Emergence of leader-follower hierarchy among players in an on-line experiment

Hierarchical networks are prevalent in nature and society, corresponding to groups of actors - animals, humans or even robots - organised according to a pyramidal structure with decision makers at the top and followers at the bottom. While this phenomenon is seemingly universal, the underlying governing principles are poorly understood. Here we study the emergence of hierarchies in groups of people playing a simple dot guessing game in controlled experiments, lasting for about 40 rounds, conducted over the Internet. During the games, the players had the possibility to look at the answer of a limited number of other players of their choice. This act of asking for advice defines a directed connection between the involved players, and according to our analysis, the initial random configuration of the emerging networks became more structured overt time, showing signs of hierarchy towards the end of the game. In addition, the achieved score of the players appeared to be correlated with their position in the hierarchy. These results indicate that under certain conditions imitation and limited knowledge about the performance of other actors is sufficient for the emergence of hierarchy in a social group

A productive clash of cultures: Injecting economics into leadership research

Research on leadership in economics has developed in parallel to the literature in management and psychology and links between the fields have been sparse. Whereas modern leadership scholars mostly focus on transformational and related leadership styles, economists have mainly emphasized the role of contracts, control rights, and incentives. We argue that both fields could profit from enriching their approach with insights from the other field. We review and synthesize the economics literature on leadership in organizations and discuss how leadership scholars in management and psychology can benefit from the detailed understanding of transactional methods that economists have developed. We link the contributions in economics to a broad set of topics including the foundations of leadership, leader emergence, and leader effectiveness. At the same time, we also point out limitations of the economic approach and outline how the integration of leadership research and economics would broaden the scope of future studies

A cognitive hierarchy model of behavior in the action commitment game

We apply the cognitive hierarchy model of Camerer et al. (Q J Econ 119(3):861-898, 2004)-where players have different levels of reasoning-to Huck et al. (Games Econ Behav 38:240-264, 2002) discrete version of Hamilton and Slutsky (Games Econ Behav 2:29-46, 1990) action commitment game-a duopoly with endogenous timing of entry. We show that, for an empirically reasonable average number of thinking steps, the model rules out Stackelberg equilibria, generates Cournot outcomes including delay, and outcomes where the first mover commits to a quantity higher than Cournot but lower than Stackelberg leader. We show that a cognitive hierarchy model with quantal responses can explain the most important features of the experimental data on the action commitment game in (2002). In order to gauge the success of the model in fitting the data, we compare it to a noisy Nash model. We find that the cognitive hierarchy model with quantal responses fits the data better than the noisy Nash model

Hierarchical self-organization of non-cooperating individuals

Hierarchy is one of the most conspicuous features of numerous natural, technological and social systems. The underlying structures are typically complex and their most relevant organizational principle is the ordering of the ties among the units they are made of according to a network displaying hierarchical features. In spite of the abundant presence of hierarchy no quantitative theoretical interpretation of the origins of a multi-level, knowledge-based social network exists. Here we introduce an approach which is capable of reproducing the emergence of a multi-levelled network structure based on the plausible assumption that the individuals (representing the nodes of the network) can make the right estimate about the state of their changing environment to a varying degree. Our model accounts for a fundamental feature of knowledge-based organizations: the less capable individuals tend to follow those who are better at solving the problems they all face. We find that relatively simple rules lead to hierarchical self-organization and the specific structures we obtain possess the two, perhaps most important features of complex systems: a simultaneous presence of adaptability and stability. In addition, the performance (success score) of the emerging networks is significantly higher than the average expected score of the individuals without letting them copy the decisions of the others. The results of our calculations are in agreement with a related experiment and can be useful from the point of designing the optimal conditions for constructing a given complex social structure as well as understanding the hierarchical organization of such biological structures of major importance as the regulatory pathways or the dynamics of neural networks.Comment: Supplementary videos are to be found at http://hal.elte.hu/~nepusz/research/supplementary/hierarchy

What is a Good Pattern of Life Model? Guidance for Simulations

We have been modeling an ever-increasing scale of applications with agents that simulate the pattern of life (PoL) and real-world human behaviors in diverse regions of the world. The goal is to support sociocultural training and analysis. To measure progress, we propose the definition of a measure of goodness for such simulated agents, and review the issues and challenges associated with first-generation (1G) agents. Then we present a second generation (2G) agent hybrid approach that seeks to improve realism in terms of emergent daily activities, social awareness, and micro-decision making in simulations. We offer a PoL case study with a mix of 1G and 2G approaches that was able to replace the pucksters and avatar operators needed in large-scale immersion exercises. We conclude by observing that a 1G PoL simulation might still be best where large-scale, pre-scripted training scenarios will suffice, while the 2G approach will be important for analysis or if it is vital to learn about adaptive opponents or unexpected or emergent effects of actions. Lessons are shared about ways to blend 1G and 2G approaches to get the best of each

Voluntary Leadership: Selection and Influence

International audienceIn social dilemmas, leading a team by making heroic efforts may prove costly, especially when the followers are not adequately motivated to make similar sacrifices. Attempting to shed light on what drives people to lead, we devise a two-stage public good experiment with endogenous timing. We show that leading by making generous contributions is widespread and relatively persistent. At least three motives explain this behavior. Some use leadership strategically to distill personal gains, with the expectation that others will respond by being at least as generous. Others are more altruistic, volunteering to lead even though this may come at a personal cost. Yet for another fraction of volunteers, a concern for maintaining a positive social image appears to be responsible. We also find that voluntary leaders are not necessarily more influential than randomly-chosen leaders

BOUNDARY SPANNING AND LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS IN CREATIVE ORGANIZATIONS: EVIDENCE FROM FOUR ORCHESTRAS

My research examines the importance of a particular form of cross-group brokerage in social networks wherein a person represents a bridge between his or her group and people belonging to a different group. Prior research on network brokerage and leadership emergence has failed to distinguish between brokerage in general and the kind of boundary-spanning between groups that is the focus of my research. Moreover, what we currently know about social network brokerage and leadership emergence comes either from highly abstracted laboratory-based work, or it comes research in relatively traditional work organizations with clear formal structures. It is unclear whether prior research from traditional organizational settings can be applied to nontraditional organizations in the so-called “creative industries,” which are the focus of my research. The core hypotheses my research examines are: (1) Do individuals whose friendship networks help them bridge between groups emerge as leaders in the eyes of others? And (2) Are people who are socially perceptive and socially skilled better at leveraging such boundary-spanning positions to win nominations of leadership from others? Data from the study come from interview and survey data from four different musical orchestras based in Korea