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Does Leader Humility Foster Employee Bootlegging? Examining the Mediating Role of Relational Energy and the
Jinzhao Qu1,2, Svetlana N Khapova2, Shiyong Xu1
1Department of Management and Organization, School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872 China.
Journal of Business and Psychology
|June 26, 2023
Summary
Leader humility boosts employee innovation (bootlegging) by providing resources like relational energy. Organic structures enhance this effect, fostering more unofficial innovation.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Behavior
- Management Studies
Background:
- Employee bootlegging, or unofficial innovation, has been studied without considering leadership's role.
- Existing research overlooks how leadership context influences unauthorized employee innovation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of leader humility on employee bootlegging.
- To examine the mediating role of relational energy and the moderating role of work unit structure.
Main Methods:
- Scenario-based experiment.
- Two three-wave time-lagged studies with employee samples (N=212 and N=190).
- Conservation of Resources (COR) theory framework.
Main Results:
- Leader humility positively influences relational energy.
- Relational energy mediates the relationship between leader humility and employee bootlegging.
- Organic work unit structure strengthens the positive indirect effect of leader humility on bootlegging.
Conclusions:
- Leader humility is a key antecedent to employee bootlegging via relational energy.
- Work unit structure significantly moderates this relationship.
- Findings offer insights for leadership practices and future research on innovation.
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