The Amsterdam Business School has a vacancy for a PhD candidate: Leadership in an Age of Inequality.

This PhD project will explore the effects of income inequality on leadership emergence and selection. Despite increasing levels of inequality, there is little work on the effects of income inequality in the workplace, with the majority of work focusing on how salary disparities might drive the performance and motivation of employees. The current project aims to assess the impact of inequality on the strategies that individuals use to attain leadership positions, the moral compunction of leaders, and the consequences of these for employees and organisations.

We define immoral leadership as leadership behaviors that prioritise self-interest over the interests of followers. Immoral leadership is a problem of enormous scope. Group leaders who pretend to be interested in the welfare of their group, but are primarily motivated to enrich themselves, cause unnecessary conflict, and are a drain on organisations and society at large. However, when and why leaders show more or less moral behavior remains insufficiently clear. The proposed research will provide a framework for understanding the origins of this problem of immoral leadership, and will also pursue methods for addressing it.

In short, the goals of the proposed research are to investigate the:

• circumstances under which inequality does and does not lead to immoral leadership;
• sychological processes that enable unqualified aspirants to attain leadership positions;
• individual differences that push people toward moral or immoral leadership styles, and how they interact with inequality of outcome;
• leadership selection strategies that minimise the likelihood that unqualified aspirants will attain leadership positions.

Data will be gathered from both the lab and the field. Laboratory experiments will provide the opportunity to test for the hypothesized main effects and mediating mechanisms within an environment that provides tight control over the examined variables. Field data will allow us to explore the hypothesized effects within more ecologically valid contexts.

The ideal candidate holds a (Research) Master’s degree in a relevant field with a quantitative focus (e.g., experimental psychology/economics). We seek a highly motivated student with a track record of excellent grades in their core discipline, applied statistics, psychometrics, and a strong interest in leadership and organisational behavior.

Fixed-term contract: four years.

The appointment will be for a period of 4 years, with an intermediate evaluation after 18 months. End-result should be a PhD thesis. An educational plan will be drafted that includes attendance of courses and (international) conferences. The PhD candidate is also expected to assist in teaching at undergraduate level. The gross monthly salary will range from €2,325 in the first year to €2,972 in the last year. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

We offer the possibility to join a young, vibrant and very collegial group, and help shape a growing business school at an internationally recognized university that has the ambition to become a leading international player in the field of business research and education.

For more information about the research policy at the Amsterdam Business School please check our site.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Economics and Business – Amsterdam Business School

The Amsterdam Business School (ABS) of the Faculty of Economics and Business is one of the two schools of the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Economics and Business. The school’s core subjects are Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship, and Big Data / Business Analytics. Six sections (Accounting, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Finance, Leadership & Management, International Strategy & Marketing, and Operations Management) conduct top-level research published in prestigious international journals. They also provide various degree programmes including a BSc programme and six MSc programmes, a wide range of post-doctoral programmes featuring three MBAs, four accountancy programmes and Lean Six Sigma programmes, as well as an extensive portfolio of open courses and in-company projects.

Supervisors of the PhD project will be Dr Richard Ronay and Prof. Deanne den Hartog.