Understanding how humble leaders foster members’ adaptivity in construction project management

In the current volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) era, construction project leaders play an increasingly pivotal role in driving project success. However, humble leadership, which offers a promising approach for construction project management, remains insufficiently examined through empirical research. Taking social identity theory as the overarching theoretical framework, this study examines how humble project leaders foster members’ adaptive behavior, that is, job crafting. Using hierarchical regression and bootstrapping on 239 time-lagged samples from construction projects, the results show that humble leadership directly promotes job crafting, with project identification mediating this effect. Moreover, power distance orientation weakens the indirect influence of humble leadership through project identification, while showing a U-shaped moderation on the direct relationship. Therefore, this study highlights that humble leadership promotes job crafting by fostering project identification, but its effectiveness depends on individual power distance orientation. These findings contribute to construction management theoretically and practically by highlighting humble leadership as an effective approach for construction managers to enhance members’ adaptivity and improve project outcomes in VUCA environments.