Plenary Lecture

Exploring The Effects Of Task Difficulty and Team Diversity on Team Creativity: A Multi-Agent Simulation Approach

Professor Kun Chang Lee
SKK Business School and Department of Interaction Science
Sungkyunkwan University
Seoul 110-745, South Korea
E-mail: kunchanglee@gmail.com

Abstract: There is no single organizational structure that is highly effective for all organizations. In order to be effective, the organization needs to tailor its activities to the environment in which is it located. Based on contingency perspectives, this study is focused on investigating effective ways to design team diversity and maximize team creativity according to the level of task difficulty. Considering the organizational team member as an agent, the study employed a multi-agent simulation method to understand the progress of creative manifestation, by observing the exploration and exploitation activity of team members with the passage of time. The results suggest that managers differentiate strategies of team diversity according to task difficulty. In the case of a difficult task, managers need to increase team diversity so that their teams can maximize team creativity through rigorous exploration and exploitation. It is desirable to maintain an average level of team diversity when performing an easy task.

Brief biography of the speaker: Dr. Kun Chang Lee is a full professor of MIS at SKK Business School at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. He also holds a WCU (World Class University) professor position at Department of Interaction Science at the same university. He received his PhD degree in MIS from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). He is on the editorial board at several international journals such as Online Information Review (SSCI), Scientia (SCIE), Journal of Universal Computer Science (SCIE), and Information (SCIE). He conducted as a guest editor at Decision Support Systems. Now he is organizing special issues in Online Information Review (SSCI), Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (SSCI), and Computers in Human Behavior (SSCI), all of which are going to publish in 2012-2013. He has presented his papers regularly in a number of prestigious international conferences like HICSS (Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences), AMCIS (Americas Conference on Information Systems), and ICIS (International Conference on Information Systems). Professor Lee is an internationally recognized authority on decision support, ubiquitous computing, intelligent systems, and creativity science. His publication records include over 150 articles in scholarly and professional journals. Refer to http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/957772/kun-chang-lee for more details on Professor Lee's academic records. He has contributed to a number of international conferences as a program committee member; it includes CONTEXT (International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context), ACIIDS (Asia Conference on Intelligent Information and Database), WORLDCOMP (World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing), UCMA (International Conference Ubiquitous Computing and Multimedia Applications), UBICOMM (International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies), PACIS (Pacific Conference on Information Systems), IASTED International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications, International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control, International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication, IASTED International Conference on Computational Intelligence, International Workshop on Improved Mobile User Experience (IMUx), and IADIS International Conference on Information Systems, among others. Since 2006-2009, he initiated collaborative researches on intelligent decision makings with Waseda University, Japan. He is frequently invited by many companies to help direct the development of intelligent decision support systems and to deliver lectures on decision making to their executives. Last year, he was invited by Harvard Kennedy School as Rajawali visiting fellow to conduct researches on creativity and organize seminars on the related issues. He is the recipient of numerous research funds from Korean Government to continue his studies on creativity, and ubiquitous decision support systems. Dr. Lee is capable of integrating intelligent techniques and behavioral research framework to create a new paradigm of researches on complexity and creativity. In line with this motif, he has recently adopted using multi-agent simulations and brain informatics, obtaining a number of pioneering results that seem useful and meaningful in terms of both practical and academic sense. As for introducing his pioneering works to practitioners working at banking industry, he gave lectures to staffs and faculties at The World Bank, Washington D.C., US.