Abstract+-+McKelvey

Generation of economic rents requires stimulating coevolution and distributed intelligence within firms. The question becomes, How to improve the corporate brain’s IQ? Intelligence //__is__ the network// among neurons, thereby setting up social capital appreciation in firms as the means of improving corporate IQ. Heroic visionary leadership theory is dysfunctional because of the problem of “leading down” through several intervening levels—it destroys networking thereby diminishing corporate IQ—cascading charisma doesn’t work; it creates instead a vision-led command-and-control hierarchy. Complexity theory offers a more dynamical means of explaining social phenomena and explicit methods by which CEOs may improve corporate IQ. Complexity leadership improves corporate IQ without emergent authoritarian command-and-control structures; it does so by speeding up intrafirm coevolving network dynamics rather than focusing on leader attributes. Complexity leadership theory moves macro-level economic, ecological, and evolutionary theories about organizational function and process into the “microrealm” heretofore left in the hands of psychologists. Effective CEO-level complexity leadership, thus, rests on a joint micro/macro theoretical footing. Various methods by which CEOs can improve corporate IQ are presented.