Leaders’ courage in showing humility
Purpose In line with emerging conceptualizations of humility in organizations, the purpose of this paper is to examine how leader humility and distance-based factors [i.e. power distance orientation (PDO) and hierarchical distance] interact to predict follower psychological empowerment. Design/methodology/approach The authors tested the hypotheses using a sample of 294 employees in South Korea. Moderated regression and bootstrapping analyses were conducted to test for direct and moderated relationships. Findings Results indicated that leader humility positively predicted follower psychological empowerment, and followers’ PDO positively moderated this relationship. Results of a three-way interaction indicated that the impact of leader humility on follower psychological empowerment was the strongest when both followers’ levels of PDO and hierarchical distance were high. Originality/value This is the first study to provide empirical evidence for the moderating effect of PDO and hierarchical distance on the relationship between leader humility and follower empowerment. The findings highlight the benefits of understanding the roles of followers’ cultural value orientation and hierarchical position in the effectiveness of leader humility.