Most microbial communities change with time in response to changes and/or perturbations in environmental conditions. Temporal variations in interspecies metabolic interactions within these communities can significantly affect their structure and function. Here, we introduce d-OptCom, an extension of the OptCom procedure, for the dynamic metabolic modeling of microbial communities. It enables capturing the temporal dynamics of biomass concentration of the community members and extracellular concentration of the shared metabolites, while integrating species- and community-level fitness functions. The applicability of d-OptCom was demonstrated by modeling the dynamic co-growth of auxotrophic mutant pairs of E. coli and by computationally assessing the dynamics and composition of a uranium-reducing community comprised of Geobacter sulfurreducens, Rhodoferax ferrireducens, and Shewanella oneidensis. d-OptCom was also employed to examine the impact of lactate vs acetate addition on the relative abundance of uranium-reducing species. These studies highlight the importance of simultaneously accounting for both species- and community-level fitness functions when modeling microbial communities, and demonstrate that the incorporation of uptake kinetic information can substantially improve the prediction of interspecies flux trafficking. Overall, this study paves the way for the dynamic multi-level and multi-objective analysis of microbial ecosystems.

PurposeThis exploratory study aims to examine the effects of leadership on organizational climate, employee psychological capital, commitment, and wellbeing in a religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.Design/methodology/approachLeadership effects are investigated using established scales including the transformational leadership scale, (TLS), organizational climate questionnaire (OCQ), positive and negative affect scale (PANAS), psychological capital (PsyCap), and organizational commitment. It is a context‐based study that considers a unique organizational culture that comprises social, political, economic, technological, personnel, and personal facets. The survey was administered across a large religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.FindingsThe findings show strong positive relationships between employee ratings of their immediate supervisor's transformational leadership and employee ratings of organizational climate, wellbeing, employee commitment and psychological capital. Additional analyses which explored the impact of demographic variables revealed older employees recorded significantly higher scores on psychological capital than younger employees. These findings inform organizational sustainability where the principles of socially responsible management practices form the heart of responsible stewardship.Research limitations/implicationsRisks of method variance or response biases are likely as all data are drawn from employee surveys, and some selection bias as respondents could not be directly compared with non‐respondents.Originality/valueThis study makes a significant contribution to the non‐profit literature by providing further evidence of the impact of leadership on organizational climate, with the added dimensions of psychological capital, employee wellbeing, and commitment adding to the knowledge of these relationships.

No abstract

No abstract

We examine the relationships among leadership, organizational climate, and workplace innovation in a nonprofit organization. We used established scales including the Transformational Leadership Scale, Organizational Climate Questionnaire, and Workplace Innovation Scale, and then descriptive statistics, regression models, and regression‐based path analysis to fulfill the objectives of the study. The survey was administered to full‐time and part‐time employees in a religious‐based nonprofit organization in Australia. A major finding is that leadership directly promotes workplace innovation and can foster a healthy climate, while the partial effect of organizational climate on workplace innovation, holding leadership constant, was insignificant. Certain characteristics of transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and organizational climate were predictive of workplace innovation as defined. The benefit of this study resides in its potential to look further into predictive leadership characteristics that would assist with recruitment processes in nonprofit organizations.