How and when does humble leadership enhance newcomer well-being

Abstract

Purpose

Many studies have examined the positive outcomes of humble leadership for employees. However, its impact on newcomers' well-being has been rarely investigated. In this paper, based on affective events theory and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, the authors proposed a moderated mediation model to explore the effect of humble leadership on newcomer well-being. In the model, we identified newcomers' pride as a mediating variable and newcomers' proactive personality as a moderating variable.

Design/methodology/approach

The data were from a two-wave sample containing 213 newcomers. The hypothesized model was tested using partial least squares structural equational modeling.

Findings

The results demonstrated that humble leadership was positively related to newcomers' well-being, and newcomers' pride medicated this relationship. Additionally, newcomers' proactive personality moderated the relationship between humble leadership and newcomers' pride.

Research limitations/implications

The authors adopted a cross-sectional research design, rendering it difficult to derive causal relationships between variables. In addition, all data were from self-reports of newcomers which would suffer from common method variance.

Originality/value

This research examined the role of humble leadership in promoting newcomers' pride and well-being.

Citation

Kang, F., Li, J. and Hua, Y. (2023), "How and when does humble leadership enhance newcomer well-being", Personnel Review, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 26-41. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2021-0019