Game Theoretic and Experimental Study on Information Sharing and Leadership

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K03354
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic theory
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: Suehiro Hideo 神戸大学, 経営学研究科, 教授 (30162837)
• Research Collaborator: ABE Koji ; KOBAYASHI Hajime ; TOKU Hisashi
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: リーダーシップ / ゲーム理論 / ゲーム実験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research aims at identifying a mechanism of leadership in teams. Specifically, we consider such a possibility that leadership is voluntarily taken by a team member who personally believes that effort is worth taking in his team. First, we formulated a game model of team production in which each member spends effort for his team given a judgment he personally holds about team productivity. We proved that leadership is realized in equilibrium if these judgments are independent across members, whereas it is not if they are correlated. Then, we tested this theory by conducting laboratory experiments. The result is that we observed emergence of leadership in teams in which subjects’ judgments about team productivity were stochastically independent, which coincides with the theoretical prediction. However, we also observed emergence of leadership in teams in which subjects’ judgments about team productivity were correlated, which contradicts with the theory.

Free Research Field

経済学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

リーダーシップは組織が成果をあげる上で極めて重要であることから、リーダーシップはどのような条件があれば生まれるのかについて経営学の長い研究蓄積があるものの、そのメカニズムは未だ解明されていない。
本研究の理論成果は、自発的なリーダーシップのメカニズムの1つを特定する成果と言える。しかし、続いて実施した実験研究の結果は、その理論が示すメカニズムの作動を示唆すると同時に、想定されたメカニズム以外の別のメカニズムがあることを示唆している。この結果は、我々が社会で実際に観察するリーダーシップをリーダーシップ現象としてひとくくりにして理解しようとすることに警告を発するものである。