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Impact of humble leadership on Impact of

humble
project success: the mediating role leadership on
project success
of psychological empowerment and
innovative work behavior 349
Mudassar Ali, Li Zhang, Syed Jamal Shah, Salim Khan and Received 28 May 2019
Revised 31 October 2019
Adnan Muhammad Shah 8 January 2020
11 January 2020
School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China Accepted 26 January 2020

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of humble leadership on project success. The mediating
effects of psychological empowerment and innovative work behavior on the relationship between humble
leadership and project success are tested.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 337 individuals employed in the civil
construction sector of Pakistan.
Findings – The results showed that humble leadership is positively related to project success. Furthermore,
psychological empowerment and innovative work behavior partially mediate the relationship between humble
leadership and project success.
Originality/value – Drawing on conservation of resource theory, this study found that how humble
leadership is important for project success and thus extends the utility of the concept of humble leadership to
the project literature.
Keywords Humble leadership, Psychological empowerment, Innovative work behavior, Project success
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Recently, project success has been the emphasis of research related to project management
(Prabhakar and Duda, 2009). Among a variety of factors contributing to project success, the
role of the project manager is essential (Prabhakar, 2005). Several researchers contend that
the leadership role of project managers is vital in project success (Kasapo
glu, 2013; M€ uller
and Turner, 2007, 2010; Nixon et al., 2012; O’Donnell, 2010; Yang et al., 2011). The leader
communicates, directs and inspires followers for goal achievements (DuBrin Andrew, 2004;
Koontz, 2010). Recently, researchers have started investigating different aspects of
leadership, such as transformational leadership (Aga et al., 2016) and transactional
leadership (Raziq et al., 2018) to have a role in project success. Among such leadership
styles, humble leadership could be a significant predictor of project success. Although
humility was reported to be a necessary quality for project managers Briere et al. (2015), the
empirical relationship between humble leadership and project success has yet to be explored.
Humble leadership has been defined as “to show generous respect to all team members
through different ways such as, accepting their criticism, encouraging them by the delegation
of power, and asking their suggestions” (Owens and Hekman, 2012). Research has found that
humble leadership significantly influences goal achievements through team performance
(Owens and Hekman, 2016) and team effectiveness Rego and Simpson (2018) that ultimately

Conflict of interest statement and author’s declaration: On behalf of all authors, I am declaring that all Leadership & Organization
authors have seen and approved the final version of themanuscript. They warrant that the article is Development Journal
Vol. 41 No. 3, 2020
original work. pp. 349-367
Funding: No financial support received for this research.Funding: No financial support received for this © Emerald Publishing Limited
0143-7739
research. DOI 10.1108/LODJ-05-2019-0230
LODJ lead to the success of a team project. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the
41,3 relationship between humble leadership and project success.
To explore the relationship between humble leadership and project success, it is essential to
know how humble leaders motivate employees toward the successful accomplishment of a
project. We postulate psychological empowerment and innovative work behavior (IWB) as the
two parallel mediating mechanisms between humble leadership and project success.
Psychological empowerment is psychological state rooted in four cognitions: meaning,
350 competence, self-determination and impact that reflect an individual’s orientation to his or her
job (Spreitzer, 1995). Previous research has explicitly found the empirical relationship between
humble leadership and psychological empowerment (Chen et al., 2018; Jeung and Yoon, 2016).
Power-sharing behavior of managers is meaningfully related to project participant’s inspiration
and performance (Liu and Fang, 2006) as it intrinsically motivates them for collective goal
achievement (Neal et al., 2013) and ultimately improves project performance (Chua et al., 2012).
Subordinates who feel that their work is valued are encouraged to perform well (Liden et al.,
2000), specifically in a project context (Aga et al., 2016; Tabassi et al., 2016). These studies
suggest that humble leadership is likely to psychologically empower employees through
facilitating followers’ strength, contribution and acknowledging their suggestions to achieve
the goals of project success. Therefore, we propose that psychological empowerment has a
mediating role between humble leadership and project success.
Another possible intervening mechanism is employees’ IWB (Zhou and Wu, 2018).
Innovation occurs when an employee develops, promotes and implements new ideas as
critical components of IWB (Janssen, 2000). Humble leadership role reflects the appreciation
of subordinates’ expertise (Mallen et al., 2019) that develops self-confidence among the
subordinates to practice their creative thinking (Zhang and Zhou, 2014). IWB can lead the
employees to quickly resolve work-related problems (Zhou and Wu, 2018), which is an
essential determinant of organizational success (Scott and Bruce, 1994). This suggests that
IWB of the subordinates is likely to mediate the relationship between humble leadership and
project success.
Based on the earlier discussion, the current study presents a theoretical model that humble
leadership is directly as well as indirectly (via psychological empowerment and IWB) related
to project success. By introducing the framework, this study aims to address a significant
contribution to the existing literature. This study will extend the previous work about the role
of leadership in project success (Turner and M€ uller, 2005) that will deepen our understanding
of the human factor as an essential aspect of project success. The study will also extend the
already limited literature about the role of employees’ internal psychological factors in project
success (Hassan et al., 2017). Moreover, the study will enhance the current knowledge about
the conservation of resource theory Hobfoll (1989) by applying the assumptions of the theory
to the model of this study. (Hobfoll, 1989) argued that leaders serve as a resource that helps
employees to manage their resources. As such, we suggest that the conservation of the
resource model may provide insights into how humble leadership is associated with resource
management strategies that may reflect in project success. In particular, we expect our paper
to contribute to the literature by positioning the conservation of resource model as a
theoretical framework to explain how a humble leader is directly and indirectly via
psychological empowerment and IWB related to project success.

Humble leadership
Humble leadership refers to the interpersonal characteristics of a leader that help him/her to
interact with subordinates, characterized by a desire to view oneself accurately, a displayed
appreciation of others and teachability (Owens et al., 2013). Conceived as an interpersonal trait,
leader humility reflects in his/her conduct that followers recognize during social interactions.
The behavioral characteristics of humble leaders, such as expressing a desire to assess oneself
without exaggeration, accurately represent that the leader has a precise, nondefensive and Impact of
objective self-examination (Exline and Geyer, 2004; Nielsen et al., 2010). Humble leaders humble
appreciate the worth and contributions of their supporters (appreciation of others) (Morris et al.,
2005) and recognize the strengths of others without feeling threatened (accurate view of oneself)
leadership on
(Exline and Geyer, 2004). Besides, they are open to new ideas, advice and information while project success
asserting a great concern to learn from others (modeling teachability) (Tangney, 2000).
It is important to note that although humble leadership seems to overlap with servant
leadership conceptually, humble leadership is unique from servant leadership in several 351
aspects. Owens and Hekman (2012) comprehensively described how the humble leadership
concept is unique regarding three elements (behavior, process and outcomes) among the
existing and closely related bottom-up leadership styles, including servant leadership. Both
humble and servant leaders spotlight followers’ strength and contribution, openly
acknowledge their mistakes, weaknesses and faults, give feelings of psychological freedom
to their subordinates and keep engaged with their followers. Owens and Hekman (2012)
described two fundamental differences: (1) humble leadership models the process of becoming
for followers, versus servant leadership, focuses on modeling serving others, (2) the
legitimization of uncertainty under humble leadership role, that is, humble leaders openly
acknowledge the uncertainties (limitations) surrounding their leadership role while servant
leaders like other traditional leaders pretend to know everything. Moreover, humble leadership
involves processes such as facilitating leader–subordinate psychological freedom, initiating
leader–follower role reversal, supporting the fluidity of organizing and fostering a tendency
toward continuous small-scale changes that are not emphasized by servant leadership.
Moreover, humble leadership is also different from a top-down leadership approach, such
as transformational and transactional leadership. Aryee et al. (2012) revealed that although
transformational leadership influences team performance by fostering cognition-based trust
and team potency, leader humility’s influence was through the contagion of the behaviors
themselves, thereby shaping specific teamwork and regulatory-focus aspects of team
functioning. Perhaps one reason why transformational leadership did not predict
performance as strongly in normal circumstances is that such incidents did not contain
extreme challenge, stress and uncertainty, which are situations when transformational
leadership is theorized to be most important (Bass and Bass Bernard, 1985). In contrast,
qualitative evidence suggests that leader humility is less effective in times marked by
extreme threat or time pressure (Jeung and Yoon, 2018; Owens and Hekman, 2012). Thus,
leader humility may be more beneficial to team effectiveness toward project success relative
to transformational leadership during routine situations. Transactional leadership style is
characterized as professional distance, role-based relationships and goal-oriented rather than
human-relationship-oriented (Lambrechts et al., 2011; Schein, 2014). This objectivity is
connected to managerial bias that has several negative consequences propagating across the
hierarchical layers that ultimately lead to negative employees’ behavior such as
disengagement, lying, cheating (Schein and Schein, 2018) eventually cracking the project
and team performance. On the other hand, humble leaders provide a more humane approach
characterized by the display of transparent, friendly attitudes, listening to what followers feel
about them, seeking guidance and supporting followers leading to the removal of power
distance (Jeung and Yoon, 2018). These characteristics are assumed to have a positive effect
on the loyalty of workers and project performance.

Humble leadership and project success

Extant research shows that a humble leader has a significant positive impact on workplace-
related outcomes, such as high goal achievements by team members (Owens and Hekman,
2016). The humility of a project manager develops team harmony and shared understanding,
encourages the open exchange of ideas and analytical perception among project team
LODJ members and emphasizes followers’ self-management and leadership skills (Owens and
41,3 Hekman, 2012). High-level team communication, collaboration and solidity create an
atmosphere where team members continue their efforts to complete a project (Burke et al.,
2006; Maqbool and Sudong, 2018; Yang et al., 2011). Humble leadership empowers their
subordinates by power delegation and giving value to their ideas (Ou et al., 2014). Authority
devolution and participation in goal setting boost subordinates’ performance (Ahearne et al.,
2005), which is an essential requirement for collaborative problem-solving and action-
352 oriented decision-making to meet specific objectives (Sohmen, 2013). Similarly, the
performance-related information obtained through feedback, which is a core characteristic
of humble leadership (Argandona, 2015), contributes to overcoming team member
weaknesses that in turn helps them to work more efficiently and achieve the required task
performance (Qian et al., 2018).
In addition, according to Walsh et al. (2014), a leader’s role can be viewed as a resource that
generates further support for the organization in the form of positively developing followers,
the phenomenon referred to as the conservation of resource (Hobfoll, 1989) that has become
vital in the field of organizational psychology in recent times. The central tenet of the
conservation of resource model is that people strive to create, protect, maintain and retain
resources. Resources are those objects, conditions, characteristics or energies that are valued
by the people (Hobfoll, 2001), and what is more detrimental to an individual is the loss of such
resources (Hobfoll, 1989). The model also suggests that those with a reliable resource pool are
the most “resource secured” and are in a position to develop their reservoir of resources
(Hobfoll, 2001). We believe that humility is an essential personal resource of a leader invested
in improving the trust among followers, which helps them in creating an atmosphere of
cooperation and coordination, resulting in project success (i.e. resource gain).
The earlier discussion suggests that the humility of a team leader may boost the
performance of a team member that ultimately leads to the successful accomplishment of a
team project. Therefore, it is proposed that:
H1. Humble leadership is positively related to project success.

The mediating role of psychological empowerment

Psychological empowerment is a set of four cognitions that reflect an individual’s orientation
to his or her work role: meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. Meaning refers
to the alignment of one’s work role and his/her own beliefs, values and standards (May et al.,
2004; Renn and Vandenberg, 1995). Competence is a person’s feeling of self-efficacy about the
successful accomplishment of a task (Bandura, 1986; Fulford and Enz, 1995). Self-
determination refers to the autonomy enjoyed by a person to choose a work role for
himself/herself (Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Impact refers to
the degree to which employees feel that their work efforts make a difference in the
achievement of the purpose of a task (Spreitzer, 1995).
Humble leaders can psychologically empower followers by inducing many features of self-
concepts (Owens et al., 2013). For example, humble leadership acknowledges the contribution
of the subordinates to the organizational goals (Mallen et al., 2019; Naseer et al., 2019), treats
the followers with compassion, respect and admiration (Argandona, 2015) that give the
feelings to the subordinates that their work is meaningful for them and have an impact over
organizational outcomes (Chen et al., 2018). Humble leaders also give value to their followers’
contributions and suggestions that enhance followers’ confidence (Jeung and Yoon, 2018) and
self-efficacy about their jobs (Bandura, 1986; Conger and Kanungo, 1988) and enhance their
level of competence. Moreover, the delegation of authority and openness to feedback shown
by humble leaders make employees feel free from bureaucratic constraints and provide a
sense of autonomy through which they can make a difference in the achievement of work Impact of
goals (Owens and Hekman, 2012). humble
Psychologically empowered employees are defined by dedication and resilience, increased
efforts toward the task and intrinsic motivation for their assignments (Seibert, 2011), which
leadership on
are leading work effectiveness. Psychologically empowered employees accept additional project success
responsibilities and become more independent that are the leading indicators of
organizational success and client satisfaction (Nauman, 2010). Project team members often
work independently and outside the organizational chain of command. There is increasing 353
evidence that the autonomous, full-time and empowered project team members can
accomplish the projects on time and within a given budget (Bommer, 2002). Employees
having a sense of competence are self-confident about their success (Bandura, 1986).
Subordinates knowing about the impact of their work promote the feeling that their work is
sufficient (Zhang and Bartol, 2010), which becomes a motivational tool for them to exert extra
efforts toward project success (Aga et al., 2016). Previous studies reported that empowered
employees were more effective in accomplishing their work and help to achieve
organizational productivity goals (Laschinger, 1999; Sigler, 2000) as well as to
demonstrating better performance (Manojlovich, 2005). In the same way, psychologically
empowered team members can significantly contribute to the achievement of project team
goals by performing well and so can contribute to the project success assigned to a team.
The earlier discussion suggests that psychological empowerment has a mediating role
between humble leadership and project success. Furthermore, our argument for the
mediating effect of psychological empowerment is based on the concept of resource caravans
proposed by conservation of resource theory (Hobfoll, 2011). We take a positive resource
gains approach toward the notion of humble leaders as having a rich resource pool capable of
orchestrating resource gain for their subordinates or followers (Hobfoll, 2011). We believe
that humble leaders invest their resources into the creation of resources of followers (e.g.
psychological empowerment) that in turn allow their followers to acquire more resources in
the shape of project success. As such, psychological empowerment seems to mediate the
effect of humble leadership on project success.
Mediation refers to the covariance relationships among three variables: an independent
variable, an assumed mediating variable and dependent variable (Sigall and Mills, 1998).
Mediation analysis investigates whether the mediating variable (psychological
empowerment) accounts for a significant amount of the shared variance between the
independent (humble leadership) and the dependent variable (project success) – in the
presence of the mediating variable, the relationship between the independent and dependent
variable changes. Based on the earlier discussion, we propose the following hypotheses:
H2a. Humble leadership is positively related to psychological empowerment.
H2b. Psychological empowerment is positively related to project success.
H2c. Psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between humble leadership
and project success.

The mediating role of innovative work behavior

Existing research has found that supportive leadership is positively related to innovation
(Zhang and Bartol, 2010). The cooperation and support of the supervisor enhance the chances
of IWB by subordinates (Yuan, 2010). Humble leaders by giving participation to others in
decision-making create a sense of self-confidence about high performance and encourage free
interaction with their followers (Gonçalves, 2017; Lin et al., 2017; Rego et al., 2017) resulting
the subordinates to develop, promote and implement new and useful ideas (Altuno
glu and
Bulgurcu G€ urel, 2015). According to Owens and Hekman (2016), humble leaders consider the
LODJ mistakes and failures of their subordinates as a tool for learning and success. Thus, team
41,3 members are more likely to display more purposeful risk-taking behavior (Mayer et al., 1995),
when immediate supervisors support such actions either by giving appropriate rewards or by
denying punishment in case of failure for achieving targeted outcomes (Dirks and Ferrin,
2001). As such, followers feel comfortable enough to share their ideas with their supervisors
freely and expect their supervisors to listen and respond constructively (McAllister, 1995).
Humble leadership encourages subordinates to present new ideas (Zhou and Wu, 2018) and
354 creates a climate where innovative efforts are supported that motivate employees to develop
creative alternatives before choosing a feasible solution (Zhang and Bartol, 2010).
Furthermore, humble leaders make their followers receptive toward uncertainty through
teachability and openness to feedback and allow their followers to try new things based on a
trial and error approach (Mallen et al., 2019) that promote IWB (Bruce, 1998; De Jong and
Hartog, 2008; Teresa M Amabile, 2004).
Prior research indicates that innovative behavior achieves performance goals in the
workplace (Yuan, 2010). Project team members capable of providing quick solutions can
timely solve operational and technical problems as well as improve the speed and quality of
their projects (Atuahene-Gima, 2003; Clark, 1991). Accordingly, innovative work activities are
relied upon to enhance workplace performance because employees with innovative abilities
better predict and detect opportunities for development and create an innovative solution to
challenges encountered in their jobs (De Jong and Hartog, 2010; Scott and Bruce, 1994),
thereby enabling the organization to succeed in a dynamic business environment (Kanter,
1983; West, 1990). Sohmen (2013) Suggested that innovation within groups should be
encouraged as it is a useful tool for problem-solving, especially in a competitive environment.
A wide range of employees’ innovative behaviors can offer more innovative solutions and use
creative expertise to convert these benefits into team performance (Hughes et al., 2018).
Employees with innovative behaviors are inclined to boost the significance of work and
enhance the sense that such behavior has a positive impact on their performance and achieve
goals successfully (Yuan, 2010).
The earlier discussion revealed that a humble leader helps to foster innovative behavior of
employees (Zhou and Wu, 2018), which positively influences project success. In other words,
humble leaders accomplish the project by stimulating creative behavior among their
subordinates. Moreover, the conservation of resource theory (Hobfoll, 1989) presents a useful
framework to understand the mediating role of IWB between humble leadership and project
success. The availability of crucial job resources in the form of humble leadership is expected
to encourage followers to invest their resources in discretionary behaviors (i.e. IWB) that
ultimately help them to achieve project success since conservation of resource logic suggests
that individuals who have significant resource pool invest more resources in discretionary
behaviors to gain more resources (Hobfoll, 1989). Thus, we suggest the following hypotheses:
H3a. Humble leadership is positively related to innovative work behavior.
H3b. Innovative work behavior is positively related to project success.
H3c. Innovative work behavior mediates the relationship between humble leadership
and project success.

Methods
Research setting and participants
The target population for this study was the construction industry located in Pakistan. The
reason for selecting this sector is that the construction industry is project-oriented, where the
firms are given a construction project for a fixed period. The culture within the construction
industry is a typical project culture and is often relatively informal rather than formal culture
commonly found in the manufacturing industry (Vrijhoef and Koskela, 2005), which makes it Impact of
a suitable population for the current study. humble
leadership on
Sample and procedure project success
For data collection, the survey questionnaires were distributed randomly among the
employees working in four large construction companies. Before data collection, we contacted
the head of work units and asked their permission for data collection from the employees 355
working in their department. After their approval, employees were informed about the
purpose of data collection. They were assured that their information would be kept
confidential and will be used for current research only. After showing their consent, they were
given questionnaires and were asked to return in a sealed envelope. The respondents were
requested to consider only one project that was recently completed while filling out the
questionnaire. Out of 500 distributed questionnaires, 393 questionnaires were returned,
representing a response rate of 78.6%. Of the returned questionnaires, 56 were dropped due to
either incompleteness or careless responses. This reduced the number to 337 questionnaires
to be used for analysis. The demographics of the study respondents are given in Table 1.

Measures
Humble leadership
Humble leadership was measured with the nine-item scale developed by Owens et al. (2013). A
sample item is included, “My leader actively seeks feedback even if it is critical.” The
Cronbach’s α for this measure was 0.92. The items were measured on a five-point Likert scale
ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly disagree (5).

Psychological empowerment
Psychological empowerment was measured with the 12-item scale developed by Spreitzer
(1995). A sample item is included, “The work I do is meaningful to me”. Cronbach’s α for this
measure was 0.93. The scale was anchored by five points ranging from strongly disagree (1)
to strongly agree (5).

Innovative work behavior

We used a nine-item scale developed by Janssen (2000) to measure IWB. A sample item is
included, “Creating new ideas for difficult issues”, Cronbach’s α for the scale was 0.91. Scale
for measuring the items ranged from always (1) to never (5).

Measures Item Frequency %

Gender Male 220 65.3

Female 117 34.7
Age (years) 20–30 67 19.9
31–40 74 22.0
41–50 107 31.8
Above 50 89 26.4
Education Bachelor’s 254 75.4
Master’s 55 16.3
Undergraduate 28 8.3
Work experience Less than 5 year 34 10.1
5–10 years 87 25.8 Table 1.
11–15 years 112 33.2 Demographic profile of
16 years and above 104 30.9 respondents
LODJ Project success
41,3 Project success was measured with the ten-item scale developed by Turner and M€ uller (2005).
A sample item is included, “Clients are satisfied with project results”. Cronbach’s α for the
scale was 0.94. The items were assessed on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly
disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).

356 Control variable

Job experience, gender and educational level have been demonstrated to influence project
success and so these variables should be included as a control variable (Aga et al., 2016).
Therefore, we consider age, education, gender and experience as the control variables.

Data analysis
Data analysis was carried out using SPSS 23 and AMOS 23. The analysis was performed in
two steps: confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural model testing. CFA is a
preliminary step in the data analysis process to confirm whether the measured items underlie
the hypothesized latent variables (Kline, 2015). Then, hypothesized relationships are tested
using a structural equation model (SEM) (J€oreskog, 1993).

Confirmatory factor analysis

CFA was conducted to see whether the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data well. The
CFA results showed an excellent model fitness (χ 2 5 1,048.68, df 5 734, χ 2 /df 5 1.142,
p < 0.001, CFI 5 0.96, TLI 5 0.96, SRMR 5 0.03, RMSEA 5 0.03). The standardized factor
loadings were greater than 0.7. Next, the four latent variables were evaluated for composite
reliability (CR), convergent validity and discriminant validity. The CR values for all the
constructs were greater than 0.9, showing excellent internal consistency (Bagozzi, 1983;
Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Convergent validity was verified by using the values of the
average variance extracted (AVE). AVE values should be greater than 0.5 in order to achieve
convergent validity among the study constructs (Sarstedt et al., 2016). The AVE values for all
the constructs were greater than 0.5, verifying that there is no issue of convergent validity
among these constructs. Discriminant validity was tested following the Fornell–Larcker
approach (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The criterion was fulfilled since the square root of AVE
value of all the constructs was greater than the correlation among all the constructs as given
in Table 2 (The square root of AVE is given in diagonal with bold letters).

Model fit
Once we confirmed that the construct scales were valid and reliable, the next step was to
check the model fit of the structural model. To examine the viability of the structural model,

CR AVE M SD α HL PE PS IWB

HL 0.92 0.58 3.70 0.81 0.92 0.761

PE 0.93 0.56 3.78 0.79 0.94 0.201 0.746
PS 0.94 0.62 3.88 0.79 0.94 0.289 0.239 0.790
IWB 0.91 0.55 3.59 0.83 0.91 0.196 0.038 0.202 0.742
Table 2. Note(s): Variance extracted are on the diagonal; Correlations are of diagonal
Mean, standard AVE 5 average variance extracted; α 5 Cronbach’s alpha; CR 5 composite reliability; M 5 Mean;
deviation, AVE and SD 5 standard deviation; HL 5 humble leadership; PE 5 psychological empowerment; PS 5 project success;
correlation IWB 5 innovative work behavior. Variance extracted is on the diagonal: Correlations are off diagonal
four established models fit statistics including χ 2, the root mean square error of Impact of
approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) and the comparative fit index humble
(CFI) were used as a model fit indicator (Kline, 2005; Schumacker and Lomax, 1996). When χ 2
is significant, the CFI and TLI are greater than 0.9 and the RMSEA is less than or equal to
leadership on
0.08, the model is considered to have acceptable fitness (Kline, 2005; Xi et al., 2017). Based on project success
these indices and following the approach used by Shah et al. (2018), we conducted a series of
model comparison tests to confirm the hypothesized model. The hypothesized model (M0)
provided a good fit (χ 2 5 1,235.354, df 5 887, RMSEA 5 0.034, CFI 5 0.960 and TLI 5 0.957). 357
In the first alternative model (M1), we deleted the direct path between HL and PS. This model
had good fit (χ 2 5 1,241.140, df 5 888, RMSEA 5 0.034, CFI 5 0.956 and TLI 5 0.959).
Compared to the hypothesized model, χ 2 increased by 6.21, CFI decreased with 0.004 and TLI
decreased with 0.002, whereas the degree of freedom added 1. In the second alternative model
(M2), we uninvolved the mediating role and erased the paths from PE and IWB to PS. This
model showed good fit (χ 2 5 1,245.807, df 5 889, RMSEA 5 0.035, CFI 5 0.959 and
TLI 5 0.956). However, compared to M0, χ 2 increased by 10.453, and the DF increased by 2,
CFI and TLI decreased with 0.001 respectively. Additionally, CFI and TLI were noted to
decrease. In the third alternative model (M3), we regressed all variables sequentially. This
model also did not offer better fit than M0 (χ 2 5 1,250.69, df 5 888, RMSEA 5 0.035,
CFI 5 0.958 and TLI 5 0.955). Thus, the hypothesized model (M0) was better than all of the
alternative models (see Table 3).

Structural model testing

Having established the reliability and validity of the measurement model, the next step was
the assessment of the structural model (Hair et al., 2013) that would test the model’s predictive
capabilities and the relationship between proposed constructs. Structural model testing was
performed in two steps: first, only control variables were entered (model 1) followed by taking
control and main variables together (model 2). About the main effect, the analysis revealed a
significant positive association between humble leadership and project success (β 5 0.12,
P < 0.001), supporting H1. H2a and H3a, as humble leadership was found to be a significant
predictor of psychological empowerment (β 5 0.20, P < 0.001) and IWB (β 5 0.19, P < 0.001).
Regarding H2b and H3b, results showed statistically significant link of psychological
empowerment (β 5 0.10, P < 0.001) and IWB (β 5 0.13, P < 0.001) with project success, hence
were accepted. It should be noted that although the controls were significantly related to
project success except gender, these results did not influence the relationships among the
study variables. The R2 values obtained for dependent variables indicate the predictive
power a theoretical model and in this case 38% of variance in project success was predicted.
As the R2 of a dependent variable must be at least 10% to ensure meaningful interpretation
(Chitsaz et al., 2017), the theoretical model demonstrated substantive explanatory power. (see
Table 4).
Regarding H2c and H3c, we followed the analytical strategy used by Khan et al. (2019) to
estimate the indirect effect of psychological empowerment and IWB through user-defined

Model χ2 df χ 2/df CFI TLI RMSEA

HL-PS, HL-IWB-PS, HL-PE-PS (M0) 1235.354 887 1.39 0.930 0.957 0.034
HL-IWB-PS, HL-PE-PS (M1) 1241.140 888 1.39 0.956 0.959 0.034
HL-PS, HL-PE, HL-IWB (M2) 1245.807 889 1.40 0.959 0.956 0.035
HL-PE-IWB-PS (M3) 1250.69 888 1.40 0.958 0.955 0.035
Note(s): HL 5 humble leadership, PE 5 psychological empowerment, PS 5 project success, Table 3.
IWB 5 innovative work behavior Model comparison
LODJ Model 1 Model 2
41,3 Structural path β SE t-value P β SE t-value P

Age → PS 0.51 0.03 10.10 <0.001 0.34 0.03 9.07 <0.001

Education → PS 0.12 0.06 2.67 <0.01 0.16 0.05 2.78 <0.01
Work experience → PS 0.17 0.03 3.67 <0.001 0.13 0.03 3.63 <0.001
Gender → PS 0.07 0.07 1.70 >0.05 (0.089) 0.05 0.07 1.13 >0.05 (0.258)
358 HL → PS 0.12 0.04 2.31 <0.05
HL → PE 0.20 0.05 3.48 <0.001
HL → IWB 0.19 0.05 3.28 <0.001
PE → PS 0.10 0.04 2.22 <0.05
IWB → PS 0.12 0.05 2.60 <0.01
R2 0.34 0.38
ΔR2 0.04
Table 4. Note(s): Model 1: Controls were regressed on the dependent variable (Note: no other variable was added to
Structural equation analysis)
model path analysis Model 2: Complete model was run and the dependent variable was controlled. HL 5 humble leadership,
results PE 5 psychological empowerment, IWB 5 innovative work behavior, PS 5 project success

estimand (i.e. the syntax for AMOS). Through the user-defined estimand, we defined the
indirect effect and then estimated it through the bias-corrected bootstrap procedure (Preacher
and Hayes, 2008). Bootstrapping tests are influential because they detect when the sampling
distribution of the mediated effect is skewed away from 0 (Shrout and Bolger, 2002). We
calculated 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals (CIs) using 5,000 data
samples. The top and lower bound results exclude 0 for psychological empowerment and
IWB, which suggests that they are significant by conventional standards. The bootstrap
results indicate a positively significant mediating effect of psychological empowerment
between humble leadership and project success (β 5 0.03, SE 5 0.01, P < 0.05, 95% CI [0.005,
0.070]). Similarly, IWB also positively and significantly mediated the relationship between
humble leadership and project success (β 5 0.02, SE 5 0.01, p < 0.05, 95% CI [0.002, 0.063]). It
should be noted the direct relationship between humble leadership and project success was
also significant, which means that psychological empowerment and IWB partially mediate
the effect of humble leadership and project success (see Table 5).
It is necessary to determine whether these two indirect effects differ significantly. An
examination of pairwise constructs for the indirect effects reveals that the specific indirect
effect through IWB is not substantially different from the indirect impact through
psychological empowerment, because their CIs contain 0 (β 5 0.01, SE 5 0.04, 95% CI [ 0.07,
0.11]) (see Figure 1).

Discussion
The current research was carried out to determine the relationship between humble
leadership and project success with the mediating role of psychological empowerment and

Percentile 95% CI
Standardized Standard error Lower Upper Significance
Table 5. estimate (β) (SE) bound bound level(P)
Bootstrapping
estimates of mediating HL → PE → PS 0.03 0.01 0.005 0.070 <0.05
effects HL → IWB → PS 0.02 0.01 0.002 0.063 <0.05
 Impact of
humble
leadership on
project success

359

Figure 1.
Research model

IWB. The data were collected from the workers employed in the construction industry of
Pakistan, and the results revealed that humble leadership was directly and indirectly (via
psychological empowerment and IWB) related to project success. The current study has
addressed a significant gap in the literature by empirically exploring the relationship
between humble leadership and project success, as the relationship between other leadership
styles (e.g. transformational, transactional leadership) and project success has already been
explored (Aga et al., 2016; Raziq et al., 2018). The outcomes of the present study imply that
humility should be an essential quality of the project manager to ensure the successful
execution of the project, thereby supporting the previous research (Briere et al., 2015).
Moreover, given the role of humble leadership in project success, this study substantiates
previous research advocating a positive link between humble leadership and teamwork (Ou
et al., 2018). Additionally, the study follows a prior call for research to explore the role of
project managers’ leadership styles in project success (Turner and M€ uller, 2005).
The current research also points out that psychological empowerment partially mediates
the relationship between humble leadership and project success, which suggests that besides
the direct effect, humble leadership leads to the successful accomplishment of project success
through psychologically empowering employees. This finding supports the previous claim
that humble leadership is unlikely to have an impact on the productivity of subordinates
unless they are psychologically empowered (Chen et al., 2018). This finding also points to the
fact that when humble leaders supervise team members, they feel themselves as
psychologically empowered as they enjoy the autonomy in their work under the
supervision of humble leaders (Jeung and Yoon, 2016), thereby team members feel
dedicated and inspired toward the accomplishment of the project goal (Ou et al., 2014).
Overall, the outcomes of the present study suggest that the psychological empowerment of
the employees is a useful tool in project success that could be achieved by having team leaders
who are high on humility traits.
Along these lines, we also found the parallel mediating effect of IWB between leader
humility and project success. However, the mediating result was partial, suggesting that
humble leadership could directly as well as indirectly via IWB lead to the achievement of
project goals. By doing this, the current research adds to previous research suggesting that
humble leadership is likely to have a stronger impact on IWB (Zhou and Wu, 2018).
Considering the role of humble leadership in psychological empowerment (Chen et al., 2018;
Jeung and Yoon, 2016) and IWB (Zhou and Wu, 2018), this study moves one step further by
merging the two processes in a single context and suggests that humble leadership could
stimulate psychological empowerment and IWB at the same time to motivate the followers
toward project success.
LODJ Practical implications
41,3 The study has several practical implications. The current research highlights the significance
of leaders’ humility for project success. Humility is a valuable quality that could be learned
and achieved (Rego et al., 2017), which suggests that organizations mainly the project-based
ones should nurture humble leaders from their workforce by taking specific measures. For
instance, project-based organizations should train leaders to prompt humility by designing
specific training programs (Wang et al., 2018b). Humility is an interpersonal quality and
360 relationship-oriented. Thus, organizations should take steps to enhance the social
interactions among the employees through both formal and informal ways.
The results also found that humble leadership is essential to enhance the psychological
empowerment of subordinates that ultimately lead to project success. A leader’s
supportive role empowers employees to manage their wisdom and activities that are
important to achieve project objectives. Psychological empowerment plays an essential
part in defining the encouraging work attitude and integrity, stimulates employee
contributions in decision making and removes inflexible restrictions (Spreitzer, 1995). As
such, team members are motivated to become more positive and loyal. This further
indicates that there is a higher possibility of project success when the modules of
psychological empowerment are correctly used. The literature has shown that such kind of
implementation by organizations cultivates an environment where team members
feel themselves to be psychologically empowered, leading to team efficiency (Wang
et al., 2018a).
As previously mentioned, humble leaders are open to their followers’ suggestions (Owens
and Hekman, 2012) and so may flourish followers’ new skills and abilities. The humility trait
of a project manager supports employees to develop IWB by asking their suggestions. This
enhances trust between leaders and followers, which is an essential element for promoting
IWB (Javed et al., 2017). However, innovation not only involves developing ideas but may also
be an effective means of solving work-related problems. Organizations should create an
environment where followers feel confident to present their innovative ideas. The literature
indicates that such support of the organization and its management motivate followers to
exert maximum efforts and keep high-performance values that ultimately lead to project
success (Hassan et al., 2017).

Limitations and future research

Our study has certain limitations that need to be addressed in future studies. First, our
study only considered the association between the focal constructs rather than the
predictions. Future studies should establish the cause and effect of these associations by
using experimental design. Second, although the CFA indicated four distinct constructs,
potential common method variance cannot be neglected because of the cross-sectional
nature of the study. However, we tried to address this problem to some extent by applying
Harman’s one-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003). The results showed that the single factor
accounted for only 22.9% of the variance explained less than the threshold level of 50%
(Khan et al., 2019), indicating that common method bias is not a severe issue. However,
future researchers may collect data from multiple sources or in different periods (cross-
sectional) to eliminate potential biases associated with cross-sectional data. The third
limitation is the generalizability of the study. We focused on a single country (Pakistan) and
a single sector (construction projects) to collect data. Future studies could replicate the same
research in other sectors and cultural contexts. More specifically, because humble
leadership is a relationship-oriented leadership style, comparative research should be
conducted between high versus low relationship-oriented culture to estimate whether the
effect of humble leadership on project success varies from culture to culture.
 It would also be of interest to see whether humble leadership leads to adverse outcomes Impact of
(Ou et al., 2014; Weidman et al., 2018). According to Bharanitharan et al. (2018), the majority of humble
empirical research on the topic of humility has demonstrated its positive effects. However, it
is uncertain if humility yields some adverse outcomes, such as slower or less confident
leadership on
decisions that might disrupt the company’s responses to rapid changes in the environment project success
(Eisenhardt, 1989). Future research should address if there is a tipping point from which the
effects of leader humility on project performance or other results are adverse.
Finally, our findings also indicate that a humble leader can play an active role in 361
promoting IWB among the subordinates. The free interaction of humble leaders with their
followers encourages the followers to openly express themselves and come up with new
ideas (idea generation) (Mallen et al., 2019). Likewise, the delegation of authority and
participation in decision-making encourages the subordinates to implement their
innovative ideas (idea promotion and implementation) (Wang et al., 2018b). Moreover,
the receptivity toward uncertainty makes the humble leaders allow their subordinates to
try their innovative ideas on trial and error base (idea realization) (Zhou and Wu, 2018).
Future research could study the impact of humble leadership on different knowledge areas
of project management through dimensions of IWB (idea generation, idea promotions, idea
realization) and psychological empowerment (meaning, competence, self-determination
and impact).

Conclusion
Improved awareness about the aspects encouraging project success is of high significance to
project-based organizations. This research established that a humble leader has a significant
impact on project success. Project-oriented organizations need to facilitate project managers
to develop their skills of humility (Rego et al., 2017). This study has pointed out that a
successful project manager is the one who is high on the humility trait as humility leads to
project success by their subordinates. The study found that humble leaders are effective
leaders because their followers earn self-respect, skills and abilities and motivation. The
study found two fundamental characteristics of employees: psychological empowerment and
IWB that have a significant impact on project success, and these two characteristics flourish
under humble leadership.

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About the authors project success
Mudassar Ali is PhD scholar under Chinese Government Scholarship at School of Economy and
Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, P.R. China. He completed his master’s in project
management from Riphah International University, Islamabad. His research interest related to 367
leadership and applied knowledge areas of project management. Mudassar Ali is the corresponding
author and be can contacted at: mudasir.ali@live.com
Li Zhang is a professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the Harbin
Institute of technology in China. She completed her PhD in the field of management from the Harbin
Engineering University. Her research interest includes organizational behavior, human resource,
leadership and work–family balance. She has had research papers published in reputed journals such as
Journal of Business Research (SSCI), Personality and Individual Differences (SSCI), International Journal
of Stress Management (SSCI) and Current Psychology (SSCI). She has continuously been reviewing
articles for International Journal of Human Resource Management (SSCI) and Journal of Managerial
Psychology as well as AOM meeting papers.
Syed Jamal Shah is a PhD candidate at the Harbin Institute of Technology. He worked as a Marketing
and Human Resource Manager in multinational and national pharmaceutical companies. His research
interest is human resource management, organizational behavior, strategic management and
marketing. His research work has appeared in journals such as Sustainability (SSCI), International
Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (SSCI), Human Systems Management (ESCI) and
Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies (ESCI). His target segment of research is
frontline employees.
Salim Khan is a PhD scholar of business administration in the School of Management at the Harbin
Institute of Technology. He received his postgraduation in the same field from the Quaid-i-Azam
University, Islamabad, Pakistan. His current research areas are business ethics, human resource,
organizational behavior. His research work has appeared in journals such as Current Psychology and
International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (SSCI).
Adnan Muhammad Shah is a PhD candidate in the Department of Management Science and
Engineering, at the School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology. His research interests
include big-data analysis, e-health, physician-rating websites and reviews, online healthcare community
and social media analytics in e-health. His research has appeared in Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences (HICSS) and others.

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