Persistent Exposure to Poverty During Childhood Limits Later Leader Emergence

Abstract

Increasing attention is being paid to the question of why some people emerge as leaders, and we investigated the effects of persistent exposure to poverty during childhood on later leadership role occupancy. We hypothesized that exposure to poverty would limit later leadership role occupancy through the indirect effects of the quality of schooling and personal mastery, and that gender would moderate the effects of exposure to poverty and personal mastery. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth provided multiwave and multisource data for a sample of 4,536 (1,533 leaders; 3,003 nonleaders). Both school quality and personal mastery mediated the effects of family poverty status on later leadership role occupancy. Although gender did not moderate the effects of poverty on leadership role occupancy, the indirect effects of early exposure to poverty on leadership role occupancy through personal mastery were moderated by gender. Conceptual and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Full text

Persistent Exposure to Poverty During Childhood Limits Later
Leader Emergence
Julian Barling and Julie G. Weatherhead
Stephen J. R. Smith School of Business, Queen’s University
Increasing attention is being paid to the question of why some people emerge as leaders, and we
investigated the effects of persistent exposure to poverty during childhood on later leadership role
occupancy. We hypothesized that exposure to poverty would limit later leadership role occupancy
through the indirect effects of the quality of schooling and personal mastery, and that gender would
moderate the effects of exposure to poverty and personal mastery. Using the National Longitudinal Study
of Youth provided multiwave and multisource data for a sample of 4,536 (1,533 leaders; 3,003
nonleaders). Both school quality and personal mastery mediated the effects of family poverty status on
later leadership role occupancy. Although gender did not moderate the effects of poverty on leadership
role occupancy, the indirect effects of early exposure to poverty on leadership role occupancy through
personal mastery were moderated by gender. Conceptual and practical implications of these findings are
discussed.
Keywords: leadership emergence, poverty, personal mastery, gender
Who emerges as a formal leader, and why, is an issue of
considerable importance. First, becoming a leader is the initial step
in what might be thought of as a leadership emergence process.
Only after becoming a leader do questions of leadership style or
behavior become relevant, and questions of leadership effective-
ness are then largely dependent on leadership behaviors (Arvey,
Rotundo, Johnson, Zhang, & McGue, 2006;Ilies, Gerhardt, & Le,
2004). Second, who emerges as a leader defines the pool from
which organizations will draw their future leaders. Third, under-
standing who does not emerge as a leader might point to personal
or contextual factors that limit the pool of future leaders.
Given this, one might expect that the issue of leader emergence
would have been a primary focus in the considerable body of
leadership research conducted over the past century, which now
sees hundreds of articles published each year (Barling, 2014). Yet
this is not the case. Most of this large body of research explores the
nature and even more so, the consequences of transformational/
charismatic leadership theories (Barling, 2014;Judge & Bono,
2000). Although invaluable in itself, the knowledge obtained from
this research is of no help in understanding leadership emergence,
and so in this study we turn our attention to understanding who
becomes a leader, and why. In particular, we focus on the ques-
tions of whether and how persistent exposure to poverty during
childhood and adolescence limits later leadership emergence.
Although less researched than other areas in the leadership
domain, there was already substantial interest before and during
World War II in predicting whom might most appropriately fill a
leadership role, and successfully assume the responsibilities that
role would entail. At the time, this was not merely a question of
academic interest; selecting the right person to meet the challenges
of war-time leadership could have very substantial consequences.
In his extensive review of the available research, Stogdill (1948)
identified more than 100 data-driven articles published by the end
of World War II. Stogdill’s early research showed that the most
consistent correlates of leadership emergence were socioeconomic
status (SES), different indicators of intelligence (e.g., school
grades, practical knowledge, judgment and decision-making, and
insight), and broad aspects of personality (e.g., extraversion, orig-
inality, adaptability, self-confidence and responsibility), and affect
(emotional and mood control, and social skills). These early find-
ings, especially with regard to the roles of family SES, current job
status and education, were replicated in studies investigating
unions (Sorokin et al., 1927), high school senior students (Rem-
mlein, 1938), and community samples (Smith, 1937), and in coun-
tries other than the United States (Gibb, 1947).
Interest in understanding who becomes a leader again resurfaced
several decades later, and focused on three broad categories of
predictors. First, researchers studied the link between traits and
leader emergence. Perhaps the most consistent finding across time
is the link between children’s general overall cognitive ability and
later leadership emergence (Daly, Egan, & O’Reilly, 2015).
Broadening this focus, research in the 1970s investigated the role
of personality, for example in isolating the role of self-monitoring
(e.g., Garland & Beard, 1979). More recent research addressed the
role of big five personality characteristics, with extraversion the
most consistent personality predictor of leader emergence (e.g.,
Ensari, Riggio, Christian, & Carslaw, 2011;Reichard et al., 2011).
Second, research has identified a consistent role for gender. Males
This article was published Online First June 16, 2016.
Julian Barling and Julie G. Weatherhead, Stephen J. R. Smith School of
Business, Queen’s University.
This research was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Human-
ities Research Council of Canada to Julian Barling. We appreciate the
invaluable advice from Mike Frone and Nick Turner.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julie G.
Weatherhead, Stephen J. R. Smith School of Business, Goodes Hall,
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6. E-mail:
julian.barling@queensu.ca
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Applied Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 101, No. 9, 1305–1318 0021-9010/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000129
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