Purpose: This study aims to explore the influence of industry leaders’ behavior on common enterprise leaders’ decisions in enterprise clustering by recognizing top executives’ cognitive processes of brains.
Methods: Twenty-one real top executives from twelve textile enterprises were recruited in the lab experiment, and decisions about whether entering an industrial zone under two conditions of following an industry leader or a common enterprise were designed as the experiment task. Throughout the formal experimental task, participants’ electroencephalograms were recorded.
Results: The behavioral results preliminarily proved the effect of industry leaders’ behaviors on the real top executives’ decisions in common enterprises: participants had a higher acceptance rate with a shorter reaction time in the condition of following an industry leader rather than that in the condition of following a common enterprise. Event-related potential results indicated that choices of following an industry leader led to a more positive perception of emotional valence (reflected by a smaller P2 amplitude) and better evaluation categorization and greater decision confidence (reflected by a larger late positive potential amplitude) than choices of following a common enterprise.
Conclusion: Top executives from common enterprises tend to evaluate industry leaders’ behaviors better than other common enterprises’ behaviors, and they tend to make a similar business decision to keep their enterprises consistent with these industry leaders.
Keywords: leading effect, business decision, ERPs, P2, LPP