When leader humility meets follower competitiveness: Relationships with follower affective trust, intended and voluntary turnover

Humble leadership and nurses' turnover intention: The moderating effect of leader expertise

AIM

This study was designed to examine the relationship between humble leadership and nurses' turnover intention and investigate the moderating role of leader expertise in this relationship.

BACKGROUND

Leader humility and expertise are two key dimensions of professional spirit in competitive magnet organizations. Many organizational factors could make nurses take a decision to leave their organization; however, leader humility and expertise could help nurses retract from this decision.

METHOD

This is a multisite cross-sectional study that was conducted at all medical-surgical units of four university hospitals. Using scales for assessing leader humility, nurses' turnover intention, and leader expertise, 385 nurses were surveyed. Data were investigated via descriptive and inferential statistics, where correlation, path analysis, and structured equation modeling were used to test the hypothetical relationship among study variables.

RESULTS

There is a statistically significant negative relationship between humble leadership and nurses' turnover intention. Humble leadership and leader expertise were significant predictors of nurses' turnover intention. The moderating effect of leader expertise on the relationship between humble leadership and nurses' turnover intention was statistically significant, making it more negative, implying that leader expertise amplifies the effect of leader humility on reducing nurses' turnover.

CONCLUSION

Incorporating leader expertise with humility could provide an efficient panacea for reducing turnover intentions among nurses in different healthcare organizations.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND HEALTH POLICY

Healthcare organizations could develop an efficient retention plan for nurses by cultivating humility among both leaders and nurses. In addition, building nurse leaders' expertise through opening avenues for professional development is a good strategy in the face of nurses' shortage and high turnover. Furthermore, succession planning in healthcare organizations must consider humility as a vital skill among anticipated leaders.

Trust in Supervisor and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Information Sharing

Creativity is modern era productivity. Many efforts have been made to enhance employee creativity. This study adopted the social exchange model of creativity to understand in-depth the integrated effect of affective and cognitive trust in supervisor (ATS/CTS) on employee creativity. We recruited 528 subordinates who completed a three-wave survey at one-month intervals. Multilevel modeling results showed that ATS and CTS were positively related to employee creativity. Moreover, information sharing served as a mediator for the relationship between CTS and employee creativity, but not between ATS and employee creativity. In addition, the mediation effect of information sharing on ATS-employee creativity was significant for employees with high levels of CTS but not for those with low levels of CTS. Our results suggested an integrated effect of ATS and CTS in information sharing and its consequences on employee creativity. We have confirmed and extended the social exchange model by examining the integrated effect of ATS and CTS on employee creativity. CTS seems to be a threshold in the relationship between ATS and employee information sharing. Our findings clarify ways to develop human resource training to promote ATS and CTS to foster employee creativity.

Does Leader Humility Foster Employee Bootlegging? Examining the Mediating Role of Relational Energy and the Moderating Role of Work Unit Structure

Prior research has framed bootlegging as employees' unofficial innovation that occurs without organizational authorization or official support. In this paper, we call for bringing leadership back into the study of antecedents of bootlegging and examine the effects of leadership context, specifically leader humility, on employee bootlegging. Following the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose that leader humility can provide valuable endogenous resources, such as relational energy, for employee bootlegging. We also propose that work unit structure (organic versus mechanistic) can serve as a boundary condition in this relationship. We test our hypotheses in (i) a scenario-based experiment, (ii) a three-wave time-lagged study with a sample of 212 employees, and (iii) a three-wave time-lagged study with a sample of 190 employees embedded in 20 teams. The results show that leader humility positively relates to relational energy, which, in turn, causes employee bootlegging. Furthermore, an organic structure strengthens the relationship between relational energy and bootlegging, and the indirect effect of leader humility on employee bootlegging via relational energy. The paper concludes with a discussion of what these findings suggest for future research and managerial practice.

Humble leadership and its outcomes: A meta-analysis

The importance of humble leadership has garnered attention from both researchers and practitioners. Unfortunately, despite the accumulation of recent findings on the effects of leader humility, a quantitative review remains scant. In addressing this void, this study is among the first to conduct a meta-analytic review of humble leadership and its outcomes. Eighty-four correlations (N = 16,534) from 53 independent studies are synthesized. The authors found that: (a) humble leadership is positively related to affective commitment (ρ = 0.56), affective trust (ρ = 0.62), creativity (ρ = 0.39), engagement (ρ = 0.40), leader-member exchange (LMX) (ρ = 0.58), job satisfaction (ρ = 0.51), organizational identification (ρ = 0.48), psychological empowerment (ρ = 0.33), self-efficacy (ρ = 0.24), task performance (ρ = 0.33), and voice (ρ = 0.34); and that (b) humble leadership contributes a significant incremental variance beyond transformational, servant, and ethical leadership in several crucial criterion variables, providing solid evidence for the construct's uniqueness. However, humble leadership does not explain incremental variance in some criterion variables, indicating that future studies should control for the influence of some positive leadership (e.g., transformational and servant leadership). Age, gender, study design, country, and year partially moderate the correlations of interest. We discuss our findings with caution and propose future research directions.

The impact of role conflict on turnover intention among faculty members: A moderated mediation model of emotional exhaustion and workplace relational conflict

This study examines the impact of emotional exhaustion on faculty role conflict as a source of stress that leads to turnover intention, which is considered to be an undesirable organizational behavior. Drawing on conservation of resources and job-demand theories, the study investigates the moderating effect of workplace relational conflict on the relationships between role conflict among faculty members and both emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 321 faculty members employed in 58 Saudi universities and institutions of higher education. Structural equation modeling revealed that emotional exhaustion mediates the significant positive relationship between faculty members' role conflict and their turnover intention and that these mediating effects are enhanced by the moderating effect of workplace relational conflict on the significant positive relationship between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Unexpectedly, the moderating effect of workplace relational conflict on the relationship between role conflict and emotional exhaustion was not supported by the results. The study concludes by highlighting several theoretical and practical implications and providing suggestions for future research.

Humble Leadership Benefits Employee Job Performance: The Role of Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi and Perceived Leader Integrity

Although humility is a hallmark of many beloved and respected leaders, yet little is known about the impact of humble leadership on employee job performance. Drawing on social exchange theory and attribution theory, the current study suggests a moderated mediation model to elucidate how and when humble leadership encourages follower job performance. Analyses of multilevel, multisource data from 204 subordinates and 68 supervisors showed that humble leadership and employee job performance via supervisor–subordinate guanxi is moderated by perceived leader integrity, such that the indirect and positive relationship between humble leadership and employee job performance via supervisor–subordinate guanxi would be strengthened when perceived leader integrity is high rather than low. Theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.