When Can Humble Top Executives Retain Middle Managers? The Moderating Role of Top Management Team Faultlines

Humble Leadership, Psychological Safety, Knowledge Sharing, and Follower Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation

“…Distinct from top-down leadership, humble leadership is a new type of bottom-up leadership style distinctly characterized by admitting personal limitations, publicly praising followers, and maintaining an open mind (Owens and Hekman, 2012). Although early propositions have pointed to the importance of leader humility within organizations, studies toward exploring the influence of humble leadership on followers – and the underlying mechanisms involved – have only recently begun to attract attention (e.g., Jeung and Yoon, 2016; Wang et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2017; Ou et al, 2017, 2018; Rego et al, 2017; Yuan et al, 2018). Furthermore, these studies are primarily limited to the individual-level or team-level analysis.…”

“…Yet despite these advances, a noticeable omission in this body of research is humble leadership (Oc et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2017). There has been an increasing recognition that leader humility is critical to organizational effectiveness, but only more recently have leadership researchers begun to empirically examine the influence of humble leadership on follower attitudes and behaviors, such as job satisfaction (Owens et al, 2013; Ou et al, 2017), psychological empowerment (Jeung and Yoon, 2016), and job engagement (Owens et al, 2013). To extend this line of research, this study seeks to understand how and when humble leadership influences follower creativity.…”

Leader Humility and Team Innovation: Investigating the Substituting Role of Task Interdependence and the Mediating Role of Team Voice Climate

“…Thus, based on SIP theory and previous group climate literatures (e.g., Zohar and Tenne-Gazit, 2008; Detert and Treviño, 2010), we propose that leader humility shapes team members’ perceptions about speaking up as humble leaders express a strong willingness to be open to new ideas and learn from others (Owens et al, 2013; Ou et al, 2017a). Generally speaking, a connection between leader humility and team voice climate is reasonable because humble leaders trigger team members’ beliefs which will enable them to characterize their work group as a safe and efficient environment to speak up by underscoring continuous delivery of the legitimacy of free communication (Owens and Hekman, 2012).…”

Growing Followers: Exploring the Effects of Leader Humility on Follower Self‐Expansion, Self‐Efficacy, and Performance

“…In a recent study, Ou et al () further report that CEOs’ humble leadership style effectively promotes behavioral integration in their top management teams – even after controlling for their charismatic leadership behaviour, one of the most dominant leadership styles identified by literature (Dinh et al, ). Despite this empirical support, various researchers (e.g., Crossan et al, ; Ou et al, ; Owens and Hekman, ) have cautioned that our understanding of leader humility and its implications in organizations is limited in several important ways.…”

“…Second, multiple studies have expressed the need for researchers to explore the boundary conditions of leader humility’s influence (e.g., Ou et al, a; Owens and Hekman, ). But, with sparse exceptions (e.g., Chiu et al, ; Daniels et al, ; Ou et al, a; Ou et al, ), conditions that strengthen or mitigate the influence of leader humility remain underexplored. Along the theme of understanding the follower’s role in the humble leadership process, we do not yet understand whether and how follower demographic similarity to the leader may influence followers’ receptiveness to displays of leader humility.…”