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This chapter explores distributed leadership in volunteer multistakeholder groups tackling complex problems, focusing on community organizing practices to bridge the gap between health and health care in Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia faces increasing chronic disease, high rates of uninsured, unequal access to healthcare services, and rising costs. Regional leaders periodically tackled these problems together but faced challenges common to multistakeholder groups. In 2010, leaders from Columbia partnered with the authors in a learning enterprise to find new, more sustainable ways to address these challenges. Together we adapted a community organizing approach to develop distributed leadership skills necessary to overcome the challenges of volunteer multistakeholder groups and transform the health system in a local area. In the first year, teams provided health screenings to over 1,000 residents; over 3,000 residents exercised leadership to improve community health; over 5,000 residents pledged to improve their health. Clinic hours were extended; new health coaches focused on primary care and wellness programs. Providers and payers committed to reinvesting a share of savings in the community, which has a voice in their use. We show that developing distributed leadership via community organizing offers an approach to solving seemingly intractable community problems.

Scrum, an agile software development method, has gained major interest among software development organizations. The scrum master should be well equipped with specific leadership traits and exhibit leadership behavior to effectively manage his/her team. However, in a distributed team, which is spread across geographies, having scrum master to lead the project team at each location is not viable. Therefore, every member in the team is expected to have the capability to become one. This paper aims to explore the leadership mechanisms desired for effective functioning of distributed self-organized scrum team members, leading to project success and overall customer satisfaction.

A qualitative research methodology with an open-ended questionnaire is followed by semi-structured in-depth interviews. The unit of analysis is a scrum master.

The qualitative findings unearth the kind of leadership mechanisms required for scrum masters and the team members in a self-organizing scrum team, leading to their project success and customer satisfaction. It includes a set of leadership approaches and behaviors explicitly related to the role of scrum masters. Both inductive and deductive approaches are used to develop a leadership framework applicable for distributed self-organized scrum teams.

The proposed framework can be empirically tested with a large number of teams and more software organizations.

Organizations can use these identified specific leadership approaches and behaviors as parameters for identifying and selecting the potential scrum masters. They can be further trained on them to be an effective scrum master.

There is scant literature on the leadership mechanisms necessary for distributed scrum teams and their impact on project performance. This paper addresses this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to show the potential of self‐organized semantic storage services. The semantic web has provided a vision of how to build the applications of the future. A software component dedicated to the storage and retrieval of semantic information is an important but generic part of these applications. Apart from mere functionality, these storage components also have to provide good performance regarding the non‐functional requirements scalability, adaptability and robustness. Distributing the task of storing and querying semantic information onto multiple computers is a way of achieving this performance. However, the distribution of a task onto a set of computers connected using a communication network is not trivial. One solution is self‐organized technologies, where no central entity coordinates the system's operation.

Based on the available literature on large‐scale semantic storage systems, the paper analyzes the underlying distribution algorithm, with special focus on the properties of semantic information and corresponding queries. The paper compares the approaches and identify their shortcomings.

All analyzed approaches and their underlying technologies were unable to distribute large amounts of semantic information and queries in a generic way while still being able to react on changing network infrastructure. Nonetheless, as each concept represented a unique trade‐off between these goals, the paper points out how self‐organization is crucial to perform well at least in a subset of them.

The contribution of this paper is a literature review aimed at showing the potential of self‐organized semantic storage services. A case is made for self‐organization in a distributed storage system as the key to excellence in the relevant non‐functional requirements: scalability, adaptability and robustness.

In this chapter, different security-related examples are shown in SGL dealing with discovery, tracing and analysis of multiple mobile objects, technical or human, in distributed environments. Starting from how overall command and control of a hypothetical missile defence can be automatically managed in SGL by following and supervising the movement of multiple ballistic missiles on their full path from discovery to elimination. Other case is dealing with fully distributed tracing of cruise missiles with complex and tricky routes, which can be effectively chased, analysed and controlled by mobile spatial intelligence spreading through intelligent sensor network. Another one is providing high-level simulation and tracing of multiple objects in outer space to avoid collisions for new vehicles launched, with engagement of scattered space observation sensors integrated under SGT. The chapter also shows how to organize distributed simulation, assistance and control of flow of refugees through international borders.

This chapter aims at setting an agenda for HRIS research from an integrative perspective. This perspective assumes that organization and information systems cannot be separated. By first elaborating on this integrated perspective in terms of a web of causes and consequences of the implementation of IT in organizations, a list of new organizational phenomena is presented. Subsequently, research on HRISs to date is summarized, resulting in the observation that HRIS research needs to be broadened and deepened. In the third section we combine the list of emerging phenomena with how HRISs are being implemented and used in mainly large global companies. We raise a number of critical questions for HRIS research per each emerging phenomena and suggest a number of appropriate research topics.

The authors first examine the extent to which having an accurate understanding of and anticipate on one another’s work routines (defined as crossattuning) explains additional variance of team performance above and beyond other implicit coordination concepts such as team familiarity and transactive memory. Furthermore, the authors aim to propose that social sensitivity interacts with team size and team longevity in supporting the emergence of cross-attuning.

The authors first use a quasi-experimental design with 35 student-teams in Study 1 to test the discriminant validity of their construct. In Study 2, the authors use a field study with 66 work teams to test their hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that cross-attuning has a positive effect on team performance and that it explains additional variance above other implicit coordination-concepts. In Study 2, the authors confirm cross-attuning associates with supervisor-rated team performance and find that team social sensitivity is more positively related to cross-attuning in small teams with low longevity and in large teams with high longevity in comparison to large teams with low longevity.

The study of implicit coordination mechanisms in teams has primarily focused on having knowledge about other team members’ expertise and competencies and how teams cope with unexpected events. How teams deal with individual work routines – repetitive work-related behavior that is limited in considering alternative actions and the task environment – have received limited attention, despite the potential of these individual routines to thwart successful team task completion.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate open source software (OSS) for digital libraries and collection management and to propose different utilization scenarios based on the characteristics of the tools.

The tools are assessed on the basis of their technical features and options, the type of the content they manage, the support for common library operations such as cataloging and circulation, the searching support and the interoperability options. Then they are evaluated by users and finally a number of usage scenarios are analyzed based on the results of the evaluation.

The basic findings of the study is that open source digital library and collection management tools offer advanced operations and support various metadata and interoperability protocols with easy and user-friendly interfaces. Most of the tools are extensively used under various settings and establishments already. Language support for the interfaces should be extended with more languages and some tools with limited operations should be improved to be of practical use.

The findings of the paper could be used support the selection of specific open source tools for various types of establishments.

The study reviews the characteristics of a few OSS for digital libraries and collection management and reveals their specific strengths and weaknesses. It also presents a number of realistic scenarios and proposes the usage of specific tools based on time, technology and staff constraints.

A recommendation system for an extended process of information retrieval in distributed information systems is proposed. This system is both a model of dynamic cognitive categorization processes and powerful real application useful for knowledge management. It utilizes an extension of fuzzy sets named evidence sets as the mathematical mechanisms to implement the categorization processes. It is a development of some aspects of Pask’s conversation theory. It is also an instance of the notion of linguistic‐based selected self‐organization here described, and as such it instantiates an open‐ended semiosis between distributed information systems and the communities of users they interact with. This means that the knowledge stored in distributed information resources adapts to the evolving semantic expectations of their users as these select the information they desire in conversation with the information resources. This way, this recommendation system establishes a mechanism for user‐driven knowledge self‐organization.

Employees constitute an important source of innovation in organizations. Innovation management strategies often include attempts of stimulating employees' innovative contribution by instilling managerial trust and granting job autonomy. However, the authors suggest and investigate the role of employees' distributed leadership agency (DLA) in hospital employee-driven innovation.

The authors tested the hypotheses using survey data from 1,536 nonmanagerial employees at a hospital in Denmark. In order to deal with a methodological risk of survey designs, the authors assessed and adjusted the results for common method variance (CMV).

The authors validated a DLA measurement instrument and found an indirect relationship between job autonomy and trust in management on the one hand, via DLA, and with idea generation, promotion and implementation on the other hand. In addition, the results showed a small direct relationship between job autonomy and the three innovative behaviors. The results showed that CMV did bias relationships and reliabilities but only little.

The study introduces distributed leadership to the field of innovation management and confirms that this concept is highly relevant for employee innovation. In order to strengthen an organization's innovative potential, leaders may not only need to grant autonomy and instill trust in their employees, but also gain from employee innovation by distributing leadership tasks to employees.

This study is one of the first to introduce distributed leadership to the field of employee innovation management. By identifying distributed leadership as a key variable, the findings add to one’s extant understanding of how employee involvement encourages employee innovation.

This paper synthesizes the extant geographically distributed work literature, focusing on how geographic distribution affects coordination and communication, knowledge sharing, work design, and social identity. Geographically distributed audit arrangements, such as group audits and offshoring, are becoming increasingly prevalent in audit practice. However, little empirically is known about how working across cities, countries, and continents affects auditors, the audit process, or audit quality. To this end, the synthesis seeks to stimulate research investigating the implications of geographically distributed work arrangements in auditing, by surveying the extant literature within the management and social psychology disciplines and developing eighteen research questions for future audit research to consider. The synthesis reveals that geographically distributed audit work is likely to be very different from work performed in more traditional arrangements and therefore cannot be treated by audit researchers, practitioners, or standard setters as replications of domestic processes abroad. As a result, the synthesis focuses on building a greater understanding of the changes in day-to-day auditing, the consequences of such changes, and interventions that may moderate the challenges encountered in geographically distributed audit arrangements.