Over 500,000 simulations later, and my dissertation agent-based modeling simulations are complete! And it took over 5 hours to run the program… I probably could have found ways to make the code more efficient or use a faster processor… but I just wanted to get it done at this point!

So what is all of this? Without getting into unnecessary detail (hey, I have to keep some suspense for when I actually send my dissertation in for publication!), this simulation explores the effects of shared leadership — when two or more individuals are in charge of a team. The simulation explores how different forms of shared leadership (simultaneous, rotated, or distributed) might lead to a variety of different outcomes including relationship conflict, role overlap, transition failure, and of course team performance. Throw in a mix of many other variables — ranging from personality to team mental model to team size — and you can see how it adds up to over 500,000 simulations exploring all possible combinations of different values for each of the key variables!

Of course, there’s a lot more to the story. The key parameters in the model come from an extensive lab experiment with data collected last semester. I couldn’t have made it this far without the help from my advisors, friends, and collaborators, and generous funding support from the APA Dissertation Research Award and the SIOP Graen Research Grant. And, after shutting myself in a room for a few days to hammer away at a keyboard, I’m finally done with an initial draft of the full dissertation!

I’ll leave it here for now — Just a few more months away from finishing up the PhD! And after that? To be determined…

PS: Hope to see some of you at SIOP in Chicago this year! I’ll be presenting at the following:
– The road less traveled in academia: “Academic professional” positions for I-Os [Panel] (April 18, 2024 at 10:30am in G Hall)
– They matter too: Examining underserved populations in work-life policy research [Symposium] (April 19, 2024 at 4:00pm in B Room N)
– Speaking up for your research: How to communicate your findings to a broad audience [Workshop] (April 19, 2024 at 5:00pm in Zurich C)