Does employee humility Foster performance and promotability? Exploring the mechanisms of LMX and peer network centrality in China

Digitalization?A Matter of Trust: A Double-Mediation Model Investigating Employee Trust in Management Regarding Digitalization

The purpose of this paper is to determine how employee trust in management regarding digitalization (TMD) is encouraged to successfully promote technological change linked to digitalization and implement digital technologies within organizations. TMD is considered a necessary precondition for employee cooperation regarding the successful implementation of digitalization within organizations. Derived from existing theoretical and empirical research on trust, a double-mediation model is developed. The proposed model investigates the direct relationships between strong digital vision (SDV), leader-member exchange (LMX), and perceptions of organizational politics (POP) on employee TMD. Further, the mediating roles of LMX and POP are investigated regarding the relationship between SDV and TMD. Based on data collected from 1,145 employees of an internationally operating energy supplier, significant positive relationships between SDV, LMX, POP, and employee TMD were found. Further, the results confirmed that LMX and POP sequentially double-mediated the relationship between SDV and TMD. Consequently, by developing a theoretical model for the specific context of digitalization, this study contributes to theory development concerning employee TMD. Furthermore, this study provides practical implications for management in terms of identifying institutional aspects within organizations that enhance TMD in the digital labor context.

Similar or Different Effects? Quantifying the Effects of Humility and Modesty on Job Performance

Humility and modesty are both emphasized in Eastern and Western societies. However, people usually conflate them in everyday usage. To reduce the confusion of the two constructs, it is very vital to carefully differentiate the two constructs and examine whether they lead to similar or different effects on job performance. In this study, we scrutinized the effects of the two constructs on four dimensions of job performance simultaneously, including task performance, citizenship behavior (helping and voicing), unethical pro-organizational behavior, and innovative behavior. Using a dataset of 239 employees and 77 supervisors, we showed that modesty is not related to task performance and voicing, but that it is positively related to unethical pro-organizational behavior and negatively related to helping and innovative behavior. In contrast, we showed that humility is negatively related to unethical pro-organizational behavior and positively related to task performance, helping, voicing, and innovative behavior. Our findings reveal that modesty and humility can lead to very divergent work outcomes. The results strongly support the idea that modesty and humility are distinct constructs embedded in separate nomological networks and strongly suggest that organizations should encourage employees’ humility rather than modesty. The theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed.

Maybe It Is Who You Know: Social Networks and Leader–Member Exchange Differentiation

Existing literature on leader–member exchange differentiation (LMXD) offers a meaningful view into the multilevel outcomes associated with leader follower relationships. However, despite the rapid growth of literature on LMXD, scholars lack a complete understanding of its antecedents or the processes that cause leaders to differentiate among team members. We address this issue by using social capital theory to propose that leaders perceive their followers’ social networks as potential resources to grow their own social capital. Because each follower has unique social networks, we propose that leaders differentiate LMX among followers depending on which followers provide them with access to the most social resources. In this conceptual paper, we posit that as leaders gain information about their followers’ social networks, they attribute status to each follower depending on their perception of that follower’s social capital. We then propose that key contingencies, such as a team’s psychological safety climate or a leader’s ambition, influence the relationship between social network characteristics and LMXD. Overall, our model provides a unique multilevel perspective of LMXD and provides important insights for both researchers and practitioners alike.