ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1673728
This article is part of the Research TopicInclusive Leadership in Multicultural Teams: Innovations, Challenges and SolutionsView all articles
The role of Intellectual Humility Leadership on Thriving at Work and Performance of New Generation Employees
Provisionally accepted
- 1Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai, China
- 2Donghua university, shanghai, China
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Background: As career maturity and self-awareness increase among new-generation employees, they seek not only material rewards but also well-being and meaningful work. Methods: Drawing on Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory and Social Exchange Theory (SET), this study establishes a moderated mediation model to examine how intellectual humility leadership influences thriving at work and job performance, with positive job attitudes as a mediator and core self-evaluation (CSE) as a moderator. Data from 518 manager–subordinate dyads in Chinese SMEs were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results: The findings show that intellectual humility leadership enhances thriving and performance by fostering positive job attitudes, which mediate these effects. Moreover, CSE moderates this relationship: the positive effect of intellectual humility leadership on attitudes is stronger when CSE is high and weaker when it is low. Conclusion: The study contributes theoretically by identifying intellectual humility leadership as a critical job resource and relational signal, refining JD-R and SET, and highlighting generational variations in leadership effectiveness. Practically, it suggests cultivating intellectual humility in leadership development to strengthen engagement, performance, and well-being among Millennials and Gen Z. Limitations include the SME focus and survey design; future research should test additional mediators and adopt longitudinal or mixed-method approaches
Keywords: Intellectual Humility, positive work attitude, Core self-evaluation, Thriving at work, Work performance, JD-R theory, social exchange theory, SEM
Received: 26 Jul 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gao, Niu and Yu. 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:
Aiwen Niu, Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai, China
Chenhui Yu, Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.