Simulating the emergence of the organizing structures of work

This article is a first step toward a visualization and classification system for studying dynamic organizing structures of work. As a first step toward this research objective, this study brings together two active projects. One called "relatonics" studies work group formation and is primarily empirical and inductive. The other called "Human Interaction Dynamics (HID)" imports concepts, relationships and modeling from complexity science and is therefore primarily theoretical and deductive. The vision is to use social media, data gathering, and process simulation technologies to rigorously describe, systematically visualize, and validly model the complex dynamics of work processes of different types. This work will serve as a means to classify, study and improve the performance of work systems. We describe our progress to data and suggest further research

Emotional Contagion and Proto-Organizing in Human Interaction Dynamics

This paper combines the complexity notions of phase transitions and tipping points with recent advances in cognitive neuroscience to propose a general theory of human proto-organizing. It takes as a premise that a necessary prerequisite for organizing, or proto-organizing, occurs through emotional contagion in subpopulations of human interaction dynamics in complex ecosystems. Emotional contagion is posited to engender emotional understanding and identification with others, a social process that acts as a mechanism that enables (or precludes) cooperative responses to opportunities and risks. Propositions are offered and further research is suggested

Towards operationalizing complexity leadership: How generative, administrative and community-building leadership practices enact organizational outcomes

Over five years ago, The Leadership Quarterly published a special issue on complexity to advance a new way of thinking about leadership. In shifting attention away from the individual to the organizing process itself, complexity added an important focus on process and context to leadership and management research. Yet, the complexity approach creates challenges for researchers who must combine or replace individual level constructs—like those built through surveys or factor analysis—with richer theories that investigate networked meso dynamics, multilevel phenomena, emergent processes, and organizational outcomes. To address this challenge, the present analysis draws on theoretical and empirical work over the last several years to identify five specific areas where complexity inspired research has led to new insights about the mechanisms that enable the organization to perform and adapt. It suggests propositions that describe how leadership and management, defined holistically, might activate complexity mechanisms to perform five essential organizing functions

22-25). Leadership in complex systems: A meta-level information processing capabilities that bias exploration and exploitation. Paper presented at the NAACSOS

Abstract Organizations as complex systems face the challenge of continuing operations as well as surviving in a constantly changing environment. This challenge is often framed in the context of strategic leadership -leaders are seen as managing the tension between exploration and exploitation Propositions regarding the importance of leadership defined in this way are presented, and a model of organizations as complex adaptive systems is described. Using a system dynamics implementation, the model is used in a series of virtual experiments to test the propositions. In general, the notion of adaptive agency at the organizational level due to the presence of leadership capability is supported

Teaching Complexity and Its Practical Implications in Leadership Development Programs

This article describes an advanced leadership seminar for senior managers and executives. The three module seminar describes how thoughtful leaders can learn to succeed even under conditions of extreme complexity. The first module describes complexity in the scientific sense and highlights the need to allow events to develop so that emergent patterns can be identified. The second module shows how this new complexity perspective can be used to frame and communicate social and economic imperatives in ways that move the organization forward. The third module puts this knowledge to work and enables participants to be better stewards of collective leadership within their organizations. Some reflections on the success of the program and potential improvements are offered in the concluding section

Simulating the emergence of the organizing structures of work

This article is a first step toward a visualization and classification system for studying dynamic organizing structures of work. As a first step toward this research objective, this study brings together two active projects. One called "relatonics" studies work group formation and is primarily empirical and inductive. The other called "Human Interaction Dynamics (HID)" imports concepts, relationships and modeling from complexity science and is therefore primarily theoretical and deductive. The vision is to use social media, data gathering, and process simulation technologies to rigorously describe, systematically visualize, and validly model the complex dynamics of work processes of different types. This work will serve as a means to classify, study and improve the performance of work systems. We describe our progress to data and suggest further research