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The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how personality traits and leadership styles impact employee engagement.

A field study involving a total of 100 participants was conducted to investigate the relationship between honesty–humility, authentic leadership and employee engagement. Hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression analyses.

The results show that honesty–humility impacts employee engagement and that authentic leadership functions as a substitute for honesty–humility.

Further studies are necessary to examine how honesty–humility interacts with other leadership styles. Further studies can also expand the understanding of this relationship across different cultures.

Employees bring engagement to work through their individual traits but organizations can help create an environment that fosters engagement through positive leadership behavior such as authentic leadership.

This study extends the understanding of the role of individual differences beyond the established Big Five model, by adding the honesty–humility dimension. In addition, the authors examine the moderating effects of authentic leadership on the relationship between honesty–humility and engagement.

The authors examined the relationship between leader humility and employee organizational deviance. They also tested the mediating effects of personal sense of power and the moderating effects of organizational identification on this relationship.

The authors tested their hypotheses using a sample of 186 employees from an information technology (IT) enterprise in China. They used hierarchical regression and bootstrapping analyses to test for direct and indirect relationships.

Sense of power mediated the effect of leader humility on organizational deviance and organizational identification moderated the effect of sense of power on organizational deviance. In addition, organizational identification mediated the indirect effect of leader humility on organizational deviance via sense of power. Thus, employees who demonstrate high organizational identification may not conduct organizational deviant behavior, even if they have a high sense of power.

Organizations should explore and practice effective leader humility. Selection and training programs should be developed to choose humble leaders and teach them how to exhibit moderate humility.

The authors contribute to the literature by revealing the negative effects of leader humility in Chinese culture. They find support for their hypotheses that employee sense of power mediates the relationship between leader humility and employee organizational deviance and that this relationship is weaker when employee organizational identification is higher. This clarifies how and why leader humility stimulates employee organizational deviance.

Wicked problems, cross-sectoral and transregional collaborations, emerging technologies and calls for innovation generate exciting but unpredictable transformations in governance. Emerging research suggests humility, rather than certitude, represents a promising ethos for public leaders working to solve problems in tumultuous times. This study examines the nature, value and practice of humility in public administration (PA) leadership.

This study reviews cross-disciplinary research on the nature and value of humility and emerging findings and debates on humility assessment measures. It analyzes discourse among graduate students in US PA classes and uses ethnographic analysis from workshops with local government leaders to identify institutional dynamics that may influence leaders' willingness to act with humility.

Findings suggest that although PA students and leaders may value humility, they encounter institutional constraints related to public sector legitimacy and narratives about expertise and risk. The author proposes a framework to guide future research and practice in humility and public leadership.

Potential constraints emerged from a modest study of courses and workshops; further research is required to test the prevalence of themes across public leadership environments.

Public leaders, teachers and coaches may apply these practices and assessment measures to cultivate humility in PA classes and organizations.

This study is among the first to explore leadership humility with attention to how PA context may influence practice.

Although leader humility is generally considered a positive leadership behavior, this study aims to examine when the positive influences of leader humility are likely weakened.

Data were collected from a two-wave survey. Ordinary least squares regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Although leader humility is positively related to perceived leader support, this relationship is weakened when the environment is uncertain, resulting in comparatively lower follower performance.

Leaders should be aware that environmental constraints may weaken the desired outcomes of humility and therefore adapt leadership to situational needs.

Contrasting to predominant research on leader humility, this study examines a critical boundary condition by which its positive influences are compromised. In light of the disruption caused by the ongoing COVID-19, this study suggests that what usually are considered positive characteristics of leader humility are likely perceived as little leader support when the environment is uncertain. Findings of this study echo contingency leadership theories, which suggest that effective leadership should be context-dependent.

On the basis of theories of social cognition and moral identity and the meta-theoretical principle of “too-much-of-a-good-thing,” the purpose of this study is to develop and test a model that explains when and why leader honesty/humility promotes subordinate organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

In this field study, with online surveys, multisource data were collected from 218 United States Air Force officers and their subordinates. Data were analyzed with MEDCURVE SPSS macro tools.

A nonlinear indirect effect of leader honesty/humility on subordinate OCBI through subordinate moral identity centrality was found. This conditional indirect effect occurred through a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality and a positive linear relationship between subordinate moral identity centrality and OCBI.

Cross-sectional data were collected. Future research might replicate findings using experimental and longitudinal designs.

Recruiting and selecting leaders who possess a moderate level of honesty/humility may serve as the first step in producing prosocial behavior during social interactions with subordinates.

This study extends the literature on character and leadership by applying the too-much-of-a-good-thing principle to empirically test the complex nature of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate OCBI as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how leader humility affects the engagement of employees in creative processes, using perceived organizational support (POS) as a mediator and leader competence as a moderator.

Data were collected from a two-wave sampling of 113 dyads of leaders and subordinates in China.

A curvilinear relationship was found between leader humility and employee engagement in creative processes. Further, POS partially mediates this relationship, and leader competence positively moderates the relationship between leader humility and POS.

First, organizations should select and train leaders who show humility as a character trait and foster a supportive organizational climate. Second, managers should study the benefits of moderate and harms of superfluous humility, especially in the Chinese cultural context. Third, competent leaders are more effective as humble leaders.

Few studies have concentrated on leader humility in the eastern cultural context. The results challenge traditional views of the impact of leader humility and shed light on its mechanism and the conditions under which it promotes employee engagement in creation. This study also clarifies the nonlinear influence of leader humility, building a fine-grained theoretical framework integrating the motivation-opportunities-abilities model and Chinese Zhong-Yong theory.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of leader humility in firm innovativeness. The study highlights the importance of promoting altruism within organizations as a mechanism that may explain why leader humility fosters innovation.

The study was conducted in a sample frame of 11,594 Spanish companies. In total, 568 valid questionnaires were obtained and 284 different companies participated in the study. Structural equations were used to validate the proposed hypotheses.

All the hypotheses proposed in the conceptual model were confirmed. Results provide empirical evidence of the positive relationship between leader humility and firm innovativeness, as well as the mediating role played by altruism. In other words, leader humility promotes altruism and, in turn, firm innovativeness.

The sample of companies is heterogeneous in terms of firm turnover, size, export ratio and age. The study is focused on firm innovativeness and only studies altruism as a mediating variable in the relationship between leader humility and firm innovativeness.

The present study provides some guidelines which may help companies to improve their competitiveness, enhancing workplace conditions.

There are few empirical studies that analyze the effect of humble leaders or leader humility on innovation. The main value of the present research is to further the current knowledge of this relationship by disentangling the mediating effect of altruism within organizations.

First, this paper aims to explore how CEO humility and relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams affect the firm-level performance of new ventures. Second, it investigates the moderating effect of CEO political skills on the indirect association between CEO humility and entrepreneurial performance through relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams.

A questionnaire survey was administered to CEOs and their entrepreneurial team members in 171 start-ups in Shanghai, China. The data obtained from the survey were subjected to multiple regression analysis using the SPSS PROCESS macro and confirmatory factor analysis using Mplus.

The findings are as follows. First, CEO humility can reduce relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams. Second, CEO political skills moderate the link between CEO humility and relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams. The weaker the CEO political skills, the stronger the effect of CEO humility on relationship conflict, and the stronger the CEO political skills, the weaker the effect of CEO humility on relationship conflict. Third, relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams is negatively related to entrepreneurial performance. Finally, CEO political skills moderate the mediating effect of entrepreneurial team relationship conflict on the CEO humility – entrepreneurial performance link.

The findings of this study offer guidance for entrepreneurs seeking to improve firm performance. The findings suggest that entrepreneurs should adopt a humble leadership style that cultivates their strengths and minimizes their weaknesses. To improve the centripetal force and cohesion of the entrepreneurial team, they should focus on the team, affirm the contribution of subordinates and accept subordinates’ advice.

The study reveals that CEO humility has a positive effect on entrepreneurial performance, which enriches research on the effectiveness of humble leadership at the firm level. From the perspective of team relationship conflict, the study also explores the mechanism underlying the effect of CEO humility on entrepreneurial performance, opening the “black box” of CEO humility and entrepreneurial effectiveness. In addition, the study reveals the boundary conditions of the influence of CEO humility, enriching the theoretical literature on humble leadership, political skills and resource conservation.

Drawing on self-determination theory, this study explored how leader humility affected employees' proactive behavior through satisfying their psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Furthermore, based on a contingency view, this paper suggested Chinese traditionality as a significant boundary condition for the effects of leader humility.

Data were collected from 465 employees and 111 direct supervisors in China using a three-wave, two-source design. Hierarchical regression analyses and Hayes' PROCESS macro were applied to test the hypotheses.

The results indicated that leader humility positively affected employee proactive behavior through the mediating mechanisms of psychological need satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness). Furthermore, these positive effects were stronger among employees with lower Chinese traditionality beliefs.

Although prior research has examined the relationship between leadership and proactive behavior, most extant studies have focused on “top-down” leadership approaches, ignoring the effect of leader humility. Drawing on self-determination theory, the present study makes contributions to both the leader humility research and proactivity literature by identifying psychological need satisfaction as the mechanism and Chinese traditionality as the moderator.

Though humble leaders can draw from their own resources to nurture employees' sense of well-being, this impact appears neglected in the leader humility literature. The aim of this study is to unfold how and when leader humility contributes to the well-being of employees in the public sector.

Participants in our research came from wards (grassroot level governments) in Vietnam.

The results lent credence to role of job crafting in mediating the relationships between leader humility and the physical, psychological and social well-being among public employees. The positive nexus between leader humility and job crafting was found to be stronger when employees demonstrated low levels of public service motivation.

This study advances the understanding of public sector employees' well-being via the predictive role of leader humility and the mediation mechanism of job crafting.