Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An experimental analysis of the role of group identity in leadership effectiveness

经济学博士论文研究：群体认同在领导效能中作用的实验分析

• 批准号: 2048476
• 负责人: Daniel Houser
• 金额: $ 0.83万
• 依托单位: George Mason University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048476&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; experimental

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Understanding the role of leaders in mitigating cooperation failures in groups especially when group members have distorted incentives is a relevant issue in economics. This research project will use economic theory and experimental methods to study whether beliefs and decisions of group members vary according to whether the leader shares the same group identity as the followers. The project will combine insights from behavioral economics, social psychology, leadership, and management studies to compare the effectiveness of ingroup and outgroup leaders. Social identity theory suggests that a shared group identity between leaders and followers could increase trust in an ingroup leader's effectiveness in fostering cooperation. The research design will investigate whether ingroup bias can lower overall cooperation and efficiency in groups with outgroup leaders. Ingroup bias can become a challenge for effective diverse leadership. This research will help to fill in gaps in knowledge of the detrimental effects of ingroup bias and will have broad impacts on the study of leadership. Further, the results of this research project will shed light on identity-based discrimination which can provide important inputs into policies that improve diversity and inclusion in leadership.In a novel laboratory experimental design, the project uses identity manipulations within a leadership game. Groups play a public goods game where the leader encourages cooperation within each group following a two-fold identification strategy which creates artificial group identities. Laboratory subjects acting as followers decide whether to follow a leader’s cooperation suggestion in a group task. The main hypothesis is that the ingroups will exhibit favoritism towards ingroup leaders and discrimination against outgroup leaders. The difference in a group’s cooperation levels under ingroup and outgroup leadership will help in isolating the effects of shared group identity on leadership effectiveness. Extending this to a second study where the leaders use a reward mechanism to incentivize higher cooperation it can be observed whether a reward mechanism can bridge the gap between ingroup and outgroup leader effectiveness. The project makes two contributions. It provides an interdisciplinary approach to studyingthe interaction effects of group identity and leader effectiveness. Second, the results will allow researchers to understand the ramifications of shared social identities between leaders and followers and prevent the negative consequences that may arise out of the lack of inclusion of diverse leaders. Overall, the results will have policy implications for both organizations and policy makers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项是根据2021年《美国救援计划法》（公法117-2）全部或部分资助的。理解领导者在减轻小组中的合作失败中的作用，尤其是当小组成员扭曲激励措施时，这是经济学中的一个相关问题。该研究项目将使用经济理论和实验方法来研究小组成员的信念和决策是否会根据领导者是否与追随者具有相同的小组身份有所不同。该项目将结合行为经济学，社会心理学，领导力和管理研究的见解，以比较群体和外部领导者的有效性。社会身份理论表明，领导者和追随者之间的共同群体身份可以提高对群体领导者在促进合作方面的有效性的信任。研究设计将调查与团队领导者组的整体合作和效率是否可以降低整体合作和效率。群体偏见可能成为有效多样性领导的挑战。这项研究将有助于填补对群体偏见的有害影响的了解，并将对领导研究产生广泛的影响。此外，该研究项目的结果将揭示基于身份的歧视，这可以为改善领导力的多样性和包容性提供重要的投入。在新型的实验室实验设计中，该项目在领导力游戏中使用身份操纵。小组玩一个公共物品游戏，领导者遵循创建人工群体身份的两倍识别策略，鼓励每个小组内部的合作。充当追随者的实验室受试者决定是否遵循领导者在小组任务中的合作建议。主要的假设是，群体将向群体领导者提取喜爱的主义，并歧视群体领导者。团体合作级别在群体和外部领导下的合作水平的差异将有助于隔离共同的小组身份对领导力效果的影响。将其扩展到第二项研究，在该研究中，领导者使用奖励机制激励更高的合作，可以观察到奖励机制是否可以弥合群体领导者和外部领导者之间的差距。该项目做出了两个贡献。它提供了一种跨学科方法来研究群体身份和领导者有效性的相互作用。其次，结果将使研究人员能够理解领导者和追随者之间共同的社会身份的后果，并防止可能因缺乏潜水员领导者的纳入而产生的负面后果。总体而言，结果将对组织和政策制定者产生政策影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准来评估值得支持。