Does Leader Humility Improve Team Effectiveness? The Mediating Role of Status Conflicts

Cai Di; Ma Jinpeng; Sun Yan; Cai Yahua

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2018.07.010

Summary

In today’s fast-changing, uncertain business environment, team work is increasingly popular in the organizations owing to its faster response speed, more diverse viewpoints, more flexibility, and so on. However, not all teams can function effectively, so how to improve team effectiveness has been an important and hot topic in the field of organizational management. The research on team field from a behavior perspective shows that both cooperation and sanction behaviors have significant influences on team effectiveness. Therefore, in order to improve team effectiveness, on the one hand, we should actively stimulate the cooperation between team members to take the natural advantages of team work mode; on the other hand, we should reduce the sanction behaviors between team members to overcome the potential drawbacks of team work mode. The role of leadership has been the focus of scholars in the literature concerning the factors affecting team effectiveness. In recent years, as the business environment that enterprises face is more complex and more turbulent, and the new generation employees who pay more attention to fairness, freedom and self-worth are becoming the main force in the workplace, the traditional leadership style depending on control is challenged continuously. The " bottom-up” leadership acknowledging or even learning from employees is very popular. Based on this realistic background, the importance of the humble leadership is increasingly prominent. 　　The conflict between team members has been viewed as one of the most important perspectives in analyzing the impact of leadership on team effectiveness. Researchers point out that there are many conflict events in teams that are closely related to the status, and status conflicts between members to compete for their own interests. Under the influences of the traditional culture such as the high power distance and the pattern of difference sequence in China, all the individuals value their positions very much in an organization or team. Besides, the relationships with leaders decide the position of the individual in an organization or team to a great extent. Thus it can be judged that the behavior style of the leadership has an important influence on the status conflicts between team members. 　　Therefore, this paper takes the leadership style and the staff behavior as the cut-in points, examines the influence of the humble leadership on the cooperation and sanction behaviors of team members as well as the mechanism from a status conflict perspective. Based on the data from a questionnaire survey of 277 members from 52 different construction project teams, the following conclusions are drawn: firstly, the more humble a leader is, the less likely status conflicts occur among team members; secondly, the less likely the status conflict is to occur, the more likely team members are to cooperate with each other, and the less likely they are to adopt sanction behaviors; thirdly, the relationship between leader humility and the above behaviors is mediated by status conflicts.　　It has made contributions to both theoretical development and management practice. Firstly, we explore the factors influencing both cooperation and sanction behaviors from an integration perspective, which enriches the research of team effectiveness from a behavior perspective. Secondly, based on the theory of social information process, this paper explores the influence of humble leadership on cooperation and sanction behaviors. It enriches the antecedents of cooperation and sanction behaviors, and makes up the research blank in the Chinese context. And it also deepens the research in humility field, and highlights its significance. Thirdly, we choose status conflicts as the intermediary variable to explore the mechanism of the role of the humble leadership in cooperation and sanction behaviors. It enriches and perfects the related research in the conflict field and opens up a new view of the influence of the leadership style on employee behaviors as well. The revelation of the findings to leaders lies in that being humble rather than authoritative, may be a more effective leadership style in the new era. Leaders should strive to consider the overall team interests as the core, pay attention to the distribution equity, and avoid leading to status disputes within teams. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a good role model for employees, promote cooperation behavior as much as possible, and reduce the sanctions against employees who violate rules. The organization effectiveness can be maintained by communicating widely, perfecting the mechanisms and so on. 　　Future research can further compare the influences of different types of leadership behaviors on cooperation and sanction behaviors, and whether their intrinsic mechanism is different. In addition, exploring the boundary conditions of the effect of the humble leadership on the team effectiveness, and developing and validating the local scale in Chinese context are of equal importance.