaires
completed by employees with the assistance of the enterprises’ supervisory
departments. To avoid the potential impact of common method bias in the research,
we collected data from two separate sources (i.e., from both subordinates and their
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supervisors). Subordinates' questionnaires included items on humble leadership and
CSE, whereas supervisors' questionnaires covered leader political skills and employee
innovation behavior. After deleting blank and non-matched questionnaires, the
remaining effective samples were from 169 employees who came from 31
departments (a total of 200 copies of the questionnaire were initially distributed). The
effective completion rate of the sample was 84.5%. Of the 169 subordinates sampled,
70.4% were men, the average age was 33 years, the average working experience was
5.7 years, and 67.5% had received post-graduate degrees. The leaders of the 31
departments were 41 years old, on average; 77.4% of the leaders in our sample were
men, 83.8% had earned post-graduate degrees, and their average work experience was
11.5 years.
3.2 Variable measurement
The selected scales for the variables in this study were all drawn from studies
reported in top journals. According to the suggestions of Brislin (1970) and Harkness
(2003: p.37), in this paper, three bilingual professors translated the scale from English
to Mandarin and then back to English independently. Three other bilingual
researchers compared the back-translation with the original items. The authors
consulted with these bilingual researchers and adjudicated on which version to use
(Harkness, 2003: p.38). After a translation is completed, it is field tested to ensure that
participants will comprehend all questions. Human resources executives of the
participating company reviewed the questionnaire to ensure that the items suited the
respondents’ jobs. All the measurement items of humble leadership used the scale
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developed by Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell (2013), which includes three dimensions
(willingness to view oneself accurately, appreciation of others’ strengths, and
teachability) and nine items. Many scholars have confirmed that this scale has high
internal consistency. The measurement of political leadership skills came from the
measurement of six items adopted by Ahearn et al., (2004), and the internal
consistency of this scale was 0.89. The scale of employee CSE adopted the 12 items
for single-dimension measurement of Judge et al. (2003). The internal consistency of
this scale was 0.81-0.87, and the test-retest reliability was 0.81 (interval of 3 months).
Furthermore, tests in the Netherlands and Spain have also shown that the scale has
high internal consistency. The measurement of employee innovation behavior was
revised from the classic scale of Scott and Bruce (1994), which was measured from
the perspectives of the innovation process – such as finding problems, generating
ideas, seeking creative support and implementing the innovation plan – and included a
total of four items, with a reliability of 0.89.
4 Data analysis
4.1 Correlation analysis
This study used SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 7.0 for data analysis and processing.
The mean, standard deviation, and related analysis results of this study are shown in
Table 1. The related variables are moderate in scope, so the model is suitable for
further analysis.
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Insert Table 1 about here
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4.2 Reliability and validity analysis
The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated based on the internal
Cronbach’s alpha (CA). The research had good reliability, with values of 0.878 for
humble leadership, 0.840 for leader political skills, 0.863 for CSE, and 0.857 for
employee innovation behavior. The CA for the total items reached 0.926. Furthermore,
this paper adopted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the structural validity of
the measurement model. The fit indexes were as follows: χ2 / df = 2.451, GFI = 0.912,
RMSEA = 0.076, TLI = 0.921, IFI = 0.927, and CFI = 0.903. By testing the
discriminant validity of the three different models, Table 2 shows that the four-factor
model best matched the actual data. Thus, the four factors involved in this research
had good discriminant validity. The above analysis shows that the reliability and
validity of the variables in this research are in the acceptable range.
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Insert Table 2 about here
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4.3 Hierarchical multiple regression
To verify the hypothesis of the model, this paper used the hierarchical stepwise
regression analysis method to build a multiple regression equation. First, this paper
constructed a regression model of the independent variable (humble leadership) to the
intermediary variable (CSE), with the results shown in Model 2 in Table 3. The
adjusted coefficient of determination (R2) in Model 2 was 0.330, which means that
Model 2 was significantly established, whereas the regression coefficient of humble
leadership on employee CSE was 0.577 and significant at the level of P < 0.001. This
result showed that humble leadership has a significant positive influence on employee
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CSE. Second, this paper constructed multiple regression equations involving the
independent variable (humble leadership), the mediated variable (CSE) and the
mediating variable (leaders’ political skills) as well as the cross-item of the
independent variable and the mediating variable (humble leadership * political
leadership skills) on the dependent variable (employee innovation behavior).
Based on Baron and Kenny (1986), this paper verified the mediating role of CSE.
First, the regression equation of the independent variable (humble leadership) and the
dependent variable (employee innovation behavior) were constructed. The results of
Model 4 showed that the regression coefficient was 0.499, which was significant at
the level of P < 0.001. That result suggested that humble leadership has a significant
and direct positive influence on employee innovation behavior. Hypothesis H1 was
thus verified. For the second step, we added humble leadership and CSE to the
regression equation of employee innovation behavior simultaneously; the results are
shown in Model 6. The results showed that the regression coefficient of humble
leadership on employee innovation behavior was reduced significantly from 0.499 to
0.168 but remained significant (P < 0.05), which suggested that CSE plays a partial
mediating role between humble leadership and employee innovation behavior.
Hypothesis H2 was thus supported. The regression results are shown in Table 3.
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Insert Table 3 about here
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To test the moderating role of political leadership skills between humble
leadership and employee innovation behavior, the dependent variable (humble
leadership) and the moderator variable (political leadership skills) were
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first centralized, and their interaction-items were then constructed. Model 7 in Table 3
shows that the regression effect of the interaction item (humble leadership
and political leadership skills) on employee innovation behavior was significant (P <
0.001). This result suggests that political leadership skills play a moderating role
between humble leadership and employee innovation behavior. Hypothesis H3 was
thus also verified. This study conceptualized its moderation effect as shown in Figure
2.
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Insert Figure 2 about here
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5 Discussion and conclusion
In social investigations of scandals involving enterprises leaders’ ethics
and decision-making over the past two decades, humble leaders admitted to personal
weaknesses and made full use of the wisdom of colleagues and subordinates to solve
business problems (Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). Compared with other
leadership styles, humble leadership is an independent charismatic leadership style
distinctly characterized by self-learning, appreciating others' merits and maintaining
an open mind (Ou et al., 2015). Responding to the call for empirical evidence on
humble leadership effects (Frostenson, 2016), this study sought to contribute the body
of knowledge on humble leadership, CSE, leader political skill, and employee
innovation. This study is a first attempt to integrating four developed streams of
research that have not been connected previously. Our findings offer a solid basis for
conceptualizing in as an underlying employees' intrinsic motivation mechanism
through which humble leadership affects more distal outcomes. Furthermore, our
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results suggest that the humble leadership- employee innovation relationship is much
stronger when leaders’ political skill is in high level.
To be specific, this study achieved the following. First, this study offered
evidence for the positive impact of humble leadership on employee innovation
behavior. This study argued that the supportive leadership behaviors of humble
leaders (such as learning with an open mind and being inclusive and fully
empowering) create an inclusive organizational learning climate within the
organization. With an open attitude toward new knowledge and advice, encouraging
employee innovation behavior and tolerating risk provides great psychological
freedom and work autonomy for employees and fosters employee innovation
behavior.
Second, this research verified the partial mediating role of CSE between humble
leadership and employee innovation behavior. The previous literature has shown that
CSE allows better forecasting of work performance than individual personality traits
(Chang et al., 2012). According to Chiang et al. (2014), CSE can not only stimulate
employees to generate more work-related knowledge but also improve their intrinsic
work motivation and indirectly help them think about creative working methods. This
study further confirmed that it is easier to build a supportive leader-member
relationship that significantly influences employee self-identity and intrinsic
motivation and to affect employee innovation behavior in that manner.
In the end, this study verified the positive moderating effect of leaders’ political
skills between humble leadership and employee innovation behavior. Leaders’
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political skills strengthen their ability to accurately read and understand employees,
which helps them build informal networks in the organization and to solve problems
and alleviate the distress of subordinates; in this manner, consistency can be achieved
between subordinates' and the organization’s goals by recognizing and capturing both
the characteristics and the needs of employees (Balkundi and Kilduff, 2006).
Furthermore, leaders with strong political skills provide vision, inspiration and
motivation for subordinates, encouraging them to undertake challenging work by
sharing both indoctrinated values and leadership (Treadway et al., 2008). This
research further confirmed that leaders with highly developed political skills make
better use of humble leadership and have a greater positive impact on employee
innovation behavior.
This study also provided some insights for organizations in implementing
humble leadership and motivating employee innovation behavior. First, in this age of
the knowledge economy, humble leadership has a significant effect on stimulating
employee intrinsic motivation and forming subordinates’ followership and
self-expansion with the enhancement of individual self-consciousness. The positive
role of humble leadership has been widely shown in management practice. As a type
of new independent leadership style, humble leadership was only recently proposed,
but most of the previous theoretical research has affirmed its positive influence on
employee and organizational performance. Second, employee CSE is the antecedent
factor that drives the formation, development and continuity of innovative ideas and
behavior within the organization. For example, Haier Group, a Chinese household
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electrical appliances enterprise, fully affirmed its staff's dominant role in
organizational innovation in its organizational change of independent management, in
which it promoted the ability of all staff members to become innovators and realized
employee self-activation by sharing human rights, the distribution of power and
decision-making power within the company (Meyer et al., 2017). Finally, using
political leadership skills to build supportive leader-member relationships will
strengthen the role of humble leaders. Employee involvement in management receives
more emphasis in current management practice, reflecting the idea that leadership is
regarded as a social dynamic process (Conger and Pearce, 2003). Leaders with highly
developed political skills are better at prodding employees to actively adopt
leadership roles themselves – all in accordance with the needs of the organization –
promoting employee goals consistent with organizational goals, leading to the mutual
development of employees and the organization.
This study also has some limitations. First, this study considered only the
positive role of humble leadership and not its negative effects in extreme cases, such
as the perceived weakness and inferiority of a humble leader, which can inhibit
leadership effectiveness. In the future, researchers may consider the excessive and/or
negative effects of humble leadership in an organization. Second, the sample of this
study was limited to 169 matched workers and supervisors from 15 technology
enterprises in China. These enterprises are all from knowledge-intensive industries, in
which the employees have a higher relative education background. Future research
may enlarge the sample size to verify the research models of this paper in a
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wider region. Finally, this paper gathered data from both leaders and followers to
avoid common method bias. However, bias might arise from leaders rating their own
political skills, and this bias could affect the statistical relationship between leaders’
political skills and the innovation behavior of employees, as rated by the leaders. It
would have been interesting to obtain comparative data for leaders and followers with
both sides and one side.
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Figure 1 Research model
Humble
leadership
Leader political skill
Employee
innovation
behavior
Core
self-evaluation
28
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis
Va r i a b l e s 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Type of enterprise 1 1
2 Scale of enterprise .041 1
3 HL .065 -.106 1
4 CSE .019 .046 564*** 1
5 LPK .031 -.089 .610*** .302*** 1
6 EIB .009 .223** .467*** .677** .364*** 1
M 3.31 2.88 3.52 3.75 3.39 3.67
SD 1.765 1.539 .823 .849 .901 . 857
Note: "**" indicates a significant correlation at the 0.01 level (two-tailed); "*" indicates a
significant correlation at the 0.01 level (two-tailed). HL indicates humble leadership, CSE
indicates core self-evaluation, LPK indicates leader political skill, and EIB indicates employee
innovation behavior. Abbreviations have the same meaning in the tables below.
29
Table 2 Competition model of the confirmatory factor analysis
Var i a b l e χ2 /df CFI GFI TLI IFI RMR RMSEA
Four-factor model 2.007 0.963 0.952 0.933 0.964 0.056 0.066
Three-factor model a 5.472 0.765 0.739 0.767 0.783 0.136 0.117
Three-factor model b 5.135 0.602 0.689 0.665 0.691 0.153 0.109
Three-factor model c 4.255 0.792 0.766 0.785 0.796 0.143 0.096
Single-factor model 12.355 0.522 0.625 0.485 0.528. 0.294 0.231
Note: Four-factor model: HL; LPK; CSE; EIB; Three-factor model a: HL; LPK + CSE; EIB
Three-factor model b: HL; LPK; CSE + EIB; Three-factor model c: HL + LPK; CSE; EIB
Single-factor model: HL + LPK + CSE + EIB
30
Table 3 Hierarchical regression results
Va r ia b le s
CSE Employee innovation behavior
model
1
model
2
model
3
model
4
model
5
model
6
model
7
model
8
Firm type .017 -.023 .000 -.035 -.011 -.021 -.043 -.024
Firm scale .046 .109 .223*** .278*** .193** .215** .280*** .218***
HL .577*** .499*** .168* .471*** .045
CSE .668*** 572*** .582***
LPK .080 .192*
HL × LPK .173*** .106+
R2 .002 .330 .050 .294 .495 .514 .526 .542
F 0.163 21.821** 3.507 46.117 43.485*** 54.892*** 52.769*** 55.637***
△
R2 —— 0.328 —— 0.244 0.445 0.220 .232 .016
△
F —— 21.658*** —— 42.610*** 39.978*** 8.775*** 6. 652*** 2.868
Note: "***" indicates P < 0.001, "**" indicates P < 0.01, "*" indicates P < 0.05; and "+" indicates
P < 0. 1. Model 2 compared to Model 1; Model 4 compared to Model 3; Model 5 compared to
Model 3; Model 6 compared to Model 4; Model 7 compared to Model 4; Model 8 compared to
Model 7.
31
Figure 2 Moderating effect of LPK between HL and EIB
EIB 5
4
3
0
High LPK
5 1 HL
1
2 Low LPK
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