Does appointing team leaders and shaping leadership styles increase effort? Evidence from a field experiment

摘要

This paper presents the results of a randomized experiment varying the method of se-lection of team leaders (appointment versus self-selection), the characteristics of the ap-pointed leaders and their leadership styles. I find that appointing high-ability and hard-working leaders increases effort, knowledge-sharing and team performance. I find even greater effects for another intervention that attempted to shape leadership style by pro-viding detailed instructions on how to coordinate the team based on previous observation of free-riders & rsquo; behavior in teams. This indicates that the coordinating abilities of leaders are particularly important in a context of a non-routine cognitive task where knowledge spillovers and the flow of creative ideas are required.(c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.