Kai Chi Yam

Leader Humility and Team Performance

Although there is a growing interest toward the topic of leader humility, extant research has largely failed to consider the underlying mechanisms through which leader humility influences team outcomes. In this research, we integrate the emerging literature of leader humility and social information processing theory to theorize how leader humility facilitates the development of collective team psychological capital, leading to higher team task allocation effectiveness and team performance. While Owens and Hekman (2016) suggest that leader humility has homogeneous effects on followers, we propose a potential heterogeneous effect based on the complementarity literature (e.g., Tiedens, Unzueta, & Young, 2007) and the principle of equifinality (leaders may influence team outcomes through multiple pathways; Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010). In three studies conducted in China, Singapore, and Portugal, including an experiment, a multisource field study, and a three-wave multisource field study, we find support for our hypotheses that leader humility enhances team performance serially through increased team psychological capital and team task allocation effectiveness. We discuss the theoretical implications of our work to the leader humility, psychological capital, and team effectiveness literatures; and offer suggestions for future research.

Counterfactual and Factual Reflection: The Influence of Past Misdeeds on Future Immoral Behavior.

ABSTRACT Though the decision to behave immorally is situated within the context of prior immoral behavior, research has provided contradictory insights into this process. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that the effects of prior immoral behavior depend on how individuals think about, or reflect on, their immoral behavior. In Experiment 1, participants who reflected counterfactually on their prior moral lapses morally disengaged (i.e., rationalized) less than participants who reflected factually. In Experiment 2, participants who reflected counterfactually on their prior moral lapses experienced more guilt than those who reflected factually. Finally, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants who reflected counterfactually lied less on unrelated tasks with real monetary stakes than those who reflected factually. Our studies provide important insights into moral rationalization and moral compensation processes and demonstrate the profound influence of reflection in everyday moral life.

Cleansing my abuse: A reparative response model of perpetrating abusive supervisor behavior.

Research on abusive supervision has predominantly focused on the consequences for victims while overlooking how leaders respond to their own abusive behavior. Drawing from the literature on moral cleansing, we posit that supervisors who engage in abusive behavior may paradoxically engage in more constructive leadership behaviors subsequently as a result of feeling guilty and perceiving loss of moral credits. Results from two experience sampling studies show that, within leaders on a daily basis, perpetrating abusive supervisor behavior led to an increase in experienced guilt and perceived loss of moral credits, which in turn motivated leaders to engage in more constructive person-oriented (consideration) and task-oriented (initiating structure) leadership behaviors. In addition, leader moral attentiveness and moral courage strengthen these indirect effects by amplifying leaders’ awareness of their immoral behavior and their willingness and determination to make reparations for such behavior. Our research contributes to the theoretical understanding of leaders’ responses toward their own abusive supervisor behavior and provides insights into how and when destructive leadership behaviors may, paradoxically, trigger more constructive behaviors.

Conveyed Leader PsyCap Predicting Leader Effectiveness Through Positive Energizing

Whereas past research on psychological capital (PsyCap) has tended to focus on how one’s self-attributed PsyCap affects one’s work behaviors, we extend this literature by examining the concept of conveyed PsyCap and its downstream consequences, above and beyond the influence of self-attributed PsyCap. Drawing from the emotions-as-social-information model, we tested a model of conveyed leader PsyCap predicting leader effectiveness through team positive energizing. A laboratory experiment and a multisource study provided support for our hypotheses. We furthermore found that a leader’s within-team consistency in conveyed PsyCap moderates these effects, such that leaders who are more consistent in conveyed PsyCap are rated by followers as better leaders, via the mediating effect of team positive energizing. A post hoc analysis further suggests that conveyed PsyCap is more consistent when conveyed PsyCap is congruent with self-attributed PsyCap. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that make leaders with greater conveyed PsyCap more effective and advances the conceptualization and measurement of PsyCap.

Good actors but bad apples: Deviant consequences of daily impression management at work.

Impression management (IM) refers to behaviors employees use to create and maintain desired images in the workplace. Prior studies have shown that the successful use of IM relates to a number of important outcomes for employees (e.g., higher performance evaluations), but this work has tended to compare IM usage between individuals, ignoring the fact that employees likely adjust their use of IM depending on the situations they face at work on a given day. In this paper, we argue that managing impressions on a daily basis can be draining, thereby leaving employees susceptible to the temptation to engage in subsequent harmful behaviors at work. To better understand the nature and within-person consequences of IM, we examine the daily use of two supervisor-focused IM tactics—ingratiation and self-promotion—among 75 professionals in China over the course of two work weeks. Our results indicate that there is significant within-person variance in employees’ use of ingratiation and self-promotion aimed at supervisors. Moreover, our findings suggest that the use of ingratiation, but not self-promotion, depletes employees’ self-control resources. In the case of ingratiation, this depletion is positively associated with employee deviance, and the indirect effect is stronger among employees with low political skill. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of the dynamic, within-person nature of IM, the consequences of IM for employees, and the dark side of IM for organizations.

The impact of leader moral humility on follower moral self-efficacy and behavior.

This study utilizes social–cognitive theory, humble leadership theory, and the behavioral ethics literature to theoretically develop the concept of leader moral humility and its effects on followers. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model wherein leader moral humility and follower implicit theories about morality interact to predict follower moral efficacy, which in turn increases follower prosocial behavior and decreases follower unethical behavior. We furthermore suggest that these effects are strongest when followers hold an incremental implicit theory of morality (i.e., believing that one’s morality is malleable). We test and find support for our theoretical model using two multiwave studies with Eastern (Study 1) and Western (Study 2) samples. Furthermore, we demonstrate that leader moral humility predicts follower moral efficacy and moral behaviors above and beyond the effects of ethical leadership and leader general humility.