Journal article
Financial Stress and Leadership Behavior: The Role of Leader Gender
Journal of occupational health psychology, Vol.29(5), pp.317-341
10/01/2024
DOI: 10.1037/ocp0000387
PMCID: PMC11892524
PMID: 39388139
Abstract
Concern about personal finances is one of the most widespread and salient sources of stress. We advance our emerging understanding of the work-related impacts of financial stress by examining the consequences of personal financial stress on leadership behavior. Drawing on compensatory control theory, we propose that financial stress positively relates to abusive supervision via a lowered sense of personal control. Integrating social role theory, we propose that these effects are stronger for leaders who are men than leaders who are women. We test our model in a vignette-based study using a sample of leaders (N = 201) and a second multiwave, multisource field survey study among leaders and their subordinates (N = 119 leader-subordinate dyads). Across both studies, we found that financial stress was positively associated with abusive supervision via lack of control and that this relationship was stronger for men than women. In Study 2, we examined an alternative tend-and-befriend theoretical account, proposing that leaders who are women exhibit more communion-striving motivation and empathic leadership as a result of financial stress. We found some support for this alternative pathway, though not gender differences in it, and in doing so we uncovered novel outcomes of financial stress. Our results offer implications for supporting employee financial health and uncover a context wherein men (and their subordinates), rather than women, experience the costs of misalignment with societal gender expectations.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Financial Stress and Leadership Behavior: The Role of Leader Gender
- Creators
- Trevor M. Spoelma - University of New MexicoKeaton A. Fletcher - Colorado State University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of occupational health psychology, Vol.29(5), pp.317-341
- DOI
- 10.1037/ocp0000387
- PMID
- 39388139
- PMCID
- PMC11892524
- NLM abbreviation
- J Occup Health Psychol
- ISSN
- 1076-8998
- eISSN
- 1939-1307
- Publisher
- Educational Publishing Foundation-American Psychological Assoc
- Number of pages
- 25
- Grant note
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; United States Department of Health & Human Services; Centers for Disease Control & Prevention - USA Research Allocations Committee at the University of New Mexico T42 OH009229 / National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center Grant
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2024
- Academic Unit
- Management and Entrepreneurship
- Record Identifier
- 9984936817702771
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