Impacts of Leader Humility Between Authority and Trustworthiness on Compliance: Tests of Three-Way Interaction

Abstract

This study aims to examine how leader humility affects the relationship between authority and trustworthiness, and its effect on subordinate compliance. This study further addresses the reliability and validity issue to advance the measurement of humility; 300 participants consisting of leader-subordinate dyads of 50 leaders and 250 subordinates contributed to the data collections. This study found that both trustworthiness and authority have impact on subordinate compliance. Through three-way moderating analysis, this study further revealed that a leader’s high humility, along with high trustworthiness under high authority results in the highest compliance, whereas a leader’s high humility combined with low trustworthiness under low authority leads to the lowest compliance. Moreover, although a leader’s personal background showed no relationship with the degree of leader humility, divergent combinations of leader-subordinate backgrounds were found to affect the degree of humility. Based on our findings, we propose that to effectively increase compliance, leader humility must be viewed as a strength when combined with high trustworthiness in high authority situations. This study may prompt future research in exploring humility in the context of virtue versus power, and the effects of humility in leadership. The implications of these findings for both theory and practice are also discussed.

Humble leadership: A review and synthesis of leader expressed humility

“…Table 6 summarizes these studies. A majority of studies examined how humble leadership moderates the effects of other leader actions or characteristics such as leader transparency (Rego & Giustiniano, 2021), leader authority (Chiu & Hung, 2020), leader perceived overqualification (Ma et al, 2020), leader trustworthiness (Chiu & Hung, 2020), and leader narcissism (Chen, 2018; Norouzinik et al, 2021; Owens et al, 2015). Generally, humble leadership serves to enhance the positive effects of leader actions and characteristics.…”

Under the humble mask: Investigating when and how leader-expressed humility leads to employee voice

“…Sincerity is a prerequisite for such bottom-up leadership behavior in an organization. Humility entails being honest with yourself and open to others rather than spurious acts of humility ( Chiu and Hung, 2020 ). Leaders should be aware of the level of congruence between their expressed behaviors.…”

Development of thriving at work and organizational citizenship behavior through Islamic work ethics and humble leadership

“…Therefore, the potential of leader humility as a moderator of IWE, thriving at work, and OCB relationship should be explored to expand the role of leader humility as a boundary condition. Although relatively limited and in different contexts, prior research has demonstrated the role of leader humility in the relationship between overqualification and career identity (Ma et al, 2020), as well as relationships between authority, trustworthiness, and compliance (Chiu & Hung, 2020). In this study, we expand on the role of leader humility in the relationships between IWE, thriving at work, and OCB.…”