Guest Editorial

Globally, human beings are getting better trained and educated. This is particularly so in the more developed nations. A significant amount of emphasis and resources are placed on education. The quality of the knowledge structures in the human thinking systems has been greatly enhanced. The awareness of human beings has also been significantly elevated. This new and sophisticated set of intangible assets is penetrating and transforming the economy, and human society in general. Coupled with a better understanding and deeper interest in complexity theory and complex adaptive systems which stipulates that the universe and its microcosms are more a mind than a machine, the entire management and leadership theory/philosophy has to be transformed. Human beings cannot be managed and led effectively in the current manner. The most valuable asset is now the human thinking system and its expertise, and not physical strength or mechanical ability. The paradigmatic shift in mindset is inevitable because the focus has to be changed drastically. For business organizations, the priority has to be changed from the traditional economic entities to the human mind, intelligence, knowledge, collective intelligence, and other intelligence associated attributes. For human organizations in general, the change is from a machine-like to a mind-like structure and dynamic. Therefore, human relationships, organizational structures, and economic and social dynamics are no longer the same. The whole of humankind is moving into the core of the knowledge era, the intelligence era. At the invitation of the Chief Editor, Professor Milan Zeleny, this Special Issue, Corporation: An Intelligent Complex Adaptive System, is conceived. It addresses some of the developments/problems mentioned above. It shares some of the interesting findings and observations of ten researchers that have ventured into this new frontier. They come from several countries namely, Australia, Canada, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their papers provide a fresh perspective that deviates from the present practices and the exact sciences, and will be beneficial to leaders and managers of all forms of human organizations. Briefly, this issue contains seven articles. The first is “The complexity of the corporation” (Professor D.A. Robertson, University of Oxford) that focuses on the comprehension and utilization of complexity to improve business performance. The second paper entitled “Emergent strategy development, abduction and pragmatism: New lessons for corporations” (Professor A. Carr, University of Western Australia; Professor R. Durant, Tulane University; and Professor A. Downs, St. Louis University) is an article on strategic planning and The Delphic Oracle, with a special emphasis on lower and middle management levels in organization. The next four papers are “The learning organization and the innovative organization” (Professor P.T. Ng, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University); “Organization/business, management, people and complexity: an approach to their integration” (Professor R.H. Draman, St. Edward’s University); “The social dynamics of diverse and closed networks” (Professor Desmond Ng, University of Alberta); and “Reflections about the role of expert knowledge and consultants in an emerging knowledge-based economy” (Professor H.D. Evers, University of Bonn and Professor T. Menkhoff, Singapore Management University). They collectively reflect a nonlinear and complexity view of learning, innovation and creativity, knowledge management, and interacting agents. The papers stipulate that the human thinking system behaves nonlinearly and intelligence is also manifested in the same manner. Finally, my paper, “Intelligence strategy: the evolution and co-evolution dynamics of intelligent human organizations and their interacting agents”, provides an interesting integration and convergence of the new concepts. In particular, the intelligent person model is an emergence of the concepts on the economic man,