Leader humility in Singapore

Abstract

Editor: Charles DhanarajThe theoretical development and empirical testing of the effects of humility in the organizational sciences is surprisingly rare. This is especially pronounced in the study of leadership in Asian contexts. To address this we employ a qualitative approach to examine the conceptualization of leader humility in Singapore and assess whether this conceptualization differs from other emerging conceptualizations of leader humility. In Study 1, using semi-structured interviews of 25 Singaporeans, we identified nine major dimensions of humble leader behaviors and explored our participants' beliefs about culturally-based differences in leader humility. In Study 2 (N = 307), we generalized our findings to a broader sample and explored how the nine dimensions fit with existing taxonomies. In addition to replicating all of the Western conceptual dimensions of humility, we identified five unique dimensions of behaviors indicative of leader humility in Singapore.

Humble Leadership, Psychological Safety, Knowledge Sharing, and Follower Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation

“…The leadership literature has provided several theoretical perspectives to explain how leadership influences follower creativity, such as intrinsic motivation and social learning. However, these studies have mainly focused on top-down leadership and the bottom-up aspects of leadership have been largely overlooked (Oc et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2017). Distinct from top-down leadership, humble leadership is a new type of bottom-up leadership style distinctly characterized by admitting personal limitations, publicly praising followers, and maintaining an open mind (Owens and Hekman, 2012).…”

“…Third, this study was conducted in the Chinese context with a high collectivist and high-power distance culture, which may raise the question about generalizability of our findings to Western and other cultural contexts. Considering that humility is culturally bound and that the potentially unique importance of humility in collectivistic or high-power distance cultures (Oc et al, 2015), additional research is needed to test if the findings of our study can be generalized across cultures.…”

“…Most of these studies have stressed that certain leadership styles, such as transformational, empowering, servant, shared, and authentic leaderships, can positively influence follower creativity. Yet despite these advances, a noticeable omission in this body of research is humble leadership (Oc et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2017). There has been an increasing recognition that leader humility is critical to organizational effectiveness, but only more recently have leadership researchers begun to empirically examine the influence of humble leadership on follower attitudes and behaviors, such as job satisfaction (Owens et al, 2013; Ou et al, 2017), psychological empowerment (Jeung and Yoon, 2016), and job engagement (Owens et al, 2013).…”

Impact of Leader s Humility on the success of Strategic Information System Planning SISP

“…The phenomenon has a historical background in philosophy where it is termed as "know thyself" (Townley, 1995).  Other's Appreciation (OA) Other's appreciation means recognizing and acknowledging the ability, successes and contributions of subordinates (Oc, et al, 2015). Even by following the attitude of hubris and rejecting all contributions and abilities of followers, one cannot be an authentic leader (Chang & Diddams, 2009).…”

The Effect Of Humble Leader Behavior, Leader Expertise, And Organizational Identification On Employee Turnover Intention

“…Among the few empirical studies, research on its mechanism and boundary condition is surprisingly scant (Oc, Bashshur, Daniels, Greguras, & Diefendorff, 2015). Based on this, we attempt to explore the explanatory mechanism and contingency of the relationship between humble leadership behavior and follower turnover intention.…”