Establishing the Conceptualization of Humility on Chinese-Western Viewpoint, and Examining the Moderating Effect of Humility on Authority, Trust and Compliance

• Main Authors: Teng-chu Chiu, 邱燈助
• Other Authors: H. Jason Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/77428527848292814797

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 企業管理學系研究所 === 101 === Whether the virtue of humility has a great influence on today’s leadership? For the issues, one study had found that leaders are able to transform their enterprises either from mediocre or those full of crisis to great companies. Collins et al. believed what made the differences depend on the leaders’ personal humility and professional will. The result was out of everyone’s expectation, including Collins et al., because it was generally believed that an outstanding leadership won''t be relevant with humility. Published in AMJ, the study of Owens &; Hekman (2012) uncovered that leader humility involved leaders modeling to followers how to grow and produced positive organizational outcomes by leading followers to believe that their own developmental journeys and feelings of uncertainty were legitimate in the workplace. Although a growing number of leadership writers argue that leader humility is important to organizational effectiveness, little is known about the construct, what it produces, and what influences its effectiveness, what these behaviors lead to, or what factors moderate the effectiveness of these behaviors. Above all, the key point is exactly what the “conceptualization of the humility” is. The lack of clarity about leader humility is due to the fact that the existing evidence (qualitative or quantitative) supporting writers’ ideas regarding leader humility. In addition, the humility has further implications. This study integrates the viewpoint of Chinese and Western on humility, and then probes into the real implications of humility, and established the definitions, constructs and scale of humility; further explorations of the important issues on the level, timing, and principle of the humility are rarely suggested in literatures. The results suggest that reliability and validity of this scale are adequate. Analysis of survey data is from 33 dyads samples of the supervisor-subordinates and 187 subordinates of various companies in Taiwan’s organizations. The study found that: (1) authority and trust have a positive influence on compliance; the influence of authority is stronger than that of trust; (2) humility significantly moderates the relation between ability and compliance, such that the relation is more strongly positive at high levels of humility than that at low levels of humility, while the compliance of low humility is higher than high humility at low levels of ability; (3) humility has marginally significant moderating relation between integrity and compliance, such that the relation is more strongly positive at high levels of humility than that at low levels of humility; However, (4) humility does not significantly moderate the relation between authority and compliance; (5) humility does not significantly moderate the relationship between benevolence and compliance, either; (6) the interaction of humility, authority and integrity is significant on compliance; (7) the interaction of humility, authority and benevolence is also significant on compliance. Humility and integrity can lead to get compliance and then get better to each other. Finally, it is hoped that this study’s conclusions, suggestions and findings would serve as a future reference for humility in leadership research.