The Concept,Antecedents And Consequences Of Leader Humility: A Rational Choice Perspective

Humility as a traditional Chinese virtue has a long history in our country.However,although humility exists for a long time in our country,little research attention has been paid on the conceptualization and effectiveness of humility.With the acceleration of social change and the increase of uncertainty in external environment,scholars call on individuals to maintain a humble attitude to cope with the challenge from their work and life.At present,the topic of humble leadership has attracted an increasing attention of scholars.Many theorists have pointed out that humble leadership is one of the effective ways to deal with changes in the external environment,which can help organizations to establish a new competitive advantage.Although much attention has benn paid to humble leadership,nevertheless,research on humble leadership is still at its preliminary stage.In addition,through summarizing the existing research on humble leadership,there are four main limitations:first,the concept of leader humility still has some ambiguity.As a malleable trait,its conceptual relationship with honesty-humility and modesty remains unclear.Second,the antecedents of leader humility are lack of empirical research.At present,the research only theoretically concerns the influence of individual factors.No research has focused on how contextual factors promote and increase leader humility.Third,the influence mechanism of the effect of leader humility is not that sufficient.Although the effectiveness of leader humility has been proved,up to present,we do not know why followers like humble leaders and what changes humble leaders can bring to followers.Finally,the research on boundary conditions for the influence of leader humility is inadequate.The existing research on the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of leader humility is leader-centric,lacking of attentions to employees' perspective.Taking the above four limitations into account,the purpose of this study is to explore the concept,formation mechanism and influence mechanism of leader humility.Based on the previous research,this study conducts empirical research to answer the above four limitations,so as to further enrich the theory of leader humility,and provide guidance and inspiration for organizations to carry out leader humility practice.Specifically,in research 1,this study will distinguish the concept of leader humility,honesty-humility and modesty,thereby laying the theoretical foundation for the research of leader humility.On this basis,in research 2,this study will explore the influence factors of leader humility from the aspect of followers' characteristics,and reveal the influence factors of leader humility on communal relationship and exchange relationship from the view of interpersonal relationship,and then explore how followers' attribution of leaders' motives influences the effectiveness of leader humility.Specifically,research 1 will first explore the malleable characteristic of leader humility through employee interviews.And then,through literature review,expert interviews and more than 30 leaders' open-ended questionnaires,research 1 will develop the leadership modesty scale by adopting grounded theory.Finally,research 1 will distinguish leader humility,honesty-humility and leader modesty,and test the predictive validity through 164 sample surveys.Research 2 will use the two-stage leader-follower matching sample collection method to investigate 72 leaders and 350 employees,so as to verify the theoretical model proposed in this study.The conclusion of this study will make great contributions to leader humility,leadership and star employee.First of all,this study will distinguish leader humility,honesty-humility and modesty theoretically and empirically,further revealing the connotation of humility.Furthermore,this study is the first to reveal the antecedents of leader humility from contextual factors.Thirdly,this study reveals the influence mechanism of leader humility to followers,and for the first time reveals the influence of leader behavior on followers from the perspective of communal relationship.Finally,this study is the first to reveal the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of leader humility from the view of followers' attribution to leaders' motivations,thus making contributions to the effectiveness of leader humility.The conclusion of this study will also provide guidance and inspiration to organization leadership practice and talent management.