More Motivated to Help Male Leaders? Explaining Fatherhood Bonuses via Follower Helping
Journal
Journal of Business Ethics
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2026-02-11
Author(s)
Abstract
Family amplifies gender biases in organizations, presenting an ethical dilemma for modern organizations. Specifically, women tend to face additional barriers to leadership when they become mothers, while men often experience the opposite. But what about leaders’ family explains these fatherhood bonuses? Focusing on work-family conflict (WFC), we theorize that this ostensibly negative state paradoxically motivates followers because it signals an opportunity to expend extra effort to help their leaders. We further theorize this helping process is stronger for male (vs. female) leaders because WFC is a more noticeable violation of gendered stereotypes, which followers respond to with motivation to help their (male) leaders to resolve cognitive dissonance. A multi-source field study of leader–follower dyads (Ntotal = 290) supported our theorizing, which we causally replicated and extended with a pair of pre-registered behavioral and recall experiments (Ntotal = 920). These results inform theory and practice of gender inequalities while also revealing new mechanisms that explain behavioral fatherhood bonuses.
Funding(s)
S
Language
English
Keywords
leadership
followership
motivation
cognitive dissonance
helping
organizational citizenship behavior
gender
sex
parenthood
family
work-family conflict
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Division(s)
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
Gloor et al. (forthcoming) in JBE.pdf
Size
669.64 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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