Financial Stress and Leadership Behavior: The Role of Leader Gender

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of occupational health psychology 2024-10, Vol.29 (5), p.317-341
Main Authors: Spoelma, Trevor M., Fletcher, Keaton A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Female
Financial Strain
Financial Stress - psychology
Human
Human Sex Differences
Humans
Leadership
Male
Middle Aged
Motivation
Sex Factors
Sex Roles
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1076-8998
1939-1307
1939-1307
DOI:10.1037/ocp0000387