IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v158y2019i4d10.1007_s10551-017-3704-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why and When Employees Like to Speak up More Under Humble Leaders? The Roles of Personal Sense of Power and Power Distance

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaoshuang Lin

    (The Australian National University)

  • Zhen Xiong Chen

    (The Australian National University)

  • Herman H. M. Tse

    (Monash University)

  • Wu Wei

    (Wuhan University)

  • Chao Ma

    (The Australian National University)

Abstract

Research investigating the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions under which leader humility influences employee voice remains underdeveloped. Drawing from approach–inhibition theory of power and leader humility literature, we developed a moderated-mediation model in which personal sense of power (i.e., employees’ ability to influence other individuals such as their leader) was theorized as a unique mechanism underlining why employees feel motivated to speak up under the supervision of humble leaders. Additionally, the cultural value of power distance was proposed to be a relevant boundary condition to influence such relationship. We tested the model using time-lagged supervisor–subordinate matched data. Results of mixed models analyses provided support for our hypotheses confirming that employees’ personal sense of power mediates the relationship between leader humility and employee voice, and such relationship was found to be stronger when employees’ power distance was lower rather than higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaoshuang Lin & Zhen Xiong Chen & Herman H. M. Tse & Wu Wei & Chao Ma, 2019. "Why and When Employees Like to Speak up More Under Humble Leaders? The Roles of Personal Sense of Power and Power Distance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(4), pages 937-950, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:158:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3704-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3704-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3704-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-017-3704-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tessa Basford & Lynn Offermann & Tara Behrend, 2014. "Please Accept My Sincerest Apologies: Examining Follower Reactions to Leader Apology," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 99-117, January.
    2. Linn Van Dyne & Soon Ang & Isabel C. Botero, 2003. "Conceptualizing Employee Silence and Employee Voice as Multidimensional Constructs," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1359-1392, September.
    3. Antonio Argandona, 2015. "Humility in Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 63-71, November.
    4. Raymond Loi & Long Lam & Ka Chan, 2012. "Coping with Job Insecurity: The Role of Procedural Justice, Ethical Leadership and Power Distance Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 361-372, July.
    5. Fast, Nathanael J. & Sivanathan, Niro & Mayer, Nicole D. & Galinsky, Adam D., 2012. "Power and overconfident decision-making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 249-260.
    6. Bradley P. Owens & Michael D. Johnson & Terence R. Mitchell, 2013. "Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for Performance, Teams, and Leadership," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1517-1538, October.
    7. Hsin-Hua Hsiung, 2012. "Authentic Leadership and Employee Voice Behavior: A Multi-Level Psychological Process," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(3), pages 349-361, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aboul-Dahab, Sameh & Agag, Gomaa & Hassan Abdelmoety, Ziad, 2021. "Examining the influence of cultural and ethical ideology on consumers’ perceptions about the ethics of online retailers and its effects on their loyalty," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    2. Shiwen Luo & Jie Wang & David Yoon Kin Tong, 2020. "Does Power Distance Necessarily Hinder Individual Innovation? A Moderated-Mediation Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, March.
    3. D. M. Sachinthanee Dissanayake & Ananda K. L. Jayawardana, 2023. "The impact of personal sense of power on unethical decision-making: a moderated mediation model of love of money motive and power distance orientation," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 50(1), pages 19-34, March.
    4. Mudassar Ali & Li Zhang & Zhenduo Zhang & Muhammad Zada & Abida Begum & Heesup Han & Antonio Ariza-Montes & Alejandro Vega-Muñoz, 2021. "Can Leaders’ Humility Enhance Project Management Effectiveness? Interactive Effect of Top Management Support," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-17, August.
    5. Arménio Rego & Ana I. Melo & Dustin J. Bluhm & Miguel Pina Cunha & Dálcio Reis Júnior, 2021. "Leader-Expressed Humility Predicting Team Psychological Safety: A Personality Dynamics Lens," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 669-686, December.
    6. Song Liu & Hao Zhou, 2020. "The Role of Sense of Power in Alleviating Emotional Exhaustion in Frontline Managers: A Dual Mediation Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-16, March.
    7. Shilpa Madan & Krishna Savani & Constantine S. Katsikeas, 2023. "Privacy please: Power distance and people’s responses to data breaches across countries," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(4), pages 731-754, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xin Qin & Xin Liu & Jacob A. Brown & Xiaoming Zheng & Bradley P. Owens, 2021. "Humility Harmonized? Exploring Whether and How Leader and Employee Humility (In)Congruence Influences Employee Citizenship and Deviance Behaviors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 147-165, April.
    2. K. Bharanitharan & Zhen Xiong Chen & Somayeh Bahmannia & Kevin B. Lowe, 2019. "Is Leader Humility a Friend or Foe, or Both? An Attachment Theory Lens on Leader Humility and Its Contradictory Outcomes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 729-743, December.
    3. Eko Yi Liao & Chun Hui, 2021. "A resource-based perspective on leader-member exchange: An updated meta-analysis," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 317-370, March.
    4. Joel Kiplagat Tuwey & Vincent Ngeno, 2019. "Does CEO Traits Influence Innovation? Evidence from the Kenya Banking Sector," Journal of Accounting, Business and Finance Research, Scientific Publishing Institute, vol. 7(2), pages 98-106.
    5. Feenstra, Sanne & Jordan, Jennifer & Walter, Frank & Stoker, Janka I., 2020. "Antecedents of leaders' power sharing: The roles of power instability and distrust," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 115-128.
    6. Asma Nisar & Tahira Hassan Butt & Ghulam Abid & Saira Farooqi & Tehmina Fiaz Qazi, 2020. "Impact of grit on voice behavior: mediating role of organizational commitment," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, December.
    7. Mudassar Ali & Li Zhang & Zhenduo Zhang & Muhammad Zada & Abida Begum & Heesup Han & Antonio Ariza-Montes & Alejandro Vega-Muñoz, 2021. "Can Leaders’ Humility Enhance Project Management Effectiveness? Interactive Effect of Top Management Support," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-17, August.
    8. Sebastian Cortes-Mejia & Andres Felipe Cortes & Pol Herrmann, 2022. "Sharing Strategic Decisions: CEO Humility, TMT Decentralization, and Ethical Culture," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 241-260, June.
    9. He Peng & Feng Wei, 2020. "How and When Does Leader Behavioral Integrity Influence Employee Voice? The Roles of Team Independence Climate and Corporate Ethical Values," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 505-521, October.
    10. Roundy, Philip T. & Lyons, Thomas S., 2022. "Humility in social entrepreneurs and its implications for social impact entrepreneurial ecosystems," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    11. Johannes Brunzel & Daniel Ebsen, 2023. "The role of humility in Chief Executive Officers: a review," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 1487-1532, May.
    12. Hai Kyong Kim & Kibok Baik & Najung Kim, 2019. "How Korean Leadership Style Cultivates Employees’ Creativity and Voice in Hierarchical Organizations," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(3), pages 21582440198, September.
    13. An‐Chih Wang & Yanyu Chen & Sheng‐Bin Wang & Yi‐Chieh Lin & Chuan‐Yu Tseng, 2023. "Actions Speak Louder than Words, Particularly in the East: How Taiwanese Followers Perceive Leaders’ Promotion of Ethical Actions Differently from Followers in the States," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 372-399, March.
    14. Vieira, Valter Afonso & Fernandes de Negreiros, Leticia & Agnihotri, Raj & Bakeshloo, Khashayar Afshar, 2021. "Perceptual differences regarding leadership between the store manager and employees and its impact on frontline sales performance: A research note," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 347-358.
    15. Jun Song & Jibao Gu & Jianlin Wu & Shuo Xu, 2019. "Differential promotive voice–prohibitive voice relationships with employee performance: Power distance orientation as a moderator," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 1053-1077, December.
    16. Tuan, Luu Trong, 2020. "Coach humility and player creativity: The roles of knowledge sharing and group diversity," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 284-301.
    17. Ai Ni Teoh & Livia Kriwangko, 2022. "Humility and Competence: Which Attribute Affects Social Relationships at Work?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-13, May.
    18. Shenjiang Mo & Junqi Shi, 2018. "The Voice Link: A Moderated Mediation Model of How Ethical Leadership Affects Individual Task Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 91-101, September.
    19. Ryan Kirkland, Julia C. & Edwards, Bryan D. & Flaherty, Karen E., 2021. "The effect of honest and humble leadership on salesperson customer orientation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 49-58.
    20. Juan Wang & Zhe Zhang & Ming Jia, 2020. "Echoes of Corporate Social Responsibility: How and When Does CSR Influence Employees’ Promotive and Prohibitive Voices?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 167(2), pages 253-269, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:158:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3704-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.