Understanding the Factors That Predict Workplace Humility: A Systematic Review

Proceedings of The 4th International Academic Conference on Management and Economics

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Understanding the Factors That Predict Workplace Humility: A Systematic Review

Haoyi Tan, Tian Liu

ABSTRACT: 

There has been a significant surge in academic research on humility in both psychological inquiry and management literature over the past decade. However, the two veins of research mostly evolve independently, lacking cross-disciplinary conversations. Furthermore, the impressive literature amassed on workplace humility overwhelming focused on the effectiveness of leader humility, whereas far less consideration has been given to the predictors. This omission is significant because understanding the determinants of workplace humility is an important hinge between academia and practice, specifically for business managers who want to improve leading effectiveness via promoting humility within their unit. The purpose of this research is to systematically review the antecedents of humility, covering both psychological and managerial research on this topic to provide an integrative framework. A systematic literature review led to a selection of 27 quantitative research papers and identified cognitive, psychological, behavioral, relational, religion, and background factors as key determinants. The major contribution of our paper is to promote the synthesis of psychological findings and managerial conclusions on determinants of humility, and meanwhile facilitate future research on workplace humility by introducing new perspectives from psychology literature.

keywords: conception; integrative framework; organizational; psychological; quantitative research.