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There are many cases where top management either missed or almost missed detecting or interpreting a major change in the environment that might have led them to a major setback. We propose a model of sensing in hierarchical organizations that describes a sequence of sensing and detecting changes in the environment, followed by successive stages of perception, interpretation, and finally action. We model an organization as a complex signal detection system, where the flow of information among members of the organization is constrained by two elements: the structure of the organization, which is defined by who reports to whom, and the attentional and cognitive limitations of the individuals. We infer the probability of sensing over time for different levels of environmental shocks and different organizational structures. By focusing on the (un)reliability of sensing and the information flow in different organizational structures, we are able to provide preliminary analysis of the trade-offs among cognitive limitations, speed of detection, modes of information flow, and the resulting performance measure of delay, false-alarms, and true detections.

Strategy scholars have theorized that a firm's strategic leaders play an important role in firm dynamic capabilities (DCs). However, little research to date has studied how leaders shape the development of DCs. This inductive theory-building study sheds new light on the multilevel architecture of DCs by uncovering that the three core DCs – sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring – operate through distinct individual, group, and organizational processes. Further, the role of strategic leadership is critical as organizational processes create DCs only when they are purposefully designed by firms' strategic leaders to enable change and opportunity pursuit. Whether strategic leaders design processes for change and opportunity pursuit, in turn, reflects the extent to which they view change as positive and desirable. Our insights about the role of strategic leaders' positive attitude toward change as an important aspect of firm DCs uncover new interconnections between strategic leadership, organizational design, and the micro-foundations of DCs. Collectively our findings about the role of positive attitude toward change, the purposeful design of processes for change, and the varying manifestations of these processes at different levels of analysis reveal the coupling of strategic and organizational processes in enabling strategic dynamism and change.

This chapter offers a dynamic model of authentic leadership that links authentic leadership to situational leadership theory and shows how dynamics in the academic environment, one of the most difficult settings that leaders face, can be addressed. Kindsiko and Vadi detail the concept of situational authenticity, which reveals how authentic leadership takes place via forms of sensing – sense-giving, sense-making, sense-breaking and sense-keeping – in work-related situations. The authors highlight questions for future research: Is sensing the key to success? Are situational ethics valid if they adapt to evolving circumstances? Are situational ethics, in effect, just another way of expressing relativism? If so, can that be reconciled with authentic leadership theory?

Strategic management research has shown growing interest in understanding the dynamic resource reconfiguration processes through which firms grow, evolve, and sustain profitability. The goal of our study is to understand how dynamic resource reconfigurations enable firms to pursue growth opportunities. We use the methods of inductive theory building from case studies to elaborate current theoretical understanding about how firms draw on both internal and external resources in the pursuit of growth. We examine the patterns of resource reconfigurations through which Yahoo and Google powered their early growth strategies in their first 10 years of existence. We analyze a total of 192 new product launches in 43 markets by the two firms to capture how they reconfigured resources dynamically. Our analysis reveals that both firms developed highly dynamic strategies exhibiting both surprising similarities and differences. These similarities and differences provided the basis for our theoretical insights about the development of what we term “dynamic resource platforms,” comprising of (a) dynamic resource shifts; (b) targeted resource orchestration; and (c) complementary processes balancing dynamism and capability development. These ideas contribute novel theoretical insights to current strategic management research on dynamic capabilities and on resource reconfiguration and redeployment.

Experience sampling methods (ESM) have enabled researchers to capture intensive longitudinal data and how worker well-being changes over time. The conceptual advances in understanding the variability of well-being are discussed. These emerging forms in the literature include affective inertia, affective variability, affective reactivity, and density distributions. While most ESM research has relied on the active provision of data by participants (i.e., self-reports), technological advances have enabled different forms of passive sensing that are useful for assessing and tracking well-being and its contextual factors. These include accelerometer data, location data, and physiological data. The strengths and weaknesses of passively sensed data and future ways forward are discussed, where the use of both active and passive forms of ESM data in the assessment and promotion of worker well-being is expected.

The ability to gather, store, and make meaning from large amounts of sensor data is becoming a technological and financial reality for cities. Many of these initiatives are happening through deals brokered between vendors, developers, and cities. They are made manifest in the environment as infrastructure – invisible to citizens and communities. We assert that in order to have community-centered smart cities, we need to transform sensor data collection and usage from invisible infrastructure into visible and legible interface. In this chapter, we compare two different urban sensing initiatives and examine the methods used for feedback between sensors and people. We question how value gets produced and communicated to citizens in urban sensing projects and what kind of oversight and ethical considerations are necessary. Finally, we make a case for “seamful” interfaces between communities, sensors, and cities that reveal their inner workings for the purposes of civic pedagogy and dialogue.

It is no surprise that artists rely closely on their senses to create, develop, and perform their art. Musicians rely on what they hear, dancers rely on their proprioceptive sense and sense of movement, and painters rely on their vision. They rely on these senses to make decisions during creation and performance. At the same time their art can be seen as an exploration of what humans can experience through the senses. Developing the capacity to sense is an integral part of art education that is valued as highly as learning technical skills, such as the musician’s mastery of the instrument, the dancer’s mastery of the body, and the painter’s mastery of color and brush techniques.

In management education, things are different. Relevant techniques are taught, but no special attention is given to developing the ability to sense. There is an implied assumption that managers already know how to do this. However, on a two-day MBA course, it became clear that not only is this assumption wrong, but moreover the traditional pedagogical formats used seem to actively limit the participants ability to sense. The result is leaders who know techniques for enacting leadership, but due to their underdeveloped ability to sense, are unable to apply these techniques appropriately in practical settings.

In the current era, multiple factors have driven the IS information system to be able to cope with changes caused by internal and external factors that affect the organization’s strategy. A variety of environmental factors can influence organizational capacity and performance and tend to change organizational strategy, including political, socio-economic, financial, and technological changes. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, other changes are expected, such as those associated with cybercrime and artificial intelligence. In this chapter, the authors discuss the concept of agility, the dimension of agility, relevant literature studies, proposed agility models, and the authors propose their conceptual model of strategic agility for IS.

The dynamics of platforms, particularly the eventual need for renewal, are too often neglected. This chapter adopts a four-stage model – Birth, Expansion, Leadership, and Self-Renewal – to analyze the requirements at each stage of the platform lifecycle in terms of its dependence on the high-level dynamic capability categories of sensing, seizing, and transforming. The requirements evolve from a heavy emphasis on generative sensing and planning-stage seizing in the birth phase, through greater emphasis on “seizing” activities and minor transformations as the platform, ideally, grows and stabilizes. When platform renewal is called for, the emphasis returns to sensing future possibilities and generating new ideas for a platform and business model, developing them alongside the existing business, and eventually undertaking a major transformation to restart the platform lifecycle. An awareness of these lifecycle changes can help managers adopt a longer-term perspective on the competitive requirements of their platform-based business.