Leadership Styles and Labor Market Conditions: An Experiment

Last registered on April 03, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Leadership Styles and Labor Market Conditions: An Experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009365
Initial registration date
October 15, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
October 17, 2022, 4:03 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
April 03, 2023, 3:30 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
Germany
Region
Berlin

Primary Investigator

Name
Ju Yeong Hong
Affiliation
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Anastasia Danilov
PI Affiliation
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Anja Schöttner
PI Affiliation
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2022-10-12
End date
2022-12-09
Keywords
Behavior, Firms & Productivity, Lab, Labor
Additional Keywords
leadership styles, motivation, communication, labor market conditions, social preferences, reciprocity
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We study the role of leadership styles and the effect of labor market conditions on the choice of leadership styles via an experimental labor market interaction, where we have participants in the role of managers and workers. We implement the leadership styles as non-monetary, performance contingent reward or punishment in the form of ex-post communication from managers to workers: The content or tone of the communication could be neutral, friendly, or unfriendly contingent on the workers’ performance.

Further details of our experimental design and predictions are included in the attached pdf.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Danilov, Anastasia, Ju Yeong Hong and Anja Schöttner. 2023. "Leadership Styles and Labor Market Conditions: An Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. April 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9365-1.1
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2022-10-12
Intervention End Date
2022-12-09

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Managers' choice of leadership styles
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
A manager's leadership style is defined by the number of friendly or unfriendly messages stipulated in the manager's contract offer, contingent on the outcome of the project. Further details are described in the attached pdf.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Subjects are either in the role of managers or workers. They make decisions in the context of a single-period, experimental labor market interaction. The context of manager-worker interactions follows a one-sided auction for hiring. Each manager makes one contract offer to hire a worker who accepts the offer and then works on the manager’s project at an exogenously fixed wage. A worker can be hired under only one contract offer‒but is free to reject all offers and remain unhired‒and a manager can only hire one worker who accepts his/her offer. A hired worker earns the fixed wage minus the effort cost. The abstract effort level chosen by the worker determines the chances of binary outcomes of the project, either success or failure, and the effort cost; the higher the effort level, the higher the chances of project success, and the higher the cost. When the project is successful, the manager gets strictly higher project earnings than when the project fails. Both the manager and the worker learn the realization of their project outcomes. However, the manager cannot observe the effort level directly.
A contract offer stipulates each manager’s leadership style, i.e., the style of ex-post communication, contingent on the project outcome. Further details of our experimental design are described in the attached pdf.
Experimental Design Details
Further details of our experimental design are described in the attached pdf.
Randomization Method
Randomizations are implemented by the computer software, zTree.
Randomization Unit
Groups. Participants are randomly assigned to groups and the role of a manager or a worker.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
32 groups per treatment
Sample size: planned number of observations
Further details of our experimental design are described in the attached pdf.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Further details of our experimental design are described in the attached pdf.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Further details of our experimental design are described in the attached pdf.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
IRB Approval Date
2022-07-01
IRB Approval Number
2022-04
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-analysis plan and details of the experiment

MD5: 19a3480c159b991a6f7e113d9ac21994

SHA1: ea052aa3c2184b03708fbc98f6193773dec6522c

Uploaded At: October 10, 2022

Theoretical predictions and hypotheses

MD5: ff8ddb482b6f91edae6d32edb6aef9ac

SHA1: 4c4f72dd48eda1cd1184e522297fd2f97fb80c6f

Uploaded At: October 10, 2022

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials