Executive Sent-Down Experiences and Corporate Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

In this study we investigate whether an executive’s downward mobility experiences in early life affect corporate antipoverty initiatives. Drawing upon insights of social mobility literature and imprinting theory, we argue that executives with early experiences in a downwardly mobile context compared to those without, tend to foster cognitive proximity to the poor by attributing the poverty to structural rather than individual factors, which motivates them to undertake more poverty alleviation initiatives afterwards. We exploit a natural experiment, the Send-Down Movement in China, to examine our theory. The results indicate that the experiences of being sent down from urban to rural substantially prompt the executives’ later engagements in poverty alleviation. We also find such effect decays as these sent-down executives received elite education and operated business in tier-one cities. Our findings contribute to the theorizing about social class mobility among upper echelons and the understanding of poverty alleviation.