We develop and test predictions about how differences in people’s social class backgrounds, as well as interpersonal perceptions of social class, influence leadership emergence as teams change tasks and group membership. Drawing on adaptive leadership theory, we test distinct pathways for how team members’ social class backgrounds contribute to their likelihood of emerging as a leader. Using data from two samples consisting of 90 teams and over 500 individuals, we find consistent support for a person’s objective class background informing subjective perceptions of social class, which in turn predict leadership emergence. Our findings extend recent research examining the relevance of social class in leadership research by demonstrating how interpersonal judgments of one’s class position contribute to leader emergence even as the group’s membership or task changes and irrespective of an individual’s performance. By examining the role of social class in these informal, yet important, attributions of leadership, our study identifies potential avenues by which class-based inequalities can be reproduced within contemporary organizations.

中文翻译：

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客观和主观社会阶层对领导力出现的影响

我们开发和测试关于人们社会阶层背景的差异以及社会阶层的人际感知如何影响团队改变任务和团体成员时的领导力出现的预测。利用适应性领导理论，我们测试了团队成员的社会阶层背景如何影响他们成为领导者的可能性的不同途径。使用由 90 个团队和 500 多个个人组成的两个样本的数据，我们发现对一个人的客观阶级背景的一致支持表明了对社会阶级的主观看法，这反过来又预测了领导力的出现。我们的研究结果扩展了最近研究社会阶层在领导力研究中的相关性，通过展示人际对一个人的阶层地位的判断如何促进领导者的出现，即使群体的成员或任务发生变化，也不管个人的表现如何。通过研究社会阶级在这些非正式但重要的领导力归因中的作用，我们的研究确定了在当代组织中再现基于阶级的不平等的潜在途径。