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The purpose of this study is to review literature relevant to leader transition and the navigation of polarities, paradoxes, and dilemmas that exist in organizations. Furthermore, the researchers aim to critique the literature and provide suggestions for practitioners and researchers interested in leader transition through the lens of polarity, paradox, and dilemma.

The authors conducted an extensive review of the literature for this study. They searched the following databases: ABI/INFORM, Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, PsychInfo, and Dissertations Abstracts. To conduct their search, the researchers used the terms; leader, manager, and supervisor in conjunction with the terms transitions, adaptation, socialization, assimilation, polarity, paradox, dilemma, polarity thinking, polarity management, leadership, team, organization, conflict management, creativity, and combinations of the same.

There is very little research conducted on either topic independently and no research conducted on both collectively. The literature on leader transitions also states that transitions are times of uncertainty and stress. The findings suggest that some of this uncertainty and stress could result from the inability to recognize and manage polarity, paradox, and dilemma. Furthermore, the literature does not acknowledge this connection nor does it specify the polarities that exist for leaders in general or leaders in transition.

Based on personal experiences working with organizational leaders and training and organization development professionals, the authors believe that there is great potential to help train new leaders on polarity thinking. If training and development professionals see value in polarity thinking for transitioning leaders and can respond with timely training interventions, it could have a positive impact on new leader effectiveness and subsequent organization performance.

This study seeks to test the researchers' theory that a leadership development intervention called “leader assimilation” for newly appointed leaders and their subordinates will facilitate feedback‐seeking and a leader‐team dialogue which will accelerate leader/team learning, leader adaptation, and relationship building between the new leaders and their teams.

Robert Yin's positivistic multiple case study research method was used. Four primary modes of data collection were used in each of the three cases: observation during the five steps of the intervention, documentation review after the intervention, a pre‐ and post‐survey, and individual interviews with the leader and the leader's direct reports approximately seven days after the last phase of the intervention.

The researchers found support for their theory from a leader and team perspective. The three leaders in the study experienced accelerated learning, adaptation, and they built relationships with their teams. The leaders' teams experienced new learning and they built relationships with their new leaders.

The generalizability of findings is limited by the number of cases studied and by industry, leader, and team variation across cases.

The study provides supporting evidence for the importance and effectiveness of leader assimilations in helping new leaders learn, adapt quickly, and build relationships with their teams early in their transition.

The study is one of the first to report on the outcomes of an early leadership development intervention to help new leaders transition from one leadership role to another.

The first Wisconsin Ph.D.s who came to MSU with an institutional bent were agricultural economists and included Henry Larzalere (Ph.D. 1938) whose major professor was Asher Hobson. Larzalere recalls the influence of Commons who retired in 1933. Upon graduation, Larzalere worked a short time for Wisconsin Governor Phillip Fox LaFollette who won passage of the nation’s first unemployment compensation act. Commons had earlier helped LaFollette’s father, Robert, to a number of institutional innovations.⁴ Larzalere continued the Commons’ tradition of contributing to the development of new institutions rather than being content to provide an efficiency apologia for existing private governance structures. He helped Michigan farmers form cooperatives. He taught land economics prior to Barlowe’s arrival in 1948, but primarily taught agricultural marketing. One of his Master’s degree students was Glenn Johnson (see below). Larzalere retired in 1977.

While social network support has been found to be critical for persons with schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders, these persons are at risk for having smaller, less functional networks than non-clinical populations. Multi-purpose or multiplex network ties are especially beneficial because they are known to be associated with positive outcomes. This study examined which types of factors were related to network multiplexity over a ten-year period in a sample of 234 persons with severe mental illness, three-fourths of whom had schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. We asked whether clinical characteristics, the nature of the sheltered-care social environments in which subjects were living at baseline, and the number of residential care episodes predicted network multiplexity at follow-up. Using three different conceptualizations of network multiplexity as outcomes, we found that, in general, a prior history of long-term institutionalization, social environments rated higher on practical orientation, and fewer residential care episodes over the study period predicted networks deficient in tie multiplexity. Contrary to expectations, psychopathology was related to only one of the multiplexity outcomes.

Process redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an ontological perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view, and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. This paper aims to provide structured guidance during the to-be process creation.

Using design space exploration as a theoretical lens, the authors develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic exploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. The authors utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing the conceptual model. First, the authors derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, the authors evaluated their artifact through three real-world applications.

The authors identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space).

Practitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question and rethink business processes in various respects.

The BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process design dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and supports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs.