Why is a modest gentleman cruel and ruthless? A study on the dark side effect of humble leadership – from the perspective of low-status compensation theory
International Journal of Conflict Management
ISSN: 1044-4068
Article publication date: 19 October 2023
Issue publication date: 17 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of humble leadership inducing abusive supervision from the low-status compensation perspective, examining the mediation role of leader perceived thread to status. Besides, the moderation effect of regulatory focus on the mediation path is discussed.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data was collected from 438 leaders and their employees in five Chinese enterprises. This study used Mplus 7.4 and adopted a bootstrapping technique for data analysis.
Findings
Humble leadership has a positive effect on leader perceived threat to status. Leader perceived threat to status plays a mediation role between humble leadership and leader abusive supervision. Leader regulatory focus is the “gate valve” that humble leadership fosters leader abusive supervision. That is, when the leader promotion focus is high, leader perceived threat to status bred by humble leadership is low, resulting in less abusive supervision. When the leader prevention focus is high, humble leadership brings relatively more abusive supervision through perceived threat to status.
Originality/value
This study explores why humble leadership breeds abusive supervision behaviors and reveals the mechanism behind the negative effect of humble leadership based on low-status compensation theory. This study not only promotes the continuous development of the field of humble leadership research through empirical research but also provides guidance for effectively suppressing the negative effects of humble leadership, promoting strengths and avoiding weaknesses and suppressing inappropriate management behaviors in management practice.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Ethical statement: The authors certify that this manuscript is original and has not been published and will not be submitted elsewhere for publication while being considered by IJCM. And the study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time. No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support conclusions. No data, text or theories by others are presented as if they were our own. The submission has been received explicitly from all coauthors.
Informed consent: All authors declare that we have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence their work, and there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.
Citation
Chen, H., Jiang, J., Wang, L., Zhang, Z. and Bao, J. (2024), "Why is a modest gentleman cruel and ruthless? A study on the dark side effect of humble leadership – from the perspective of low-status compensation theory", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 35 No. 3, pp. 508-525. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-05-2023-0099
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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