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

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。理解领导者在减轻团队合作失败中的作用，特别是当团队成员有扭曲的激励时，是经济学中的一个相关问题。这个研究项目将使用经济学理论和实验方法来研究群体成员的信念和决策是否会随着领导者和追随者是否拥有相同的群体身份而变化。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，比较内群体和外群体领导者的有效性。社会认同理论认为，领导者和追随者之间共同的群体认同可以增加对内部领导者在促进合作方面的有效性的信任。研究设计将探讨内群体偏见是否会降低有外群体领导的群体的整体合作和效率。内部群体偏见可能成为有效的多元化领导的挑战。这项研究将有助于填补知识的空白，内团体偏见的有害影响，并将对领导的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，这可以为改善领导中的多样性和包容性的政策提供重要的投入。在一个新颖的实验室实验设计中，该项目在领导游戏中使用身份操纵。群体玩公共产品游戏，领导者鼓励每个群体内部的合作，遵循双重识别策略，创造人为的群体身份。在小组任务中，实验对象作为追随者决定是否遵循领导者的合作建议。主要假设是，内群体会对内群体领导者表现出偏爱，对外群体领导者表现出歧视。小组内领导和小组外领导下小组合作水平的差异将有助于隔离共同群体认同对领导有效性的影响。将此扩展到第二项研究，即领导者使用奖励机制来激励更高的合作，可以观察到奖励机制是否可以弥合内群体和外群体领导者有效性之间的差距。该项目有两个贡献。它提供了一个跨学科的方法来研究群体认同和领导效能的互动效应。其次，研究结果将使研究人员能够理解领导者和追随者之间共享社会身份的后果，并防止可能因缺乏多元化领导者而产生的负面后果。总体而言，研究结果将对组织和政策制定者产生政策影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.