Abstract: In today’s increasingly complex and volatile business environment, employee self-leadership plays an important role in the survival and development of an organization. However, how to promote employee self-leadership through effective management practices still needs to be further explored. Based on the dynamic status theory, this paper analyzes the affecting mechanism of flexible human resource management on employee self-leadership, especially the mediating role of the status seeking motivation of the employees between the two and the moderating role of universal concept of leadership. The analysis of the data of 439 longitudinal employee questionnaire at three different time points shows that flexible human resource management is positively correlated with employee self leadership, and that status pursuit motivation plays a mediating role in the relationship between the two. When the general concept of leadership among employees is lower, flexible human resource management has a stronger positive relationship to affect employee self-leadership through status seeking motivation. Based on the above conclusion, in the new environment of human-machine coexistence, managers should attach importance to establishing flexible human resource management, pay attention to the cognitive characteristics and motivational factors of employees, and transmit signals of variable status to employees, thereby stimulating their status pursuit motivation and self-leadership behaviors.

Key words: self-leadership, flexible human resource management, status seeking motivation, universal concept of leadership