دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی عملکرد سازمانی با رهبران گروه خودی و گروه حذفی: یک آزمایش - الزویر 2018

Abstract

In this paper, we compare the performance of a homogeneous organization in which group members and the leader belong to the same group, with a heterogeneous organization in which the leader is an outsider. Using a modified public goods game in which leaders’ performance in a real effort task determines the marginal return to the public good we focus on the effect of shared group membership on: i) the effort of the leader in the real effort task, ii) cooperation of group members and iii) group members’ payoffs. When the leaders are selected randomly, we find that homogeneous groups tend to out-perform heterogeneous groups. This is due to lower performance of the out-group leader and not to differences in cooperation. This effect disappears when high-performance leaders are selected. High performance out-group leaders tend to over perform relative to in-group leaders, yet, there are no differences in cooperation once we control for the marginal incentives to invest in the public good. The results of our study have important implications for how organizations can deal with the arrival of out-group leaders.

5. Discussion

In this paper, we compare the performance of organizations with an in-group and an outgroup leader in terms of performance of the leader, cooperation by group members and payoffs. We found mixed evidence regarding the effect of the leader’s group membership on organizational performance.

Our results indicate that random out-group leaders were less willing to work for the group they represented, than random in-group leaders. This difference was also observed for high performance leaders in the first round but shrank and eventually reversed over 10 periods. One possible explanation for this effect could be related to the lower marginal cost that high performance leaders have compared with random leaders, which is expected to induce higher effort. However, it is also possible that high performance leaders could be inherently different from random leaders and have a higher motivation for the task, and therefore be less affected by group membership. It is also possible that the selection mechanisms changed the motivation of the leaders. High performance leaders could have perceived that they had a more legitimate claim to the position of leader, which could have fostered their motivation to work for the group members. Surprisingly, our results indicate that heterogeneous groups with an out-group leader do not necessarily produce lower contributions to the public good than homogenous groups. Despite productivity differences between in-group and out-group leaders (for random leaders), whether a group had an in-group or an out-group leader did not significantly affect the level of contributions made by the group members. This effect could be partly due to the uncertainty that group members feel regarding the effort of the leader. More research to explore this question is needed.