The double-edged sword of leader humility: Investigating when and why leader humility promotes versus inhibits subordinate deviance.

Extant research has uniformly demonstrated that leader humility is beneficial for subordinates, teams, and even organizations. Drawing upon attribution theory, we challenge this prevailing conclusion by identifying a potential dark side of leader humility and suggesting that leader humility can be a mixed blessing. We propose that the effects of leader humility hinge on subordinates’ attributions of such humble behavior. On the one hand, when...