How does humble leadership promote follower creativity? The roles of psychological capital and growth need strength

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a moderated mediation model to examine the roles that psychological capital (PsyCap) and growth need strength may play in the relationship between humble leader behaviors and follower creativity. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from a three-wave survey study with a sample of 165 matched leader-follower questionnaires in China. Multiple regression analyses, moderated regression analysis and bootstrapping analysis were used to test the hypotheses. Findings The results show that humble leader behaviors positively influence follower creativity, PsyCap mediates this influence and growth need strength not only moderates the relationship between humble leader behaviors and PsyCap, but also amplifies the indirect relationship between humble leader behaviors and follower creativity via PsyCap. Research limitations/implications Common method bias may still exit, although the measures of research variables were gathered from different sources and with time separation. Additionally, this study is conducted in a single cultural context, which may raise the question about the generalizability of our findings to other cultural contexts. Originality/value The primary contribution is building and examining a conceptual model that focuses on the potential effect of humble leader behaviors on follower creativity. Additionally, by confirming the mediating role of PsyCap, the research further uncovers why followers under humble leader behaviors are more likely to engage in creativity, and the moderating role of growth need strength found in this study also offers additional insight into that followers may differ in the degree to which they are receptive to leader effect.