Doctoral Dissertation Research: Information and Leadership in a Laboratory Setting

领导者如何领导？为什么追随者要追随？为什么有些领导者在某些情况下是成功的，而在其他情况下却不成功？尽管学者们早就认识到领导力在社交中的重要性，但事实证明，对这些基本而重要的问题缺乏坚实的概念把握。然而，这种弱点并不妨碍学术界对领导力重新产生兴趣。领导者是许多关于经济公司、社会和政治团体、政策产出和政治机构的当前和突出的描述的核心，然而我们对领导者-追随者关系的动态的理解仍然不完整。这项博士论文研究将解决一个基本问题，即领导者如何以及何时能够战略性地利用信息，在一组理性的追随者中诱导帕累托增强的规范？具体地说，它开发和测试了一系列模型，这些模型明确地将领导信号映射到追随者策略上，并考察了当一个人系统性地改变领导者和追随者互动的环境背景时，这种映射是如何变化的。这项研究由两部分组成。首先，建立了一系列关于领导者、追随者和领导过程的简单博弈论模型。这些模型提供了一种明确的领导力概念：领导者之所以被称为领导者，是因为他们能够并有动力传播影响追随者战略选择的信息。那么，领导力就是领导者传播信息以建立一系列有益于社会的规范的行为和过程。从这些模型中得出假设，以解决领导者将如何以及何时成功地利用信息来影响结果。这些模型既突出了领导者和追随者互动的战略背景，也强调了围绕他们互动的信息条件。第二部分包括在实验室条件下测试这些模型。博弈论模型严重依赖于“信念”和“信息”等概念，在自然界中很难进行测试。实验设计，通过其巨大的控制水平，提供了具有高水平内部效度的直接测试的潜力。这项调查有望为社会和政治互动中领导力的性质提供洞察。它将阐明在什么情况下，领导者可以有效地利用信息作为其行业的工具，并将加深我们对为什么个人追随一些领导人而不是另一些领导人的理解。

How do leaders lead? Why do followers follow? Why are some leaders successful in some situations but unsuccessful in others? Although scholars have long recognized the importance of leadership in social interaction, a solid conceptual hold on these basic and important questions has proven elusive. This weakness has not precluded, however, a renewed scholarly interest in leadership. Leaders are central to many current and prominent accounts of economic firms, social and political groups, policy outputs, and political institutions, yet our understanding of the dynamics of the leader-follower relationship remains incomplete. This Doctoral Dissertation research will addresses a basic question how and when can leaders strategically employ information to induce a Pareto-enhancing norm among a set of rational followers? Specifically, it develops and tests a series of models that explicitly map leadership signals onto follower strategies, and examines how this mapping changes as one systematically alter the environmental context in which leaders and followers interact. The research consists of two components. In the first, a series of simple game-theoretic models are developed of leaders, followers, and the leadership process. These models offer a distinct conceptualization of leadership: Leaders `lead` because they are able and motivated to disseminate information that affects the strategy selection of followers. Leadership, then, is the act and process by which leaders disseminate information in order to crate a series of socially beneficial norms. From these models, hypotheses are derived to address how and when leaders will successfully employ information to affect outcomes. The models highlight both the strategic context in which leader sand followers interact as well as the informational conditions surrounding their interaction. The second component consists of testing these models under laboratory conditions. Game-theoretic models, critically dependent on such concepts as `beliefs` and `information,` are extraordinarily difficult to test in the natural world. Experimental designs, through their tremendous levels of control, offer the potential of a direct test with a high level of internal validity. This investigation promises to provide insight into the nature of leadership in social and political interaction. It will shed light on the circumstances under which leaders can productively employ information as a tool of their trade, and will increase our understanding of why individuals follow some leaders but not others.