Essays in the political economy of organisations: power, leadership and coordination

Restrepo Plaza, Lina (2017) Essays in the political economy of organisations: power, leadership and coordination. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This study provides with behavioural insights on three components of the political economy of organisations namely power, leadership and coordination. In the second chapter, we implement a lab experiment to study how the experience of power affects the value given to powerful positions. We contribute to the literature on the value of decisions rights by replicating in the lab a real-life-like power asymmetry. Moreover, we manipulate the status and the legitimacy of the powerful positions, and elicit the value of power from the powerful and the powerless reference points. We find that those who have experienced and exercised power are willing to let go substantial pecuniary compensations to remain in charge.
The third chapter experimentally compares teams versus individual in a coordination task. Since in our setting teams do not necessarily outperform individuals, our results partially contrast the state of the art on this arena. We contribute to the literature on organisational behaviour by pointing out the importance of coordinating institutions such as voting rules, communication, joint incentives, etc., to promote teams’ coordination.
Finally, we empirically study the role of formal leaders in real-life organisations: football teams. We contribute to the literature in organisational behaviour in sports by implementing an adaptation of the red card into the sport production function to estimate the relative effect of a captain dismissal in both Northern and Southern European leagues. We find context specific results, as we find that the captain dismissal only affects the match outcomes in Southern leagues when the away captain is sent-off. This result might open a window to incorporate leadership and cross cultural studies in the literature of the home team advantage.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
Depositing User:	Jackie Webb
Date Deposited:	09 May 2018 12:09
Last Modified:	09 May 2018 12:09
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/66976
DOI:

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