Legitimacy, Communication, and Leadership in the Turnaround Game
研究领导者如何通过沟通和激励促使组织转向更高效的均衡，发现当选领导者的沟通比随机领导者更有效，且结合激励与沟通能实现近乎全面的扭亏为盈。
We study the effectiveness of leaders for inducing coordinated organizational change to a more efficient equilibrium, i.e., a turnaround. We compare communication from leaders to incentive increases and also compare the effectiveness of randomly selected and elected leaders. Although all interventions yield shifts to more efficient equilibria, communication from leaders has a greater effect than incentives. Moreover, leaders who are elected by followers are significantly better at improving their group’s outcome than randomly selected leaders. The improved effectiveness of elected leaders results from sending more performance-relevant messages. Our results are evidence that the way in which leaders are selected affects their legitimacy and the degree to which they influence followers. Finally, we observe that a combination of factors—specifically, incentive increases and communication from elected leaders—yields near-universal turnarounds to full efficiency. This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.