Behavioral Mechanisms of Leadership

对于领导工具的有效性，比如以身作则或惩罚，只有有限的清晰洞察力(Yaffe和Kark，2011)。这种逆差实际上并不令人意外，因为领导人通常只使用他们最喜欢的工具。因此，我们不知道一位领导人是否使用了另一种工具。这一缺陷限制了循证领导力培训的范围，因为我们无法评估特定工具的行为后果。为了解决识别问题，该项目通过一系列实验室实验来研究领导工具(特别是榜样领导和惩罚领导)的相对有效性，建立并加强了领导行为经济学的最新发展。实验经济学家通常将社会困境中的先行者视为领导者。这种以身作则的领导方式是协调集团和加强集团内合作的有效工具，至少在集团成员手头没有其他协调机制的情况下是这样。该项目将在简单的非约束性建议促进协调的情况下测试这种领导的有效性。此外，它还检验了相对于惩罚来说，以身作则的有效性。这样的测试代表了变革型和交易型领导力之间的简化比较(贾奇和罗宾斯，2015)。该项目研究了不同环境背景下的领导力影响(小团体和大团体，有或没有额外的自由形式聊天交流，竞争性框架和中性框架)。众所周知，这种环境差异塑造了群体成员相互合作的倾向。这些差异也会影响领导工具的有效性。例如，惩罚的威胁在大型团体中可能更有效，而竞争环境可能会增强以身作则的领导的影响。最后，但同样重要的是，该项目研究了领导人是否真的选择了更有效的工具。以身作则是一种相对危险的工具，因为领导者不确定其他团队成员是否真的会效仿。有了惩罚，领导者就能更好地控制自己的收益和团队内部的收入差距。因此，领导者可能会选择更安全的领导工具，而不是更有效的领导工具。

There is only limited clean insight into the effectiveness of leadership instruments like leading by example or punishment (Yaffe and Kark, 2011). This deficit is actually not that surprising because leaders typically only apply their most preferred instruments. Hence we do not know a leader's performance if she had used another instrument. This shortcoming limits the scope of evidence-based leadership training because we cannot assess the behavioral consequences of specific instruments. To address the identification problem, this project studies the relative effectiveness of leadership instruments (in particular leading by example and punishment) with a sequence of laboratory experiments, building upon and enhancing the recent developments in the behavioral economics of leadership. Experimental economists typically consider a first mover in a social dilemma as a leader. This leadership by example is an effective instrument to coordinate groups and enhance in-group cooperation, at least if group members have no alternative coordination mechanism at hand. This project will test the effectiveness of such leadership in a context where simple non-binding recommendations facilitate coordination. Moreover, it tests the effectiveness of leading-by-example relative to punishment. Such a test represents a streamlined comparison between transformational and transactional leadership (Judge and Robbins, 2015).The project studies this leadership impact in different environmental contexts (small vs. large groups, with/without additional free-form chat communication, competitive vs. neutral framings). It is well known that such environmental differences shape the inclination of group members to cooperate with each other. These differences can also influence the effectiveness of leadership instruments. For example, the threat of punishment can be more effective in large groups while competitive environments may enhance the impact of leading by example. Last, but not least, the project studies whether leaders actually choose the more effective instrument. Leading by example is a relative risky instrument because leaders are not sure whether the other group members will actually follow. With punishment, a leader has more control over her own payoff and the earning differences within the group. Hence, leaders might choose the safer rather than the more effective leadership instruments.