A levels-based leadership simulation: insights regarding group decision optimization

Previous literature has compared the effectiveness of different styles of leadership, yet most of this research has not compared different levels of analyses regarding leader styles or behaviors. This shortcoming often limits our understanding of how leadership acts on a phenomenon of interest to a single level of analysis. This article develops a computational model and describes a levels-based comparison of four types of leadership that represent three different levels: individual, dyad, and group. When examined across a dynamic group decision-making optimization scenario, group-based leadership is found to produce decisions that are closer to optimal than dyadic-based and individual-based leadership. An alternative computational model varying individual cognitive and experience-based components among group members also indicates that group-based leadership produces more optimal decisions. First published in Leadership Quarterly (Dionne, S. D., & Dionne, P. J. (2008). Levels-based leadership and hierarchical group decision optimization: A simulation. Leadership Quarterly, 19, 212–234), this version offers an updated introduction discussing simulation as a theoretical development tool and supplies additional evidence regarding the growth of simulation methods in leadership research.