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The clear specification of leadership efforts spanning levels of analysis has lagged behind leadership research in general. Simulation modeling, such as agent-based modeling, provides research platforms for exploring these interesting issues. This chapter uses agent-based models, along with Dionne and Dionne's (2009) choices of leadership styles, to examine the impact of those styles on the generation of an emergent group resource, context-for-learning (CFL), instead of the specific task outcome (group decision making) described by Dionne and Dionne. Consistent effectiveness is found across leadership styles for workgroups with high and slightly lower initial individual levels of a CFL. A second agent-based model includes the ability of agents to forget previous learned skills and reveals a reduced effectiveness of all leadership styles. However, the effectiveness of the leadership styles differs between the two outcomes (the specific group task model and the emergent group resource model). Reasons for these differences are explored, and implications from the comparisons of the two models are delineated.

Entrepreneurs are action takers. This paper presents an agent-based model illustrating entrepreneurial action choices between rhetoric and action during the very early stages (pre-formal alliance) of an entrepreneur's journey. Environmental factors, inertia, entrepreneurial conation preferences, the context-for-learning, and identified opportunities are all factors that will influence action choices both separately and in configurations. In virtual experiments, we examine the length of time it takes entrepreneurs to reach the stage for opportunity commitment, based on their skills and conation profiles. From the computer simulation, we determined that certain entrepreneurial profiles do make a difference in the overall effectiveness and efficiency of reaching an opportunity commitment. In general, an entrepreneur is more effective in reaching opportunity commitment if the entrepreneur has either a high skills profile, or a high conation profile, while the combination of high-level skills and conation profiles do not provide any real advantage. A high skills profile proves to create the greatest advantage of reaching opportunity commitment in the shortest length of time.

The competence perspective requires deploying various organizational resources, skills, and capabilities in creating organizational-level skills. Of particular interest in organizational behavior is the effect of leaders on developing skills. This paper examines an emergent organizational capability, the Context-for-Learning, using virtual experiments and an agent-based model. In examining the developmental paths of this skill, we found that both the organization's composition and the leader's leadership style had very different effects on the developmental paths. The set of followers in an organization and the leader's leadership style are both critical in determining the developmental paths of the organizational skill, the Context-for-Learning. However, the leadership style of a highly skilled leader with a high set of followers did not matter.

This paper applies a complexity-theory-based simulation to the diverse field of organizational behavior. The specific form or level of competency emerges from the involved people and resources and the interactions among them. This paper focuses on an organizational competency of being capable to change which arises from the set of individuals involved (a leader and direct reports) and their interactions. This model is a simplified version of reality that may provide insight into the complex processes of organizations. The Context-for-Learning (CFL) competency is based on the work of Black and Boal 1997. Leader behavior is based on Quinn's competing values framework (1984, 1988). In addition to complexity theory, the simulation uses social constructivism to explain the coevolution of the individual, leader, and organizational capabilities. Using the same set of individual responses for a set of subordinates and varying leader behavior, we examine the resulting level of organizational CFL. This simulation demonstrates that leader behavior impacted the level of the emerging CFL in ways that were unique to individual leaders. Even two “good” leaders had surprisingly different impacts.

In this paper, we look at how understanding the basic rules governing the iterative mathematical generation of fractals might be translated into understanding a mathematics of social systems. In particular, we will apply the fractal metaphor to illustrate the creation of a coherent strategic orientation in a nonprofit organization. We believe that the use of “stories” in prominent organizational publications is an integral part of the generation of a coherent strategic orientation.

Strategic resources are critical for the survival of organizations. One such critical strategic resource is the quality of leadership found within an organization. The competitive advantage provided by any intangible resource like leadership is predicated upon two bases – an adequate level of skill and the skill's relative rarity in the market. Just how rare are patterns of leadership skills within an organization, a multi-foci organization or even an industry? Leadership skills are assessed for these three contexts. We find great similarity of patterns within each type of entity and across all three contexts. This argues that some leadership patterns may indeed be effective in a variety of contexts but may not be the only strategic resource contributing to the competitive advantage of an organization since on their own they are not rare.

This paper explores the issue of the types of skills required of leaders and followers in new organizational forms. It reviews the concept of virtual teams in organizations. The paper addresses the role of training in facilitating boundary spanning in organisations using case examples.

While there is no set definition of what constitutes “complexity,” some general classes of definitions have emerged across the writings of several fields of science. The basis for the classifications and a general definition used in this issue are presented. The papers of this issue are classified into the general categories and introduced to the reader.

In this chapter, I focus on stigmatization exercised and experienced by local residents, comparing two socially-diverse areas in very different contexts: the Cabrini Green-Near North area in Chicago and the La Loma-La Florida area in Santiago de Chile.

Data for this study were drawn from 1 year of qualitative research, using interviews with residents and institutional actors, field notes from observation sessions of several inter-group spaces, and “spatial inventories” in which I located the traces of the symbolic presence of each group.

Despite contextual differences of type of social differentiation, type of social mix, type of housing tenure for the poor, and public visibility, I argue that there are important common problems: first, symbolic differences are stressed by identity changes; second, distrust against “the other” is spatially crystallized in any type and scale of social housing; third, stigmatization changes in form and scale; and fourth, there are persisting prejudiced depictions and patterns of avoidance.

Socially-mixed neighborhoods, as areas where at least two different social groups live in proximity, offer an interesting context for observing territorial stigmatization. They are strange creatures of urban development, due to the powerful symbolism of desegregation in contexts of growing inequalities.

The chapter contributes to a cross-national perspective with a comparison of global-north and global-south cities. And it also springs from a study of socially-mixed areas, in which the debate on concentrated/deconcentrated poverty is central, and in which the problem of “clearing places” appears in both material (e.g., displacement) and symbolic (e.g., stigmatization) terms.

The information age has highlighted the complex nature of our organizing systems. Complex systems move between ordered and disordered states. Ordered states condense near attractor points which include bifurcation points where order is redefined for the system. Such points have occurred repeatedly in our economy over the past decade, causing an unpredictable environment. As our economy moves from a stable state, a different set of organizing rules is needed. When this new set of organizing rules are overlaid with the conditions and processes facilitated by the use of advanced communication and computing technology, we find that virtual or network organizations are an emerging logical form for organizing.