Humble leadership and employee creative performance in China: the roles of boundary spanning behavior and traditionality

Purpose This paper examined the mediating role of boundary spanning behavior and the moderating effects of traditionality linking humble leadership and employee creative performance from the perspective of Social Exchange Theory (SET) to reveal the behavioral mechanism and boundary condition regarding the influence of humble leadership on creative performance. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 276 employees and the supervisors from 8 companies in China was taken using two-wave data. Findings The results indicated that humble leadership was positively related to employee creative performance, and boundary spanning behavior partially mediated the relationship between humble leadership and employee creative performance. Traditionality strengthens the mediation process when traditionality is high. Practical implications These findings provide several theoretical and practical implications for the domains of humble leadership and boundary spanning behavior. For example, human resource (HR) departments can recruit leaders with high humility and cultivate team leaders through systematic training programs about self-awareness, openness and self-transcendence; team leaders should encourage employees to participate in boundary spanning activities and hiring managers select employees with high traditionality to synergize with leader humility. Originality/value Based on the SET, this paper explored the behavioral mechanism between humble leadership and creative performance and enriched the prior research, which is from the cognitive or emotional view, and further answered the question “what are the employees' behavioral responses when they confront the humble leadership”.