Collaborative Experimentation Initiative for Organizational Behavior- First Experiment of ‘Leadership Preference Study’ Established in November 2021

The enterprise reformation of China has created its unique forms of entrepreneurship, corporate governance, and labor management. The new idiosyncratic system has not only attracted practitioners and investors, but also academic researchers. Among the fields these researchers specialize in, Organizational Behavior (OB) stands as the one investigating the ways of management and human resource management in China. For that reason, the Collaborative Experimentation Initiative for Organizational Behavior (CEI-OB) was launched early this year to provide a fundamental research platform to support the scientific development of Organizational Behavior (OB) studies. Co-directed and co-founded by Mr. Sheng Yan at GEC Academy and Dr. Yeun Joon Kim, Associate Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS), this initiative was established to delve into research topics for experimental studies in CEI-OB including creativity, innovation, culture, leadership, and followership.

 

From the beginning of October, research fellows at GEC and Dr. Kim, together with his Ph.D. students, started to prepare for our first collaborative experiment- Leadership Preference Study. The study aims to understand individuals’ preferences for leaders, for example, what are some characteristics and behaviors individuals would like to see in a leader. By the end of November, GEC has recruited 252 participants (GEC students) for the study. After the experiment, Dr. Kim and his Ph.D. students will run a 30- to 60-min Zoom session for debriefing during when participants can learn information regarding the experiment - e.g., goals, hypotheses, and theoretical models that the experiment hopes to test. We believe that it’s also a great opportunity for GEC students to learn academic research by participating in social experimental studies.