Hu Jia, a professor in the Department of Leadership and Organization Management at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM), received the Decennial Influential Article Award from The Leadership Quarterly, a leading journal in the field of leadership studies, in recognition of his collaborative research on servant leadership.

Hu Jia (R) and her collaborators accept an award together at the AOM 2025 Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Established by the journal's publisher, Elsevier, this award honors research published in the journal over the past decade that has had a profound impact on both theoretical development and practical application. The winning paper, "Servant Leadership: Validation of a Short Form of the SL-28," was co-authored by Hu Jia, Robert C. Liden, Sandy Wayne, Jeremy Meuser, Wu Junfeng, and Liao Chenwei.

The study focuses on the development and validation of a measurement tool for servant leadership, proposing and validating a simplified SL-28 scale that has provided a crucial methodological instrument for subsequent empirical research worldwide. Since its publication, the paper has been extensively cited in the fields of organizational behavior and leadership studies, exerting significant influence on both academic research and practical applications.

Another research paper by Hu was recently shortlisted for a finalist for the 2023–2024 Best Paper Award by top international journal Personnel Psychology. The award is presented biennially to one winning paper and two finalist papers selected from all publications during the period. Hu co-authored the shortlisted paper, "Digital Connectivity for work after hours: Its curvilinear relationship with employee job performance," with Ren Shuang, Tang Guiyao, and Doren Chadee.

The study examines the nonlinear impact mechanism of digital connectivity after work on employee performance, revealing the complex dual-path role it may play in either facilitating or hindering job performance within the context of digitization and remote work. The findings offer new perspectives for understanding the management of work-life boundaries in the digital age.

These two international academic honors reflect the sustained contributions and growing influence of Chinese scholars in the fields of leadership and human resource management.

Source: Department of Leadership and Organization Management, Tsinghua SEM

Editor: Ren Zhongxi