Humble Leadership and Perceived Organizational Performance: A Serial Mediation Model

Purpose: This paper investigated the effects of humble leadership on perceived organizational performance. It also explored the mediating role of psychological capital and innovation behavior in the above relationship. Finally, this paper examined the serial mediating effect of psychological capital and innovative behavior on the relationship between humble leadership and perceived organizational performance.Methods: This paper used a cross-sectional design with questionnaires administered to 584 employees working in Korean firms. It applied an hierarchical and multi-regression analysis by using SPSS 21.0 and Hayes' Macro Process to test the proposed hypotheses including a serial mediation model.Results: As a result of the analysis, first, it was found that the humble leadership had a positive effect on the perceived organizational performance. Second, psychological capital was found to have a positive mediating effect in the relationship between humble leadership and perceived organizational performance. Third, innovation behavior was found to have a positive mediating effect in the relationship between humble leadership and perceived organizational performance. Finally, psychological capital and innovative work behavior were found to serial mediating the relationship between humble leadership and perceived organizational performance.Conclusion: This paper contributes to the humble leadership and perceived organizational performance studies by identifying the role of humble leadership enhancing perceived organizational performance while confirming connection mechanism and boundary conditions strengthening the positive effect of humble leadership on organizational performance.