ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1592148
This article is part of the Research TopicEntrepreneurial Psychological Capital and Emotional IntelligenceView all articles
Leader Humility and Employee Proactivity: Sequential Affective Mediation and the Moderating Effect of Role Breadth Self-Efficacy
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China
- 2Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 3Shanghai University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
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Despite established links between leader humility and employee proactive behavior, the affective transmission mechanisms and boundary conditions remain theoretically underdeveloped. Drawing on Affective Events Theory, this study examines how and when leader humility influences employee proactive behavior through sequential mediation in Chinese organizations. Study 1, a scenario-based experiment with 105 participants, demonstrates that leader humility enhances employee proactive behavior by fostering positive mood and affective commitment. Study 2, which collected multisource survey data from 51 supervisors and 290 subordinates, confirms this chain mediation and further reveals that role breadth self-efficacy amplifies both the effect of affective commitment on proactive behavior and the overall indirect effect of leader humility. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, along with directions for future research.
Keywords: Leader humility, Positive moods, Affective commitment, role breadth self-efficacy, proactive behavior
Received: 12 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Jin and Lan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanhong Chen, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China
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