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I Take Care of My Own: A Field Study on How Leadership Handles Conflict between Individual and Collective Incentives

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  • Romain Gauriot
  • Lionel Page

Abstract

In most collective actions, individuals' incentives are not perfectly aligned with the goals of the group/team they are part of. We investigate how individual specific incentives affect both individuals and team leaders' strategies in a natural setting. We use a discontinuity in individual rewards in batsmen scoring in cricket to identify the causal effect of such incentives on behavior. We find that batsmen react to the presence of individual-specific incentives by adopting strategies that may be suboptimal at the team level. More surprisingly, we also find that team captains react to these individual incentives by adopting suboptimal strategies at the team level, which may bring large benefits to the individual players. These results suggest a complex interplay of individual and team incentives which we conjecture may arise in repeated team interactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2015. "I Take Care of My Own: A Field Study on How Leadership Handles Conflict between Individual and Collective Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 414-419, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:105:y:2015:i:5:p:414-19
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20151019
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    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.p20151019
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    6. P Scarf & S Akhtar, 2011. "An analysis of strategy in the first three innings in test cricket: declaration and the follow-on," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(11), pages 1931-1940, November.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page, 2019. "Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(4), pages 658-666, October.
    2. Gauriot, Romain & Page, Lionel, 2018. "Fooled by randomness: over-rewarding luck," Working Papers 2018-03, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    3. Karol Kempa & Hannes Rusch, 2019. "Dissent, sabotage, and leader behaviour in contests: Evidence from European football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 500-514, July.
    4. Klein Teeselink, Bouke & Potter van Loon, Rogier J.D. & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2020. "Incentives, performance and choking in darts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 38-52.
    5. Stephen Easton & Sean Pinder & Steven Stern, 2018. "Documenting the functional form of dynamic risk‐taking behaviour in a real options context using sporting contests," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(S1), pages 159-178, November.
    6. Nourani, Vesall & Maertens, Annemie & Michelson, Hope, 2021. "Public good provision and democracy: Evidence from an experiment with farmer groups in Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    7. Karol Kempa & Hannes Rusch, 2016. "Misconduct and Leader Behaviour in Contests – New Evidence from European Football," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201629, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • Z21 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Industry Studies
    • Z22 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Labor Issues

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