Leaders’ Upward Comparison Perception and Subordinates’ Colleague-Oriented Humble Behavior: The Underlying Mechanisms

Existing studies have mostly focused on the dyadic superior-subordinate perspective, exploring the underlying mechanisms of leaders' behaviors aimed at narrowing the gap with their subordinates.Although these studies provide valuable insights into social comparison and interaction dynamics between supervisors and subordinates, they overlook the cross-interpersonal spillover effects of leaders' upward comparison perception.Critical questions regarding how leaders' upward comparison perception shapes subordinates' interpersonal interactions with teammates, as well as the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions, remain underexplored.To address this gap, the present study moves beyond the traditional superior-subordinate dyadic lens and extends the research focus to the team member interaction perspective.Drawing on protection motivation theory, we conduct an in-depth investigation to examine the mechanism linking leaders' upward comparison perception to subordinates' humble behavior toward colleagues, with a particular emphasis on the mediating role of subordinates' perceived potential threat and the moderating role of subordinate power.Based on a three-wave longitudinal sample of 335 responses, our findings reveal that leaders' upward comparison perception has a significant negative indirect effect on subordinates' humble behavior toward colleagues via perceived potential threat.Furthermore, when subordinate power is high, the negative indirect effect of leaders' upward comparison perception on humble behavior via perceived potential threat is significantly attenuated.This study uncovers the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the cross-interpersonal spillover effect of leaders' upward comparison perception, and thereby offers new theoretical insights into how leaders' upward comparison perception shapes team interpersonal interaction, and provides important implications for organizational management practices.