Humility Harmonized? Exploring Whether and How Leader and Employee Humility (In)Congruence Influences Employee Citizenship and Deviance Behaviors
Xin Qin (),
Xin Liu (),
Jacob A. Brown (),
Xiaoming Zheng () and
Bradley P. Owens ()
Additional contact information
Xin Qin: Sun Yat-sen University
Xin Liu: Renmin University of China
Jacob A. Brown: Boston College
Xiaoming Zheng: Tsinghua University
Bradley P. Owens: Brigham Young University
Journal of Business Ethics, 2021, vol. 170, issue 1, No 10, 147-165
Abstract:
Abstract Various studies have recognized the importance of humility as a foundational aspect of virtuous leadership and have revealed the beneficial effects of leader humility on employee moral attitudes and behaviors. However, these findings may overestimate the benefits of leader humility and overlook its potential costs. Integrating person–supervisor fit theory and balance theory with the humility literature, we employ a dyadic approach to consider supervisor and employee humility simultaneously. We investigate whether and how the (in)congruence of supervisor and employee humility influences employee citizenship and deviance behaviors. We conducted a multilevel, multiphase, and multisource field study to test our hypotheses. The results of cross-level polynomial regression analyses revealed that when supervisors and employees were incongruent in humility, employees experienced higher levels of negative affect toward supervisors. Also, compared to those in low–low congruent dyads, employee negative affect toward supervisors was lower in high–high congruent dyads. The results further revealed asymmetric incongruence effects: employees experienced the highest levels of negative affect toward supervisors when their own humility was lower than their supervisors’. In addition, we found that employee negative affect toward supervisors mediated the impacts of supervisor–employee (in)congruence in humility on employee organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior.
Keywords: Humility; Congruence; Negative affect; Organizational citizenship behavior; Counterproductive work behavior; Polynomial regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-019-04250-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:170:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04250-4
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04250-4
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman
More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().