Sources of leader's legitimacy, an experiment

• Main Authors: Tan, Melody, Liang, Zi Xin, Teoh, Amas Chong Wei
• Other Authors: Yeo Xiong Wei, Jonathan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Economic development
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165796
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Recent research has highlighted the importance of legitimacy, in determining the impact of leaders on their followers. It is believed that various sources of legitimacy can influence a leader’s effectiveness in managing and motivating their team. This study aims to investigate how different legitimacy types, namely institutional and personal legitimacy, can affect cooperation among followers and whether leader selection procedure can improve cooperation. Subjects were engaged in a public goods game, which examined how various legitimacy types and leader selection mechanisms influence outcomes. Leaders were chosen through members’ vote, previous leaders’ vote, or random selection at the beginning of each round. Once selected, leaders would choose a message from a list that reflects either the institution’s or personal power before members contributed to the game. The study revealed that members under institutional legitimacy tend to contribute more on average. Moreover, the impact of leader selection mechanisms differed based on institutional and personal legitimacy. In groups under institutional legitimacy, those with voted leaders contributed the least when compared against groups randomly assigned leaders and those chosen by the previous leader. Whereas in groups under personal legitimacy, those with voted leaders had the highest contribution. No noteworthy variation in contributions was noticed between groups with randomly assigned leaders and those chosen by the previous leader. Findings from this study may provide valuable insights into the impact of leadership in behavior where cooperation is essential and may have implications in broader societal contexts.