Leading With Humility: How Leadership Humility Drives Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior Through Readiness to Change,With Flexible Work Practices as a Moderator

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the underexplored mechanisms through which leadership humility influences change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in the context of Pakistan’s educational sector. The primary novelty of this research lies in testing an integrated moderated mediation model that positions Readiness to Change as a mediator and flexible work practices as a moderator, a framework that has not been previously examined in this specific cultural and professional setting. Using a random sampling approach, data were collected from 291 employees across educational institutions in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The proposed hypotheses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) via SmartPLS (version 3). The results revealed that leadership humility has a significant positive impact on employees’ change-oriented OCB. This relationship is mediated by their Readiness to change. Furthermore, flexible work practices were found to positively moderate the link between leadership humility and Readiness to change, indicating that this relationship is strengthened in the presence of greater workplace flexibility. These findings provide valuable implications for educational management, suggesting that fostering humble leadership and implementing flexible work arrangements are crucial strategies for promoting adaptive and proactive change behaviors among employees.