The Role of Leader’s Humility in Facilitating Frontline Employees’ Deep Acting and Turnover: The Moderating Role of Perceived Customer-Oriented Climate

Abstract

Many cultures recognize humility as an important human virtue. However, there is scant research on a possible relationship between leader’s humility and employees’ emotional labor. The current study, based on strong-situation hypothesis, posits that within the service industry, leader’s humility could determine and facilitate employee’ deep acting and turnover. Moreover, the mediating effect of deep acting is moderated by employees’ perceptions of the organization’s customer-oriented climate. The study is based on self-reported and archival data of 157 frontline employees at a hospital in China. The results generally support the hypotheses. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed.

Keywords

leader’s humility deep acting turnover perceived customer-oriented climate longitudinal

In much of the developed and developing world, service labor has become the mainstay of the economy, and will continue to develop at a rapid pace (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012; cf. Lam, Huang, & Janssen, 2010; Wu & Hu, 2013). For example, in China, the added value of 1.8 million workers in the service industry was $4.6 trillion dollars in 2014 (converted from Chinese currency). These workers represented almost a thousandth of the Chinese whole population in 2014, increased by 8.1% from last year (China News, 2015). China’s intensified growth in and heavy reliance on service industry also reflects its positions in other countries (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012).

Service organizations exert high emotional regulation requirements on frontline employees. Scholars have found that the emotional regulation strategy, appropriately applied, can help employees in the service industry adapt successfully to organizational requirements (Arvey, Renz, & Watson, 1998; Grandey & Gabriel, 2015). Emotional regulation requires frontline employees to express appropriate emotions even when they cannot feel them (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 2003). Hochschild (1979, 2003) proposed two types of emotional regulation strategy that employees may use to satisfy the requirements of organizations and customers: surface acting, in which employees express fake emotions as required by their employers and customers; and deep acting, in which employees seek to change the actual internal feelings to accord with the emotions that must be expressed.

Extant studies have focused on the predictors of employees’ emotional regulation strategy. For example, recent studies found that the congruence between personal traits and emotional requirements of service jobs, self-monitoring, agreeableness, positive affectivity, and also organizational emotional requirements, can serve as accurate predictors of both deep and surface acting (Diefendorff, Erickson, Grandey, & Dahling, 2011; Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013; Mesmer-Magnus, Dechurch, & Wax, 2012; Ozcelik, 2013). Specifically, scholars found that employees with strong customer-oriented motives are more likely to conduct deep acting (Allen, Pugh, Grandey, & Groth, 2010; Gabriel, Daniels, Diefendorff, & Greguras, 2015; Maneotis, Grandey, & Krauss, 2014), while those without overall work goals or bad faiths to emotional labor tended to conduct more surface acting (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Ozcelik, 2013).

Although numerous studies have tried to predict employees’ emotional regulation strategy in the workplace, few have investigated the impact of leaders’ traits on employees’ adoption of different strategies, even though scholars have called for more relevant studies (Yukl, 2009). Humility, as an important human virtue that stems from recognizing one’s own limitations and emphasizing others’ strengths, has been identified in many cultures as the hallmark of a good leader (Owens & Hekman, 2012; Peterson & Seligman, 2004). For example, Morris, Brotheridge, and Urbanski (2005) articulated the historical Chinese Taoist view of humility by approaching humility as the loss of the self, and it was believed that a leader’s effectiveness was largely determined by whether he or she was willing to let go of the self to achieve harmony. In this regard, researchers have suggested that leaders should move beyond portraying themselves from the “great man” perspective and should, instead, show their humanness by being open to their own limitations (Exline & Geyer, 2004), focusing more on their employees (Uhl-Bien, 2006), and appreciating others; essentially, their employees’ merits (Murrell, 1997; Weick, 2001).

The current study is based on strong-situation hypothesis (e.g., Cooper & Withey, 2009; Meyer, Dalal, & Hermida, 2010; Mischel, 1977). From this hypothesis, we emphasize leader’s personal traits and situational factors in determining employees’ emotional regulation strategy choices interactively. We propose that, first, leader’s humility serves as an important human virtue that may help employees conduct a complicated emotional regulation strategy (i.e., deep acting); second, only when employees perceive that organizational climate is not so strong would employees’ deep acting be facilitated by the leader’s humility; third, employees also need supports from the climate to receive necessary resources and informational benefits to stay on incumbent job positions (Grandey, 2003). We propose a moderated mediation model: When employees perceive that the organizational customer-oriented climate is relatively weak, leader’s humility would positively increase employees’ deep acting which, in fact, increases turnover under weak climate. Conversely, when employees perceive that customer-oriented climate is high, employees’ inherently high deep acting would, in effect, help reduce their actual turnover rates.

We design our study to contribute to both humility and emotional labor literature by adding potential antecedent and consequence of each construct, and also to highlight the boundary conditions: employees’ perceived organizational climate. We also attempt to contribute to strong-situation hypothesis theory by arguing that leader’s humility can also act as a kind of catalyst facilitating employees’ initiatives in relatively weak situations. These may broaden our understandings of humility, emotional labor, and turnover theories and, at the same time, put forward more empirical evidence.

Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis Development

Leader’s Humility

Humility has become a fast-growing topic in recent years and it has rich theoretical roots. Traditional definitions of humility often paint it within a negative picture of self-abasement or low self-esteem (Tangney, 2000). People may associate humility with low opinions of the self and also link accepting limitations with humiliation. However, more scholars began to find humility as a kind of human virtue recently (Exline & Geyer, 2004). For example, Tangney (2002) systematically reviewed the construct of humility from philosophical and psychological literatures and summarized many positive components associated with humility. Exline and Geyer (2004) compared different theoretical streams and concluded that scholars began to suggest humility as a kind of human virtues rather than traditional negative views. From then on, psychological theories started to find more positive implications of humility (Davis, Worthington, & Hook, 2010; Exline & Geyer, 2004; Peterson & Seligman, 2004), while management research on humility also showed significant milestones when humility started to be associated with virtue, ethics, and empowering leadership (Hackett & Wang, 2012; Morris et al., 2005; Vera & Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004).

Owens and his colleagues developed their construct with three important behavioral manifestations of humility in organizations (Owens & Hekman, 2012; Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2013). Ou et al. (2014) adapted these behavioral manifestations and added more important cognitive or motivational components. These studies loaded solid foundations of humility in management. Based on these studies, humility is defined as a relatively stable personal trait where individuals tend to have self-views that there are always others greater than themselves. This humble self-view can be rooted in comparisons with universal truths (Morris et al., 2005), a sense of responsibility toward others (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), and also larger communities (Tangney, 2002).

An increasing number of studies have attempted to describe core characteristics of leader’s humility. Morris et al. (2005) suggested that leader’s humility is composed of several important factors: self-awareness, openness to new ideas, and the tendency to examine oneself. Nielsen, Marrone, and Slay (2010) argued that humility entails a willingness to understand one’s own strengths and weaknesses, whereas Collins (2001) suggested that leader’s humility also involves a sense of calmness and quietness (Collins, 2001; Vera & Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). Although some disagreements regarding humility exist, scholars generally investigate leader’s humility with regard to how it reflects the leader’s tendency to approach interpersonal interactions as opportunities to learn from others. Owens and colleagues’ studies defined humility as an interpersonal characteristic in three areas: (a) a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately, (b) spotlighting employees’ strengths and contributions, and (c) modeling teachability (Chiu & Owens, 2013; Owens et al., 2013; Owens & Hekman, 2012).

Ou et al. (2014) extended this model and articulated that these three components may not capture the cognitive and motivational cores of humility (Morris et al., 2005; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Tangney, 2000). They proposed that humility be viewed as a leader’s personal characteristic, not only leadership behaviors. Humble leaders accept their own imperfections and fully understand their own abilities, which implies their low self-focus. They appreciate others’ positive worth, strengths, and contributions, and are willing to listen to (and accept) advice from others; this reflects their deep motives: self-transcendent pursuit. Moreover, they care more about the whole community and the ultimate universal truth, which reflects their transcendent self-concept. Therefore, Ou et al. (2014) and Ou, Waldman, and Peterson’s (2015) six-dimension model of leader’s humility includes three manifested behavioral factors from Owens’ model (Owens et al., 2013; Owens & Hekman, 2012) and, additionally, three cognitive or motivational factors: low self-focus, self-transcendent pursuit, and transcendent self-concept.

Moreover, some leadership constructs, such as authentic leadership (Chang & Diddams, 2009), servant leadership (Van Dierendonck & Nuijten, 2011), and also spiritual leadership (Fry, 2003), may also include humility as their core component. For example, Chang and Diddams (2009) suggested that humility provides a sense of authenticity. Van Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011) incorporated openness of imperfections, willingness to seek more sophisticated advices from different perspectives as an important component in their servant leadership scale. However, these constructs only regard humility as one organic element, which cannot represent the conclusive meaning of such construct. As Ou et al. (2014) argued, these constructs may fail to treat leader’s humility as a unique personal trait from behavioral and cognitive dimensions.

Relationship Between Leader’s Humility and Employees’ Deep Acting

Our study focuses on employees’ deep acting rather than surface acting, because deep acting is more like an antecedent-focused emotional regulation strategy, by which employees need to change situations or cognitions to modify their actual feelings, as previous studies have indicated (Grandey, 2000). Compared with surface acting, in order to conduct deep acting, service employees need to form and maintain positive emotional states and have higher emotional regulation abilities (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Grandey, 2003; Grandey & Diamond, 2010; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013). From the employees’ perspective, leader’s humility sends supportive information and knowledge from both organizations and the leader’s relatively more powerful position (Bangerter, Roulin, & König, 2012). Previous studies have suggested that deep acting is a more complicated strategy consistent with intellectual-level actions (T. Y. Wu & Hu, 2013; Zapf, 2002). This strategy requires employees to consume more cognitive resources to evaluate the environment and to discover appropriate methods to change their internal feelings (Zapf, 2002).

Based on Ou et al.’s (2014) conception of leader’s humility, there are two basic reasons for the researchers to believe that leader’s humility would increase employees’ deep acting. First, employees may find it easy to maintain positive emotions when their leaders are humble. In the workplace, subordinates tend to occupy relatively powerless positions vis-à-vis their time and resources; and, moreover, employees’ interactions are largely impacted by their supervisors. Within this context, a leader’s appreciation could signal that such employees’ performance is appreciated (Bangerter et al., 2012). Humble leaders, who tend to appreciate others’ strengths while admitting their own limitations, may generate employees’ perceptions that their own work has a strong impact within the organization. Therefore, employees are likely to maintain more positive emotional states when working for, or under the supervision of, a humble leader (Spreitzer, 2008). Based on Kammeyer-Mueller et al. (2013), psychological strain is expected to decrease when employees experience congruence between their internal emotions and their bodily displays. Those in positive emotional states will less likely feel emotional or cognitive dissonance, which is beneficial for their emotional regulation (Abraham, 2000). Scholars found that employees’ abilities to regulate their emotions is positively related to deep acting, but negatively related to surface acting (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012). More important, according to broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2004), positive emotions can broaden employees’ momentary thought-action repertoires. This means that positive emotions can widen the array of thoughts and actions. These positive emotions facilitate the discovery of new ideas and actions (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005). Deep acting, as a more complicated emotional regulation strategy, requires more temporally cognitive and emotional efforts (Grandey & Gabriel, 2015). In consequence, more positive emotional states help employees increase and conserve personal resources for effective deep acting.

Moreover, deep acting strategy asks for higher emotional regulation abilities than surface acting (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012). According to emotion regulation theory (Gross, 1998), rather than passively sustaining emotional resources from environment (i.e., customers, coworkers, and supervisors), deep acting requires employees to proactively use various strategies to modify the situations or the perceptions of situation. For example, frontline employees may use situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, and cognitive change as their emotional regulation tools to engage in deep acting (Gross, 1998).

Employees can acquire necessary emotional regulation abilities from humble leaders. Seminal studies have already articulated that humble leaders have better emotional regulation abilities (Morris et al., 2005). This is because humility does not mean self-abasement or self-degradation (Ou et al., 2014). On the contrary, humble leaders can fully realize their current abilities and limitations, which actually enables them to disclose themselves and to actively seek feedbacks (Owens et al., 2013; Tangney, 2002). Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez (2004) proposed that humble people are open to new paradigms, eager to learn from others, and attempt to correct their failures, rather than passively accepting them. Besides, humble leaders have more accurate and honest self-appraisals, which may prevent themselves from making unfair comparisons and from begrudging the good fortune of others (Morris et al., 2005). This function of helping leaders screen out negative emotions such as jealousy (Richards, 1992) may have similar impacts on their subordinates. Through social learning processes (Bandura, 1977), humble leaders can also improve their subordinates’ emotional regulation abilities and eliminate the negative impacts of bad experiences from environment.

Strong-situation hypothesis (e.g., Cooper & Withey, 2009; Meyer et al., 2010; Mischel, 1977) suggests that a strong situation may weaken the effects of personal traits by providing clear guidelines for appropriate behaviors and minimizing individuals’ uncertainty. However, during ambiguous situations, employees may not have clear expectations about which behaviors are appreciated. Thus, their personal differences are more likely to matter in consequence when situations are relatively weak (Mischel, 1977). Empirical studies provide strong supports of this hypothesis by suggesting that individual differences have a stronger effect on employees’ behaviors when situational strength is weaker (Meyer, Dalal, & Bonaccio, 2009; Mullins & Cummings, 1999). In the current study, we believe that the influences of leader’s humility would be much more significant if organizational climates were vague. Meanwhile, the communication of self-transcendent pursuits between leaders and employees may encourage employees to understand the value of their work. By maintaining positive emotional states and acknowledging their own limitations (Morris et al., 2005), employees can grasp more emotional regulation abilities which, in turn, help them use appropriate emotional regulation strategies (Grandey & Gabriel, 2015). Therefore, we believe that leader’s humility will encourage employees’ deep acting. Thus, our first hypothesis can be posited as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Leader’s humility will facilitate employees’ intentions to engage in deep acting as their emotional regulation strategy.

Moderating Effect of Perceived Customer-Oriented Climate

In addition to leader’s influences, employees may also obtain, conserve, and protect resources from the environment and adapt their behaviors to the informational environment in which those behaviors are embedded. Organizational climate is a critical information source that may shape both shared perceptions and the ambient atmosphere surrounding employees (Lam et al., 2010; Schneider, 1990), which provides cues, norms, and expectations that constrain or direct the processes of rationalizing or justifying their workplace behaviors (Hong, Liao, Hu, & Jiang, 2013; Liao, Toya, Lepak, & Hong, 2009). Generally, organizational climate imputes organizations with a psychological identity vis-à-vis its employees in the work environment. In this article, we focus on one aspect of employees’ perceived climate: customer-oriented climate. The definition of perceived customer-oriented climate stems from Schneider’s (1990) original work of service climate. Service climate refers to employees’ shared perceptions of correct behaviors and procedures concerning organizational good customer service (Schneider, 1990, 2006). Likewise, one organization’s customer-oriented climate is also the employees’ shared perceptions of organizational customer-related behavioral requirements.

Employees with the strong perceived customer-oriented climate will have perceptions about what will be rewarded, supported, and expected from their organization when delivering service to customers (Schneider, White, & Paul, 1998). This service climate rests on the availability of supportive resources in the form of training, managerial practices, colleagues who share similar goals, and recognition through organizational policies and practices (Schneider & Bowen, 1993), which includes “strong human resources foundation issues for customer, strong service climate, and high levels of customer-focused behavior” (Bowen & Ford, 2002; Johnson, 1996; cf. Schneider, 2006). Besides, Lam et al. (2010) argued that these resources can help promote service quality and foster emotional display rules as to which kinds of emotions should be expressed and which should be suppressed (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). Previous studies found that this climate will actually promote a display of positive emotions, which generally results in better service behaviors, higher service quality and customer satisfaction (Schneider, 1990). Thus, we believe employees perceived that a customer-oriented climate motivates employees to engage in deep acting by providing supportive resources and indicating the accurate display rules (Allen et al., 2010). Therefore, we believe employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate will lead to deep acting in general.

Moreover, from previous studies on strong-situation hypothesis, Cooper and Withey (2009) became aware that clarity was an important operationalization of situational strength. Strong situational cues may restrict the expressions of individual differences by providing clear information to guide appropriate behaviors in organizations. A salient organizational climate can also provide some kinds of organizational information guiding employees’ behaviors. Accordingly, in the current study, we focus on employees’ perceived (rather than actual) climate, since employees’ perceptions are the most proximal factors affecting their actual behaviors (Schneider, 1973). A strong perceived climate reduces the employees’ perceived job uncertainty by letting them realize the prescribed information filtering, sense making, and behavioral regulation processes. This directing effect may allow employees to focus their complete attentions on specific requirements, which may motivate them to behave in accordance with the norms or expectations of the organization.

When employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate is high, they lose some degree of the autonomy provided by a humble leader. In such a situation, appropriate employee-service behaviors may be prescribed and circumscribed explicitly or implicitly by the customer-oriented climate (Hong et al., 2013). Hence, the organization’s overarching climate may be an influencing factor in their behavior, even if a humble leader facilitates employees’ behaviors. This will, in turn, lead them to abide by the prescribed rules. Although the absolute level of employees’ deep acting can be high, since customer-oriented climate inherently encourages delivering authentically positive emotions, a leader’s humility may play a relatively unimportant role in facilitating employees’ deep acting at this point.

However, when employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate is minimal, the impact of leader’s humility becomes a key factor: such humility encourages the development and persistence of voluntary deep acting. Looking back on the original definitions of leader’s humility, it incorporates the low self-focus as its cognitive core and spotlighting employees’ strengths and contributions as its basic motivations (Ou et al., 2014). A leader’s humility generates an internal motivational force that may serve as a “compensatory energy resource needed to recharge their depleted resources for further resource investment in delivering positive emotional display” (cf. Grandey, 2003). Thus, we posit our next hypotheses:

Hypothesis 2: Employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate moderates the relationship between a leader’s humility and employees’ deep acting. When employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate is relatively low, the relationship between leader’s humility and deep acting will become more positive.

The Boundary Condition of Deep Acting and Turnover Link

The basic perspective of emotional labor is that such labor harms personal well-being (Hochschild, 2003). Previous studies generally supported the idea that surface acting with inherently inauthentic characteristics was less likely to increase employees’ cognitive or emotional resources (Goodwin, Groth, & Frenkel, 2011). Rather, there is a continuous loss of resources as long as employees are engaging in surface acting (Prati, Liu, Perrewé, & Ferris, 2009). Employees who need to engage in high strength of surface acting would become more inclined to leave their current job, since the high needs of this strategy may signal that the current working environment is not suitable for employees (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Previous studies have found that employees’ surface acting increases their turnover rates (Chau, Dahling, Levy, & Diefendorff, 2009; Grandey, 2000). However, relative to surface acting, the effect of deep acting on employees’ work outcomes is still unclear and needs to be investigated (Grandey & Gabriel, 2015). Scholars have found that, rather than a net loss in resources, deep acting can compensate for energy losses by gaining alternative resources (Hobfoll, 1989), such as positive social feedback (Côté, 2005; Côté & Morgan, 2002) and genuine affective experience (Brotheridge & Lee, 2003; Scott & Barnes, 2011). Empirical evidence on the effect of deep acting is disappointing: no significant relationship has been found between deep acting and turnover (Chau et al., 2009). Given that emotional labor can also be beneficial (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Côté, 2005), there is an urgent need to understand contingent factors that may support employees’ deep acting (Huang, Chiaburu, Zhang, Li, & Grandey, 2015).

Previous studies on turnover have suggested that employees’ turnover is the final outcome of a deliberatively cognitive process wherein employees develop job perceptions, evaluate job satisfaction, and the utility of their present job(s) (Mobley, Griffeth, Hand, & Meglino, 1979). Hom and colleagues refined on previous theory and indicated similar supports that attitude evaluations lead to withdrawal cognitions, job searches and, ultimately, turnover (Griffeth & Hom, 2001; Hom & Kinicki, 2001). Based on strong-situation hypothesis (Cooper & Withey, 2009), we believe a strong perceived customer-oriented climate is also one type of service guidelines based on the availability of supportive resources such as training, managerial practices, supportive colleagues, and assistance in removing obstacles by human resources policies (Schneider, 2006; Schneider & Bowen, 1993). If employees perceive a strong customer-oriented climate, they may also receive information and signals that the available resources will definitely be provided by leaders or organizations. Employees engaged in deep acting may build up perceptions that it is efficient to assimilate necessary resources from such a strong climate. The more they perceive the availability of supportive resources in their current environment, the less likely they will be to leave their current jobs. Thus, when employees perceive that customer-oriented climate is high, engaging in deep acting is particularly beneficial for them to stay in current positions. However, when employees perceive customer-oriented climate is low, engagement in deep acting may harm employees’ well-being and increase their intentions to leave their current job. Moreover, in relatively weak situations, employees’ own intentions will determine their decisions to leave or stay in incumbent organizations to a large extent. Therefore, our next hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 3: Employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate moderates the relationship between deep acting and employee turnover. When employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate is low, the relationship between deep acting and turnover will become more positive.

Therefore, based on strong-situation hypothesis, the current study proposes a moderated mediating model by suggesting that employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate moderates two relationships: between a leader’s humility, and employees’ deep acting; and, from there, between employees’ deep acting and potential turnover. Thus, our entire theoretical model can be articulated as follows:

Hypothesis 4: Employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate moderates the mediating effect of deep acting between a leader’s humility and employees’ turnover. That is, when the perceived customer-oriented climate is low, the mediating effect of deep acting between a leader’s humility and employee turnover will become more significant.

Method

Sample and Procedures

We conducted one field survey to validate our theoretical model. Participants in this study were employees from a private hospital in China. A human resources manager in the hospital helped us distribute the questionnaires to all 296 employees working in this hospital, which were in individually sealed envelopes, to each employee. All participants in this study were told that they were invited to participate in a survey about their daily work. A small “Thanks for Your Collaboration” sticker was affixed to each envelope. Employees were assured that their answers would remain confidential. They voluntarily included personal information, such as the last five digits of their national IDs, their birth date, hometown, and gender; this was to enable the researchers to match specifics with the demographic information provided by their human resources managers. A total of 226 employees returned their questionnaires to us in person during Time Period 1, yielding a response rate of 76.35%. Five months later, we collected all employees’ turnover data from human resource department; this represents Time Period 2.

As our intention was to investigate service employees’ behavior within a service industry, only 194 frontline employees’ answers were included in our data set. Carefully pairing their answers revealed that only 157 employees had successfully completed all of the questions and matched their demographic information. These 157 employees were broadly distributed among 33 departments, each led by one supervisor; this meant that the respondent employees were broadly distributed among 33 supervisors. The number of employees who agreed to participate in each department ranged from 1 to 13. This yielded a suitable context, as all 33 departments were frontline departments representing different functions including medical treatment, medical technicians, nursing, machine operating, and so on. The context ensures necessary variance of both leader’s humility and employees’ perceived climate. Of those employees, 46.5% in our final sample were male (Male = 73, Female = 84), participants’ average tenure was 8.23 years (SD = 8.54) and the age distribution ranged from 16 to 59 years (Mean age = 27.57 years old, SD = 8.63). In terms of education, 7 employees (4.46%) did not complete high school, 35 employees (22.29%) graduated high school, 72 employees (45.86%) held junior college diplomas, and 37 employees (23.57%) held at least an undergraduate degree.

Measures

We used the Chinese version of Emotional Labor Scale and customer-oriented climate scale as translated by previous studies, and we translated other scales following the traditional translation–back translation procedure (Brislin, 1980).

Leader’s Humility

This was measured on a scale with 19 items adapted from Ou et al. (2014). Nine items on this scale were adapted from Owens et al. (2013); the remaining 10 items were based on Ou et al. (2014). We asked the employees to rate their direct supervisor’s humility using these 19 items in Time Period 1. For example, employees were directed to evaluate whether his or her supervisor “actively seeks feedback, even if it is critical” or “believes that all people are a small part of the universe.” Six dimensions include both manifested behavioral indicators: self-awareness, appreciation of others, openness to feedback; and also motivational and cognitive cores: low self-focus, self-transcendent pursuit, and transcendent self-concept.

To test our hypotheses, in our regression model, we used mean values of all 19 items to indicate a leader’s humility; and the second-order latent factor of humility with six first-level factors in the structural equation model. Scale anchors range from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The Cronbach’s alpha for leader’s humility is .91.

Perceived Customer-Oriented Climate

Perceived customer-oriented climate was measured using the Chinese version of a scale with five items, developed by Tsui, Wang, and Xin (2006). This construct was supported by employees’ self-reporting of their departments’ climates. For instance, one item states: “Our department will provide first-class service to patients.” This scale is anchored from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The Cronbach’s alpha is .93.

Deep Acting

Daily deep acting was measured using a six-item scale. Three items of this scale were adapted from Grandey (2003) and originally developed by Brotheridge and Lee (2003). Scholars translated these three items to Chinese, and added another three items describing employees’ deep acting in detail, to adapt to the Chinese context, based on the existing three items (P. J. Wu, 2002). This scale is widely accepted in studying Chinese employees’ emotional labor strategy. For instance, one sample item states: “In daily work, I will make an effort to actually feel the emotions that I need to display to others.” This scale is also anchored from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The Cronbach’s alpha is .79.

Turnover

Employees’ actual turnover data were collected. Chau et al. (2009) collected turnover data 6 months after their first study; however, the actual turnover data in our study was also assessed using the human resources department’s records 5 months after the first study. This is because this hospital’s acquisition negotiations would start immediately after we collected the data and these negotiations may affect frontline service employees’ decisions on whether they would leave current jobs. Turnover was coded as a dichotomous variable indicating whether the participant remained employed by the organization, with “0” indicating that the employee was still employed, and “1” indicating the employee had left the organization. Thirty-six of the employees who participated in our study left the hospital 5 months later.

Surface Acting

In our models, we also controlled for employees’ surface acting, since surface acting may deplete their cognitive resources, and thus prevent deep acting (Brotheridge & Lee, 2003). The scale of surface acting was adapted from Grandey’s (2003) five-item measure. One sample item states: “In daily work, I pretend to have emotions that I don’t really have.” The Cronbach’s alpha is .70.

Other Control Variables

Employees’ demographic information such as age, gender, education, and job tenure were also controlled for, to avoid their potential influences on employees’ emotional labor and turnover (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000).

Results

Table 1 illustrates the means, standard deviations, and correlations between each pair of relevant variables. We created a hierarchical regression model by entering control variables, predictors, and interactive variables step by step (see Table 2). We also centered the data of perceived customer-oriented climate when testing moderating effects.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations.

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Humility	3.93	0.53	(.91)
2. Deep Acting	3.92	0.64	.40**	(.79)
3. Turnover	0.23	0.42	−.05	−.03
4. Customer Climate	4.22	0.76	.27**	.29**	−.16	(.93)
5. Age	27.57	8.63	−.01	−.12	.10	.04
6. Gender	0.54	0.50	−.10	−.03	−.01	.06	−.04
7. Education	13.82	1.71	.07	.04	−.05	.09	.09	.06
8. Tenure	8.23	8.54	−.01	.04	−.04	.05	−.07	.09	−.03
9. Surface Acting	3.10	0.74	−.01	.21**	.04	−.07	.04	−.08	−.01	.05	(.70)

Note. N = 157. Turnover: 1 for employees not employed, 0 for employees still employed. Gender: 1 for female, 0 for male. Cronbach’s alpha is shown in parentheses along the diagonal.

p ≤ .01.

Table 2.

Hierarchical Regression Analysis.

Criterion	Deep acting (OLS)				Turnover (logistic)
Criterion	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
Constant	3.34 (6.67)***	1.52 (2.69)**	1.12 (7.78)*	1.21 (8.01)*	−1.25 (−0.66)	−1.56 (−0.79)	−1.47 (−0.69)	−1.75 (−0.80)
Control variables
Age	−0.01 (−1.66)	−0.01 (−1.70)	−0.01 (−1.90)	−0.01 (−1.92)	0.03 (1.30)	0.03 (1.46)	0.03 (1.33)	0.03 (1.33)
Gender	−0.03 (−0.27)	0.02 (0.27)	0.00 (0.03)	−0.02 (−0.18)	0.02 (0.06)	0.09 (0.23)	0.03 (0.08)	0.07 (0.19)
Education	0.02 (0.74)	0.01 (0.39)	0.01 (0.21)	0.01 (0.24)	−0.08 (−0.70)	−0.07 (−0.58)	−0.06 (−0.49)	−0.05 (−0.45)
Tenure	0.00 (0.34)	0.00 (0.38)	0.00 (0.23)	0.00 (0.07)	−0.01 (−0.44)	−0.01 (−0.34)	−0.01 (−0.30)	−0.00 (−0.15)
Surface Acting	0.18 (2.69)**	0.19 (3.01)**	0.20 (3.29)**	0.19 (3.17)**	0.13 (0.48)	0.09 (0.31)	0.10 (0.33)	0.12 (0.38)
Predictors
Humility		0.47 (5.46)***	0.40 (4.55)***	0.40 (4.61)***				−0.18 (−0.44)
Deep Acting						0.13 (0.39)	−0.09 (−0.24)	0.01 (0.03)
Customer Climate			0.19 (3.02)**	0.18 (3.02)**		−0.50 (−1.93)	−0.64 (−2.04)*	−0.65 (−2.03)*
Interactions
Humility * Customer				−0.22(−2.06)*				0.86 (1.43)
Deep * Customer							−1.00 (−2.15)*	−1.34 (−2.60)**
R² (pseudo R²)	.06	.22	.26	.29	.01	.04	.07	.09
ΔR²		.16***		.03*			.03*	.05*

Note. N = 157. Humility = leader’s humility; Customer Climate = perceived customer-oriented climate; Humility * Customer = leader’s humility * perceived customer-oriented climate; Deep * Customer = deep acting * perceived customer-oriented climate. Values in the main part of this table are unstandardized regression weights, independent variables in Models 3, 4, 7, and 8 are centered, with t values in parentheses from Models 1 to 4, z values from Models 5 to 8.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

To test Hypotheses 1, we first regressed employees’ deep acting to all control variables. In Model 2, we entered leader’s humility; Model 3 reflects the perceived customer-oriented climate. From Model 2, we find that leader’s humility has a significantly positive relationship with employees’ deep acting (β = .47, p < .001), which strongly supports Hypothesis 1, that leader’s humility will facilitate employees’ deep-acting strategy. From Model 3, we also find that perceived customer-oriented climate also has a significantly positive relationship with employees’ deep acting (β = .19, p < .01).

To test Hypothesis 2, we entered leader’s humility, perceived customer-oriented climate, and the interactive variables between these two variables. The coefficient of interaction and the increase in R² are both significant (β = −.22, p < .05; ΔR² = .03, p < .05). We further conducted a simple slope test following Aiken and West (1991), entering standardized variables to plot the relationship between leader’s humility and employees’ deep acting when customer-oriented organizational climate is 1 standard deviation above and below its mean (see Figure 1). The results indicate that when the customer-oriented organizational climate is relatively low, the leader’s humility has a more positive relationship to employees’ deep acting.

Figure 1.

The moderating effect of perceived customer-oriented climate on the relationship between leader’s humility and employees’ deep acting.

To test Hypothesis 3 in Models 6, 7 and 9, we conducted logistic regressions. At first, we did not observe a direct relationship between employees’ deep acting and turnover (β = .13, n.s.). However, when we entered the interactive variables between deep acting and perceived customer-oriented climate, the results indicate that the perceived customer-oriented climate significantly moderates the relationship between employees’ deep acting and their turnover (β = −1.00, p < .05; ΔR² = .03, p < .05). A simple slope test reveals that the relationship between deep acting and turnover is indeed contingent on the perceived customer-oriented climate (see Figure 2). That is, when the climate is high, deep acting significantly reduces employees’ turnover. To retest our hypotheses and further validate our results, we ran the exact same models, but without control variables. The results were similar, indicating that all hypotheses have been supported. Besides, depriving control variables in regression models would not affect our results.

Figure 2.

The moderating effect of perceived customer-oriented climate on the relationship between deep acting and turnover.

To test the whole moderated mediation model proposed in Hypothesis 4, we used the bootstrapping method from Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes (2007). We ran the MOMED process in SPSS 21.0 with 5,000 resamples; the results are shown in Table 3. When the perceived customer-oriented climate is relatively high, the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the size of the indirect effect does not exclude zero (indirect effect = −0.03, standard error [SE] = 0.03, n.s., 95% confidence interval = [−0.10, 0.01]). When the perceived customer-oriented climate is relatively low, the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the size of the indirect effect excludes zero (indirect effect = 0.10, SE = 0.05, p = .05, 95% confidence interval = [0.00, 0.24]), which supports the moderated mediation model we proposed in Hypothesis 4. When the perceived customer-oriented climate is low, leader’s humility leads employees to engage in more deep acting, which facilitates turnover; when the perceived customer-oriented climate is relatively high, the mediating effect does not approach a significant level. Thus, the results of this study generally support our four hypotheses.

Table 3.

Indirect Effects of Leader’s Humility on Employees’ Turnover Through Employees’ Deep Acting.

Moderator	Conditions	Indirect effect	SE	LL CI	UL CI	z	p (two-tailed)
Perceived customer-oriented climate	1 Standard deviation above mean	−0.03	0.03	−0.10	0.01	−1.11	.27
Perceived customer-oriented climate	1 Standard deviation below mean	0.10*	0.05	0.00	0.24	1.95	.05

Note. SE = standard error; CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit. Number of resamples for bias corrected bootstrap intervals = 5,000. Level of confidence for the CIs = 95%.

p < .05.

Robustness Checks

Johnson–Neyman technique was also used to estimate the value of perceived customer-oriented climate, where the conditional indirect effect will transition between statistically significant (i.e., .05 level of significance) and nonsignificant level (Preacher et al., 2007). We found that the indirect effect of deep acting between leader’s humility and employees’ turnover is positively significant below the threshold value of 3.40 (indirect effect = 0.11, SE = 0.05, p ≤ .05). However, as the value of perceived customer-oriented climate increased, the indirect effect becomes less positive or even negative, and insignificant. Thus, the threshold of indirect effect is around 3.40. This analysis provides more evidence to our Hypothesis 4.

We also conducted confirmatory factor analysis using Mplus 6.12 (Muthén & Muthén, 2005). We submitted all six humility dimensions (i.e., self-awareness, appreciation of others, openness to feedback, low self-focus, self-transcendent pursuit, and transcendent self-concept) and also deep acting, perceived customer-oriented climate to a confirmatory factor analysis model to test the discriminant validity between these eight factors. The eight-factor model demonstrates best goodness-of-fit indices (Δχ²[377] = 785.63, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .08, comparative fit index [CFI] = .87, Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = .85). We also tested fitness of the three-factor model with all 19 items of humility loading on one latent factor (Δχ²[25] = 350.45, p < .01, RMSEA = .11, CFI = .76, TLI = .74); four-factor model with 19 items of humility loading on two factors (i.e., behavior factor and cognitive factor, Δχ²[22] = 268.01, p < .01, RMSEA = .10, CFI = .79, TLI = .77); and also one-factor model, with all items loading on one latent factor (Δχ²[28] = 1186.10, p < .01, RMSEA = .16, CFI = .49, TLI = .45). The results suggest that the six-dimension model of leader’s humility is the best fit.

Moreover, we also conducted structural equation model to test our hypothesis with leader’s humility loaded by subordinate six dimensions using Mplus 6.12. Due to the limited sample size, we did not use the full-featured structural equation modeling with item-level data included. Rather, we used construct-level data with both six dimensions of humility; and also deep acting, perceived customer-oriented climate, turnover intention, and actual turnover. We took into consideration the possibility of measurement errors following the previous approach (Williams & O’Boyle, 2008), setting the error variance of latent factor to be Variance * (1 − Estimated Reliability). The ultimate results of our model further support our hypotheses. The effects of leader’s humility (β = .47, p < .001) and perceived customer-oriented climate (β = .20, p < .01) on deep acting are both significant. The effects of interaction of humility and climate on both deep acting (β = −.39, p < .05) and turnover (β = .34, p < .05) are also significant. The effect of interaction of deep acting and climate on turnover is also significant (β = −.32, p < .01; see Table 4, Figure 3).

Table 4.

The Results of Structural Equation Model (Mplus 6.12).

Criterion	Deep acting	Turnover
Predictors
Leader’s humility	0.47 (0.13)***	−0.03 (0.10)
Perceived customer-oriented climate	0.20 (0.07)**	−0.15 (0.05)**
Interaction of humility and climate	−0.39 (0.17)*	0.34 (0.03)*
Deep acting		0.04 (0.08)
Interaction of deep acting and climate		−0.32 (0.10)**

Note. N = 157. Values in the main part of this table are unstandardized weights with standard error values in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Figure 3.

The results of structural equation model (SEM).

Finally, we also tested the common method bias, since we collected the leader’s humility, deep acting, and perceived customer-oriented climate from the same source. First, from Table 1, no strong correlations between these constructs were found. This provides initial evidence that the common method biases may not exist. Furthermore, following Williams, Cote, and Buckley (1989), we compared both a null model, where all items were independent, with a model of two-method factors; and the baseline measurement model of the eight constructs (i.e., includes six constructs of humility, deep acting, and perceived customer-oriented climate) with a bifactor model of both measure and method factors. Although we found that the method model fits better than the null model (Δχ²[31] = 1535.94, p < .05), the bifactor model could not converge, which may be due to the relatively small sample size. Thus, following suggestions (Antonakis, Bendahan, Jacquart, & Lalive, 2010), we compared a baseline model with all items loaded on eight factors with a method model in which the second-level eight factors were loaded on both measured and method factors. The bifactor model (χ²[396] = 837.77, p < .05) was worse than the baseline model (χ²[376] = 781.56, p < .05; Δχ² [20] = 56.21, p < .05), demonstrating that the bifactor model was suboptimal. Therefore, we can conclude that the common method bias is not a major concern for the current study.

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

Our study contributes to both leader humility literature (Owens & Hekman, 2012) and emotional labor literature (Grandey, 2000). First, extending beyond previous theoretical studies, we show that, except for other factors such as personal traits (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013), work motives (Gabriel et al., 2015), emotional ability (Gabriel et al., 2015), and also emotional events (Totterdell & Holman, 2003), a leader’s humility can also be an important antecedent that facilitating employees’ deep acting in service settings. Deep-acting strategy, which acts as a more sophisticated emotional regulation strategy, may consume additional emotional resources, including energy, psychological support, and autonomy (Grandey, Foo, Groth, & Goodwin, 2012). A leader’s humility is believed to provide a positive signal, indicating appreciation of employees’ emotional regulation abilities in addressing unprecedented problems in the workplace, at the same time, facilitating employees’ deep acting in this study. Our empirical results support this conclusion by providing more evidence of the antecedents of emotional regulation strategy.

Most important, we observe that the relationship between leader’s humility and employees’ deep-acting strategy will become increasingly positive when employees’ perceived customer-oriented climate is low. We arrive at this conclusion with reference to strong-situation hypothesis. A customer-oriented climate provides employees with implicit behavioral rules that the employees must adhere to as requirements of the organization (Schneider, 2006). Grandey (2000) posited that emotional regulation is a critical step of emotional labor, because service employees are required to express emotions that are consistent with the norm and rules of the organization. In today’s context, the requirements expected of service work have become increasingly more complicated, thus rendering employees’ work increasingly uncertain (Schneider, 2006). By integrating strong-situation hypothesis, we observe that when perceived customer-oriented climate is relatively low, leader’s humility has a more positive relationship effect on employees’ deep acting. We explain this phenomenon by suggesting that in a high free environment, leader’s humility becomes more effective, because its primary function is to free employees from the burden of hiding their own inexperience.

The results of this study may also contribute to the organizational service climate literature, which has mostly emphasized the facilitative effect of climate, while ignoring the direct effect of employees’ cognition (Hong et al., 2013; Liao et al., 2009). We observe that the relationship between employees’ deep acting and turnover is also contingent on employees’ perceived climate, because to engage in deep acting, employees must change their inner feelings, which may consume many resources. Our results suggest that by perceiving available informational resources under strong situations, employees can engage in deep acting without burnout (Grandey & Diamond, 2010). However, in a low-perceived customer-oriented climate condition, engaging in deep acting may lead employees to withdraw from their current work, as previous studies have suggested (Diefendorff et al., 2011; Grandey, Kern, & Frone, 2007).

When employees’ climate perceptions are relatively strong, the leader’s humility may no longer be effective in encouraging deep acting. However, when the perceived climate is low, indeed, humility may facilitate employees’ deep acting; this deep acting may be detrimental and could increase employee’s turnover. Although some studies have found positive influences of leader’s humility on employees’ workplace behavior (Morris et al., 2005; Nielsen et al., 2010; Owens & Hekman, 2012), relatively few empirical studies have focused on, and tested, the effect on this relationship of leader’s humility on employees’ turnover, and also the theoretical mechanisms, and the boundary conditions of organizational environmental guidance (Kerfoot, 1998; Morris et al., 2005; Ou et al., 2014; Ou et al., 2015; Owens et al., 2013; Owens & Hekman, 2012; Tangney, 2000; Vera & Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). We suggest that additional similar studies be conducted to test the effects of incongruence between employees and organizations, rather than more studies on congruence scholars’ current focus.

In conclusion, we adapted Ou et al.’s (2014) conceptualization of leader’s humility, since other definitions or measurement on this construct cannot perfectly address humility’s cognitive cores and fails to distinguish humility as a kind of personal characteristic of leadership (Ashton & Lee, 2005; Morris et al., 2005; Owens et al., 2013). In the current study, we emphasize the dyadic relationship between leader’s humility and its strong effect on subordinates’ emotional regulations under strong or weak situational strengths. By adopting Baumeister’s (1998) self-experience framework, Ou et al. highlight leader’s humility as a kind of self-experience in understanding the self in relation to others. Therefore, by extending a personal trait perspective of humility (e.g., Hackett & Wang, 2012; Morris et al., 2005), this conceptualization helps us understand the cognitive cores and deep motives underlying the interactive effects of both situational and leader’s factors on employees’ behaviors.

Our study proposes a moderated mediating model of leader’s humility. Although previous studies have proposed emotional labor ability, personal traits, and work motives as the determinants of deep acting, our study expands on those results by including a leadership virtue, humility, as a component of a dynamic process between leaders and employees. Our study also emphasizes the importance of employees perceived organizational climate and leader attributes by suggesting that when a leader’s humility and the customer-oriented climate are both high, frontline employees engage in more deep acting and are less likely to leave their organizations.

Practical Implications

In this study, we used a field study to test our hypotheses. Our findings may have some important implications for organizations. A leader’s humility serves as an important human virtue that strongly affects employees and may cumulatively cause great changes in organizations. Managers must be clear about the relationship between leaders’ humility, employees’ turnover, and the boundary conditions of this relationship. The current study provides a critical reminder for managers, because their expressed humility cannot reduce employee turnover in every condition. In a low-perceived customer-oriented organizational climate, although a leader’s expressed humility may lead to more deep acting on employees’ part that may benefit the organization, this emotional regulation strategy can also cause employees to move toward quitting their temporal jobs. Managers must have a clear understanding of this process to better control the extent to which they can act as humble leaders.

Limitations

Our study suffers from all of the usual drawbacks of a field study. First, in order to keep our study clean and accurate, we did not discuss the relationships between leader’s humility and perceived customer-oriented climate with the other important emotional regulation strategy: surface acting. Compared with deep acting, surface acting is likely to be used by those employees who do not share the goals of organizations (Ozcelik, 2013) or hold a bad faith to emotional labor (Ashforth & Humphrey 1993). Those with more instrumental or prevention motives tend to use this strategy (Dahling & Johnson, 2010). From our preceding arguments, leader’s humility actually encourages learning-oriented behaviors. It helps employees maintain relatively positive emotional states and acquire high emotional regulation abilities. Therefore, humility, as a stable personal trait which encourages employees to know their own limitations and learn from environment, is not compatible with this more performance-oriented emotional regulation strategy (Phillips & Gully, 1997). Therefore, we propose that leader’s humility may not have a significant relationship with followers’ surface acting.

Besides, scholars also found that employees with strong customer orientation are more likely to use deep acting (Allen et al., 2010; Maneotis et al., 2014). Organizational customer-oriented climate could provide employees with different resources when they need to display positive emotions (Diefendorff, Richard, & Croyle, 2006). Thus, when organizations have a high customer-oriented climate, there is greater valence for employees to ensure their personal goals are consistent with organizational requirements (Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003). Therefore, in the current study, we believe that perceived customer-oriented climate may reduce employees’ surface acting.

More statistical analyses were conducted to validate our arguments. After regressing employees’ surface acting to leader’s humility and perceived customer-oriented climate, we found that the relationship between humility and surface acting is not significant (β = −.13, n.s.), nor is the relationship between perceived customer-oriented climate and surface acting (β = −.13, n.s.). Moreover, when we did not find the moderating effect of perceived customer-oriented climate between leader’s humility and employees’ surface acting (interaction: β = −.05, n.s.). More studies in the future are encouraged to test the relationships between leader’s humility and employees’ surface acting.

Besides, we cannot positively conclude that there exists a causal relationship between proposed constructs, and we must admit the existence of a reciprocal effect. However, we utilized several methods to eliminate this problem. For example, longitudinal data collection design was used to avoid the shortage of the cross-sectional data set. The human resources department supplied objective records that enabled us to measure employees’ turnover, which may also reduce this concern. Tests of reciprocal effects have also been conducted, and no moderating effect has been found. For further studies, we suggest using additional methods, including the laboratory method, to revalidate our theory. Second, our sample size is relatively small. This may be partially explained by the difficulties in tracking the employees’ actual turnover. More evidence must be provided to supplement our results. Thus, we stipulate more studies to reconfirm our results.

Last, although we collected employees’ turnover data from objective records, the measures of a leader’s humility and employees’ deep acting came from employees’ self-reports, which may raise the problem of common method biases. Although we conducted several remedial methods, future studies need to solve this problem completely by collecting data from different sources and different times. For example, the leader may be given an opportunity to self-report on whether, and to what extent, they consider themselves humble. Considering that our sample size is relatively small, we cannot aggregate the data to the second level. Future studies can also solve the problem by testing whether the data are internally consistent for employees in the same department or organization, and aggregate the data to appropriate levels.

Conclusion

We conducted this study because we believe employees’ perception of leader’s humble attributes, widely regarded in various cultures as an important human virtue, may have strong effects on employee turnover. However, relatively few studies have tested this relationship. To fill this gap, we conducted field study at a hospital in China. We observed that a leader’s humility facilitates employees’ deep-acting strategy, and that the organizational climate in fact plays a critical role in moderating the relationship. When the customer-oriented organizational climate is high, engaging in deep acting will reduce employee turnover, whereas when the climate is low, engaging in deep acting in fact reverses the relationship. Thus, encouraging employees to engage in more sophisticated emotional regulation strategies without providing sufficient resources in fact increases employee turnover. In short, a leader’s humility may explain why employees choose to stay with an organization; nevertheless, when employees perceive that a leader’s humility is not congruent with the organizational climate, this can also provide justifications for employees to quit.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Jinyi Zhou is a doctoral student in School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His current research focuses on the business ethics, human virtues, and personal identity system.

Yawen Li is a doctoral student in School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Her research focuses on the trust, social network, scientific productivity, and collaborative innovation.

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