Search results

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.

Neal M. Ashkanasy is a Professor of Management at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests lie in organizational and ethical behavior, leadership, culture, and emotions. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and the book series Research on Emotion in Organizations.

This volume of Advances in Applied Business Strategy (AABS) presents a collection of studies exploring different ways in which an organization's competences can be enhanced to create competitive advantage that is enduring or intendedly transitional.

This chapter investigates the ‘green skills gap’ as economies move towards net zero emissions. Building on the work of Moon, Walmsley, Apostolopoulos, and Zollo (2020), the author identifies critical skills needed in the green economy to ensure that current skills gaps identified by the International Labour Organization (2018) are bridged. However, the ILO (2018) report predominantly refers to macro level changes in society as economies transition to carbon neutrality (job destruction, job creation and job reallocation). There is little evidence of detailed action plans nor their implementation and the ILO report concludes that skills development programmes are yet to be mainstreamed in policy discussions. This chapter thus highlights the green skills needed, identifies some of the barriers preventing economies from mainstreaming such skills development programmes into policy and provides recommendations for governments, enterprises and universities in the short to medium term. The chapter includes a review of global progress in developing skills for a greener future (ILO, 2019) but focusses on implications for European policy in particular.