《the leader as catalyst on leadership and the mechanics oh institutional change》.pdf

QED Queen’s Economics Department Working Paper No. 1128 The Leader as Catalyst: On Leadership and the Mechanics of Institutional Change Sumon Majumdar Sharun Mukand Queen’s University Tufts University Department of Economics Queen’s University 94 University Avenue Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 6-2007 The Leader as Catalyst On Leadership and the Mechanics of Institutional Change Sumon Majumdar and Sharun W. Mukand1 First draft: March 2007. This draft: June 2007. Preliminary. Comments very welcome. 1 Majumdar: Dept. of Economics, Queen’s University; Kingston, ON, Canada. e- mail: sumon@econ.queensu.ca, Mukand: Dept. of Economics, Tufts University. email: sharun.mukand@. Abstract Individual leaders have been central to the transformation of organizations, political institutions and many instances of social and economic reform. In this paper we take a first step towards analyzing the role of leadership to ask: when and how does a leader engineer change? We show that while underlying structural conditions and institutions are important, there is an independent first- order role for individual agency in bringing about change and thus transforming the institutions. We emphasize the key nature of the symbiotic relationship between followers decisions’ to willingly entrust their faith in the leader and the leader’s initiative at leading them. This two-way interactio