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Nature-inspired leadership - Seeking human-technology-earth harmony
Abstract and Figures
"Go to the ant, ... consider its ways and be wise!" (Proverbs 6:6). We have progressed using biomimicry to inform our engineering designs and processes. Yet we have learnt very little in finding our inspiration from nature for leading in our complex world. In nature, those species that learn by observing, listening, making sense, internalising, thinking, and resting at the right time, survive and thrive in their environments - on plains, in mountains, in the bush, rivers, oceans, deserts, and the sky. Fight or flight takes place in both nature and business. Challenges are shared in coexistence, patience, perseverance, resilience, and adaptation. Leadership challenges that are emerging in the new world of human and machine coexistence will also be enriched by lessons from nature that inspire new behaviour, that are not conceived in business schools or legacy cultures, but that are flexible, effective, and work efficiently - as natural solutions have done for millennia. We discuss the makings of a conceptual thought model of leadership inspired by nature. It is a starting point to create an awareness of how nature-inspired leadership may be applied. Yet, when modelling anything on nature, one has to realise that all models are simplifications, which means that nature itself, as a complex system, is not fully understood. Our aim should not be to copy nature, but to extract principles from it.
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... GESE is a significant factor in determining entrepreneurial intention within the realm of literature (Arshad et al., 2016). The connection between green entrepreneurial self-efficacy (GESE) and entrepreneurial intention (EI) is essential for comprehending how individuals' beliefs about their capabilities in green entrepreneurship impact their intention to participate in environmentally sustainable entrepreneurial endeavors (Botha, 2020). Furthermore, individuals who have a strong sense of green entrepreneurial self-efficacy are more inclined toward green entrepreneurship. ...
The objective of this research is to investigate the correlation between green entrepreneurial self-efficacy (GESE) and its outcomes, which include innovative work behavior (IWB) and entrepreneurial intention (EI). Specifically, the study will focus on the meditating effect of attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE) using the framework of theory of planned behavior (TPB). Data was collected from 307 employees working in SMEs related to the textile industry in Pakistan. M+ is used to test the research model. The research findings indicated that individuals' belief in their ability to succeed as green entrepreneurs had a beneficial effect on their inclination to engage in creative work practices and pursue entrepreneurial endeavors. Moreover, the attitude towards entrepreneurship served as a mediator in the connection between green entrepreneurial self-efficacy and its resulting effects, namely creative work behavior and entrepreneurial intention. Green entrepreneurial self-efficacy is the belief in one's ability to successfully engage in environmentally sustainable entrepreneurial activities. This study suggests that green entrepreneurial self-efficacy can be an effective tool for managers to induce entrepreneurial intention and innovative work behavior. This research added to green self-efficacy, innovation, and entrepreneurial literature and provided understandings into how managers could enhance the green entrepreneurial self-efficacy of employees to boost innovative work behavior and entrepreneurial intention.
... Through the adaptive mindset and agile organization of Harmony Land, Harmony Land is capable of rising up (Botha, 2020). Moreover, the units sold 2020 are still higher than before Covid 19. ...
PT Harmony Land Group is property developer company for landed houses residential that founded by Fithor Muhammad and Ramadani in 2016. As a company that builds from the scratch, Harmony Land grew so fast, only 5 years, in 2021 Harmony Land already has 25 residential projects with 1004 units in five cities, Depok, Jakarta, Bogor, Sukabumi and Medan. In the fourth year of growth, an unexpected big disaster is coming, Pandemic Covid 19. The property business is greatly affected, people are afraid to leave the house, even less to buy a house. After struggling to survive for two years in a pandemic situation without firing any employees, Harmony Land started looking for the next opportunity to bring Harmony Land to the next level. One big issue that Harmony Land wants to solve is increasing the act per ask at A5 costumer journey. In 2021, the number of ask customers which have already contacted Harmony Land are 17.789, while the number of unit transactions are 105 houses. Only 0,59% act per ask and lost 17.684 potential customers. So, Harmony Land wants to increase the sales by developing a marketing strategy to increase conversion rate act per ask. This research uses the AFI framework. Analysis internal and external that will continue to Formulation strategy and be closed by the Implementation plan of that strategy. Through external analysis, there are many opportunities after pandemic covid where other competitors still wait and see, while customers start to bounce again. From the customer analysis, customers buy houses in Harmony Land because of price, location, design concept and selling service. So, for increasing act per ask, the proposed marketing strategy is to develop thematic residential in many locations with caregiver service to help more customers with many product option each target market area.
... Through the adaptive mindset and agile organization of Harmony Land, Harmony Land is capable of rising up (Botha, 2020). Moreover, the units sold 2020 are still higher than before Covid 19. ...
PT Harmony Land Group is property developer company for landed houses residential that founded by Fithor Muhammad and Ramadani in 2016. As a company that builds from the scratch, Harmony Land grew so fast, only 5 years, in 2021 Harmony Land already has 25 residential projects with 1004 units in five cities, Depok, Jakarta, Bogor, Sukabumi and Medan. In the fourth year of growth, an unexpected big disaster is coming, Pandemic Covid 19. The property business is greatly affected, people are afraid to leave the house, even less to buy a house. After struggling to survive for two years in a pandemic situation without firing any employees, Harmony Land started looking for the next opportunity to bring Harmony Land to the next level. One big issue that Harmony Land wants to solve is increasing the act per ask at A5 costumer journey. In 2021, the number of ask customers which have already contacted Harmony Land are 17.789, while the number of unit transactions are 105 houses. Only 0,59% act per ask and lost 17.684 potential customers. So, Harmony Land wants to increase the sales by developing a marketing strategy to increase conversion rate act per ask. This research uses the AFI framework. Analysis internal and external that will continue to Formulation strategy and be closed by the Implementation plan of that strategy. Through external analysis, there are many opportunities after pandemic covid where other competitors still wait and see, while customers start to bounce again. From the customer analysis, customers buy houses in Harmony Land because of price, location, design concept and selling service. So, for increasing act per ask, the proposed marketing strategy is to develop thematic residential in many locations with caregiver service to help more customers with many product option each target market area.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is upon us, emerging at a rapid pace and providing digitalisation and technology systems that can improve the agility and efficiency of the South African petroleum industry. Owing to the dynamism of and unfamiliarity with 4IR ways of working, leaders are grappling with how changes brought upon by 4IR affect their role in the organisation. In this study, the current leadership styles employed in the South African petroleum industry were investigated, and the type of leadership style required to lead a 4IR organisation effectively was determined, in order to provide recommendations of changes that leadership needs to undergo to best support the 4IR. A conceptual model was developed in which the study was sub-divided into a pre-4IR phase, transitioning to the 4IR phase, and then to fully functioning 4IR organisations. A structured questionnaire was sent to leaders in the South African petroleum industry, in which they were asked their views on leadership theories, factors influencing leadership, and leadership models pertinent to each of the three phases of 4IR. The findings of the study show that, for leaders to thrive in 4IR, they must move away from authoritarian, bureaucratic, and task-orientated leadership styles and embrace transformational, people-orientated, and charismatic leadership styles. Keywords Leadership 4.0; leadership theory; leadership styles; petroleum industry; 4IR; 4IR transitional phases
Since the end of the last century, different approaches for corporate management have been appearing that try to incorporate the social advances that are being produced and disseminated thanks to the greater capacity of communication available through social networks and other traditional avenues. Among the best known are Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, the Circular Economy, and Collaborative Economics. All of them add value to organisations, and all of them have a common characteristic: they are anthropocentric approaches. Our proposal goes a step further: we need a worldview that is capable of placing organisations in a position of continuous learning looking at nature, because it is the best way to integrate into it as a more ecosystem and thus achieve its flowering respecting the once to all the other subsystems that make up the planet: Organizational Biomimicry. This work compares the anthropocentric vision with the worldview at the same time that it offers a guide of the essential steps so that Organizational Biomimicry is the new model of corporate management.
Inspired by the behavior of elephants in nature, elephant herd optimization (EHO) was proposed recently for global optimization. Like most other metaheuristic algorithms, EHO does not use the previous individuals in the later updating process. If the useful information in the previous individuals were fully exploited and used in the later optimization process, the quality of solutions may be improved significantly. In this paper, we propose several new updating strategies for EHO, in which one, two, or three individuals are selected from the previous iterations, and their useful information is incorporated into the updating process. Accordingly, the final individual at this iteration is generated according to the elephant generated by the basic EHO, and the selected previous elephants through a weighted sum. The weights are determined by a random number and the fitness of the elephant individuals at the previous iteration. We incorporated each of the six individual updating strategies individually into the basic EHO, creating six improved variants of EHO. We benchmarked these proposed methods using sixteen test functions. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed improved methods significantly outperformed the basic EHO.
Biologically inspired design (BID) is an emerging field of research with increasing achievements in engineering for design and problem solving. Its economic, societal, and ecological impact is considered to be significant. However, the number of existing products and success stories is still limited when compared to the knowledge that is available from biology and BID research. This article describes success factors for BID solutions, from the design process to the commercialization process, based on case studies and market analyses of biologically inspired products. Furthermore, the paper presents aspects of an effective knowledge transfer from science to industrial application, based on interviews with industrial partners. The accessibility of the methodological approach has led to promising advances in BID in practice. The findings can be used to increase the number of success stories by providing key steps toward the implementation and commercialization of BID products, and to point out necessary fields of cooperative research.
Purpose: Biomimicry, as a new way to create technology, provides new perspectives and innovations for companies’ strategies. Biomimicry has been used in different fields such as architecture, product design, engineering and production processes since the 1990s. Although its long history, biomimicry and managerial concepts were handled together in just a few studies. The primary purpose of this paper is to handle biomimicry and managerial concepts together and to bring a managerial perspective to biomimicry.
Design/methodology/approach: This study used a qualitative approach by exploring existing literature and relevant cases for biomimicry and selected managerial concepts.
Findings: The study has put forward twelve propositions in order to correlate biomimicry and managerial concepts. We tried to correlate leadership and biomimicry in terms of harmonized individuals and teams and flexibility and courage ability of leaders. With regard to innovation, biomimicry is a powerful driver to accomplish and sustain innovation processes. On the other hand, biomimicry is a relevant concept of being an open system of companies and a significant tool of strategy formulation. Finally organization structure is linked with biomimicry in terms of being organic, lean and self-replicating.
Research limitations/implications: It has also significance to future research in sustainability issues.
Practical implications: The study could be a starting point or a guideline for companies to survive by mimicking nature.
Originality/value: This study is a step forward in understanding the link between biomimicry and managerial concepts.
Ke ywords : Sustainab ilit y, biomimic r y, business strategy, strategy formulat io n, leadership , innovation, organization structure.
Flight is an economical mode of locomotion, because it is both fast and relatively cheap per unit of distance, enabling birds to migrate long distances and obtain food over large areas. The power required to fly follows a U-shaped function in relation to airspeed, from which context dependent ‘optimal’ flight speeds can be derived. Crosswinds will displace birds away from their intended track unless they make compensatory adjustments of heading and airspeed. We report on flight track measurements in five geometrically similar tern species ranging one magnitude in body mass, from both migration and the breeding season at the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. When leaving the southern point of Öland, migrating Arctic and common terns made a 60° shift in track direction, probably guided by a distant landmark. Terns adjusted both airspeed and heading in relation to tail and side wind, where coastlines facilitated compensation. Airspeed also depended on ecological context (searching versus not searching for food), and it increased with flock size. Species-specific maximum range speed agreed with predicted speeds from a new aerodynamic theory. Our study shows that the selection of airspeed is a behavioural trait that depended on a complex blend of internal and external factors.
This article is part of the themed issue ‘Moving in a moving medium: new perspectives on flight’.
From the popularity of authoritarian political leaders to the under-representation of women in boardrooms, leadership is an important theme in current human social affairs. Leadership is also a prominent research topic in the biological, social, and cognitive sciences. However, these active literatures have evolved somewhat independently and there is a need for synthesis. A comparative-evolutionary approach can integrate seemingly divergent perspectives by making a distinction between two leadership styles, prestige and dominance, that have contrasting expressions, functions, histories, and neural and developmental pathways. The distinction may help to resolve various scientific puzzles, such as: (i) opposing views on the different functions and expressions of leadership; (ii) the appeal of dominance-style leaders; and (iii) sex biases in leadership emergence in modern society.
Thanks to fewer numbers of control parameters and easier implementation, the Elephant Herding Optimization (EHO) has been gaining research interest during the past decade. In our paper, to understand the impact of the control parameters, a parametric study of the EHO is carried out using a standard test bench, engineering problems, and real-world problems. On top of that, the main aim of this paper is to propose different approaches to enhance the performance of the original EHO, i.e., cultural-based, alpha-tuning, and biased initialization EHO. Acomparative study has been made between these EHO variants and the state-of-the-art swarm optimization methods. Case studies ranging from the recent test bench problems of CEC 2016 to the popular engineering problems of gear train, welded beam, three-bar truss design problem, continuous stirred tank reactor, and fed-batch fermentor are used to validate and test the performances of the proposed EHOs against the existing techniques. Numerical results show that the performances of the three new EHOs are better than or competitive with the population-based optimization algorithms.
This study introduces Flock Leadership, a framework for understanding and influencing emergent collective behavior in the context of human organizing. Collective capacities emerge when interactions between individuals enact divergent and convergent ways of perceiving and responding to reality. An agent-based flocking model is employed to represent these interactive dynamics and emergent processes. This study explicates the model's constructs, translating its algorithms into behavioral norms at the individual level and its outcomes into collective behaviors at the group level. Phenomena-based simulation modeling links two collective states—technical capacity and adaptive capacity—to the specific underlying norm configurations from which they emerge. Flock Leadership provides a unique theoretical framing of emergent collective behavior in organizational settings, a new methodology for analyzing relationships between those emergent behavioral patterns and the interaction norms underlying them, and a useful means for identifying leadership opportunities.