Free to move or trapped in your group: Mathematical modeling of information overload and coordination in crowded populations

We present modeling strategies that describe the motion and interaction of groups of pedestrians in obscured spaces. We start off with an approach based on balance equations in terms of measures and then we exploit the descriptive power of a probabilistic cellular automaton model. Based on a variation of the simple symmetric random walk on the square lattice, we test the interplay between population size and an interpersonal attraction parameter for the evacuation of confined and darkened spaces. We argue that information overload and coordination costs associated with information processing in small groups are two key processes that influence the evacuation rate. Our results show that substantial computational resources are necessary to compensate for incomplete information -- the more individuals in (information processing) groups the higher the exit rate for low population size. For simple social systems, it is likely that the individual representations are not redundant and large group sizes ensure that this non--redundant information is actually available to a substantial number of individuals. For complex social systems information redundancy makes information evaluation and transfer inefficient and, as such, group size becomes a drawback rather than a benefit. The effect of group sizes on outgoing fluxes, evacuation times and wall effects are carefully studied with a Monte Carlo framework accounting also for the presence of an internal obstacle

I will follow (when I need to) Followers' responses to their team leader's desire for control in conditions of high and low intergroup competition

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the personality trait of desire for control over others (DFCO) matters to team leadership and performance, and how commitment to the leader mediates this relationship. Furthermore, the authors study whether intergroup competition moderates this indirect relationship. Design/methodology/approach - The authors test hypotheses for mediation and moderation using a sample of 78 groups and their leaders. Commitment to the leader and intergroup competition were measured at the team member level, while DFCO and team performance was rated by the team leader. Bootstrapping was used to assess the significance of the ( conditional) indirect effects. Findings - The results show that leader's DFCO does not relate to team performance through commitment to the leader. Leader's DFCO only relates negatively to team performance through commitment to the leader when the team operates in a context with little or moderate intergroup competition. In a highly competitive environment, however, leader's DFCO does little damage to team performance. Originality/value - This research is the first study to focus on DFCO as a personality trait of a group leader. In doing so, it adds to the continuing debate about leader personality and context, as well as the ongoing study on how subordinates respond to different levels of control over decisions in groups

Multiple Team Membership (MTM) and the future of work:How MTM experiences affect knowledge workers

Knowledge workers are asked to work concurrently on several teams, but very few studies have tried to operationalize Multiple Team Memberships (MTM) using a variety of metrics, above and beyond the number of teams. However, broader conceptualizations of MTM (for instance, different forms of context variety) could help appreciate some unique benefits and challenges for multi-teamers. Relatedly, we still need to more broadly understand how people interpret and give meaning to their different experiences in MTM contexts. This symposium addresses these pressing issues by presenting four papers looking at the interplay between various conceptualizations of MTM (e.g., number of teams, variety of perceived team inclusion, variety of perceived team prestige) and several underexplored individual outcomes such as creativity, emotions, thriving at work, and the likelihood to enter multiple boards. Importantly, the papers use multiple methods and multiple sources of data such as qualitative data based on interviews, quantitative data based on surveys, and longitudinal panel data. They also focus on the experiences of people when engaged in scenarios of MTM within the boundaries of single firms as well as when they work across multiple firms