Conformity and Leadership in Organizations

Shunsuke Matsuno ()

No DP2025-15, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: Some organizations are characterized by a conformity culture, where followers are expected to conform to the leadership's behavior. In contrast, other organizations exhibit an anticonformity culture. What drives the variation in conformity culture across organizations? This paper develops a model of leadership and (anti)conformity culture in organizations with dispersed information. The optimal culture trades off coordination gains against informational losses. I show that with strategic complementarity, conformity is optimal; whereas with strategic substitutability, anticonformity is optimal. By showing how culture coordinates agents in organizations with dispersed knowledge–much like the price system coordinates agents in decentralized markets (Hayek, 1945)–I contribute to the theory of organizations centered on corporate culture (Kreps, 1990). Comparative statics of optimal culture sheds light on the origins of cultural variation across organizations from an informational perspective.

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate culture; Conformity; Coordination games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D82 M14 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2025-15.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

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:kob:dpaper:dp2025-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University 2-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501 JAPAN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University ().