Leadership and the effective choice of information regime

Mana Komai, Philip Grossman and Evelyne Benie
Additional contact information
Mana Komai: Saint Cloud State University
Evelyne Benie: Wolters Kluwer

Theory and Decision, 2017, vol. 82, issue 1, No 7, 117-129

Abstract: Abstract Economic research suggests that, in some circumstances, exogenously restricting the information leaders can provide to followers can overcome the free-riding problem and coordination failures, and improve efficiency in collective actions. The reason is that a leader’s information advantage can deprive followers of the information necessary for profitable defection. In this paper, we focus on situations where the decision to restrict access to information is an endogenous choice made by the leader. We experimentally investigate if leaders choose to strategically withhold information when appropriate to improve outcomes. To address this question, we adopt a single-shot collective action game in which a leader–follower setting with information advantage for the leader can potentially solve the free-riding problem and coordination failures. Our results suggest that leaders, in many circumstances, fail to utilize their information advantage to improve efficiency. This implies that groups may benefit if a nontransparent information regime is exogenously imposed on them.

Keywords: Leadership; Transparency; Coordination; Free-riding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11238-016-9554-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:theord:v:82:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11238-016-9554-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11238/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11238-016-9554-z

Access Statistics for this article

Theory and Decision is currently edited by Mohammed Abdellaoui

More articles in Theory and Decision from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().