Complexity Leadership Theory:
Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era
Mary Uhl-Bien, Russ Marion, Bill McKelvey
the clarion group
REAL. CLEAR. INSIGHT.
Abstract:
The most widely used leadership models today are rooted in top-down bureaucratic models.
While these models are effective in stable, production-oriented economies, they are not wellsuited for the less stable, knowledge-oriented economy that describes the current environment.
Rather, the study of complexity science supports a new model, the Complexity Leadership
Theory, which describes leadership as a complex interactive dynamic that promotes the
emergence of adaptive outcomes (learning, innovation, adaptability). It is a leadership
framework that enables the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of Complex Adaptive
Systems (CAS) within the context of knowledge-producing organizations and describes three
interacting leadership roles: administrative, adaptive, and enabling. These three leadership roles
represent the necessary and inevitable interaction between an organization’s bureaucratic,
administrative functions and its emergent, informal CAS dynamics.
Article abridged from its original 2007 publication in The Leadership Quarterly
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Introduction
The transition from the 20th Century to the 21st Century has marked a clear change from the
Industrial Era to the Knowledge Era, where knowledge, constantly increasing and being shared,
is now a core commodity. Additionally, the technological revolution and globalization of
business has ensured a complex, competitive and ever changing business environment and yet
businesses are still performing under 20th Century leadership models. In order for a business to
compete successfully in the Knowledge Era, it must perform under a more relevant leadership
style.
Core elements of the proposed leadership theory are Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), which
are defined as changeable structures with multiple, overlapping hierarchies that are linked with
one another in a dynamic, interactive network. A similar structure has been described as
“temporary constellations of people and units”. They are structures that are capable of creative
problem-solving, learn and adapt quickly, and emerge naturally in social systems.
The proposed Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT), which is based on the dynamic capabilities
of CAS, focuses on the strategies and behaviors that foster organizational and subunit creativity,
learning, and adaptability that emerge when the right CAS dynamics are activated. CLT
includes three broad types of leadership: (1) administrative leadership based on traditional,
hierarchical bureaucracy, (2) adaptive leadership, a generative dynamic on which emergent
change activities depend, and (3) enabling leadership, which structures and enables conditions
that allow CAS to address creative problem-solving, adaptability, and learning.
CLT is based on several important ideas. One is context: CAS and leadership are socially
constructed in and from a context consisting of interactions and interdependencies among
agents (people, ideas), hierarchical divisions, organizations and environments. A second
important notion is a distinction between leadership and leaders. CLT’s definition of leadership is
that it can come from anywhere, is emergent, interactive, dynamic, and produces adaptive
outcomes, whereas leaders are individuals who create the environment which influences this
dynamic and the outcomes. CLT will focus on the concept and process of leadership. A third
crucial idea is the distinction between leadership and managerial positions. CLT will focus on
adaptive leadership, which occurs in emergent, informal dynamics throughout the organization
rather than on formal administrative leadership. The last important notion is that of recognizing
that leadership in the Knowledge Era occurs in the face of adaptive challenges rather than
technical problems, which are more characteristic of the Industrial Age.
Part 1: Leadership in the Knowledge Era
The Knowledge Era is defined by its competitive landscape that is shaped by globalization,
technology, deregulation, and democratization. It is an environment in which a company’s
success depends on its ability to promote faster learning and lies more in its social assets
(corporate IQ and learning capacity) than in its physical assets. Whereas, in the 20th Century
industrial economy, the challenge was to optimize production and physical flow of products, the
goal in the 21st Century economy is to create an environment where knowledge accumulates
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and is shared at a low cost, and to cultivate, protect, and use difficult to imitate knowledge
assets. In the Knowledge Era, there is an intense focus on speed and adaptability. Further, while
companies in the Industrial Era emphasized a simplification and rationalization of its
environment, companies in the Knowledge Era must focus on increasing their complexity to the
level of the environment in order to optimize their capacity for learning, creativity, and
adaptability.
Although business has entered a new age, leadership theory remains grounded in an Industrial
Era bureaucratic framework. One example of this is the traditional idea that goals are rationally
conceived and that managerial practices should be structured to achieve those goals. Another
is that leaders are traditionally thought to be able to influence others towards desired objectives
within the formal top-down, hierarchical framework. The CLT will address the contradiction
between centralized power found in bureaucratic systems still in use today and the needs of the
Knowledge Era by focusing on leadership that is grounded in complexity rather than in
bureaucracy.
CAS are the foundation of that complexity, primarily, the interdependent interactions of agents
within CAS, agents with CAS, and CAS with CAS. They are able to adapt rapidly and creatively
to environmental changes, and enhance their capacity for adaptive response by diversifying
their behaviors or strategies. Types of adaptive responses to environmental changes include
counter-moves, altered or new strategies, learning and new knowledge, new allies, and new
technologies.
The CLT aims to enable adaptive responses to challenges through network-based problem
solving, offers tools for knowledge-producing organizations dealing with rapidly changing,
complex problems, and is also useful for firms dealing with less complex problems and that are
seeking creativity.
Part 2: Complexity Leadership Theory
CLT is a framework for leadership that enables the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of
CAS. At the same time, it enables control structures appropriate for coordinating formal
organizations and producing outcomes appropriate to the vision and mission of the system.
How can organizations enable and coordinate CAS dynamics without suppressing their
adaptive and creative capacity? CAS are intensely adaptive and innovative, possessing the
flexibility to adapt and the capacity to coordinate. Its auto-coordination is derived from informal
but interdependent structures and activities; it emerges naturally from system dynamics and is
not imposed by authorities. This informal interactive interdependency, or the spontaneous
emergence of behaviors and changes from network dynamics, is referred to as informal
emergence.
Informal emergence and auto-coordination are not necessarily incompatible with administrative
coordination. When interdependent relationships create informal emergent constraints and
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when actions external to the informal dynamic (such as environmental restrictions or
administrative controls) create constraints, coordination emerges.
In businesses with a bureaucratic, hierarchical organizational structure, administrators influence
complex adaptive systems by imposing external coordinating constraints and demands. But this
hierarchical coordination can inhibit the effectiveness of complex adaptive systems when it
imposes the knowledge of a few onto the rest of a complex, neural network.
To strike the balance between administrative coordination and complex adaptive dynamics,
managers should aim to enable informal emergence and should coordinate the contexts within
which it occurs, thus expanding the manager’s responsibilities beyond aligning worker
preferences with centralized organizational goals.
Part 3: A Framework for Complexity Leadership Theory
The Three Leadership Functions of the Complexity Leadership Theory
Administrative Leadership  Individuals and groups in formal managerial roles plan and
coordinate activities to accomplish organizationally-prescribed
outcomes in an efficient and effective manner
 Focuses on alignment and control
 Represented by hierarchical and bureaucratic functions of
organization
Adaptive Leadership
 Adaptive, creative, learning actions that emerge from the
interactions of CAS as they strive to adjust to tension
 Informal emergent dynamic that occurs among interactive agents
 Not an act of authority
Enabling Leadership
 Catalyzes optimal conditions for adaptive leadership
 Manages entanglement between bureaucratic (administrative)
and emergent (adaptive) functions of organization
Entanglement refers to the intertwinement of the formal, bureaucratic (administrative) forces
with the informal CAS (adaptive emergent) forces of social systems. Administrative leadership
may work in conjunction with adaptive leadership or stop it with overly bureaucratic control
structures. Adaptive leadership can rebel against administrative leadership, increase its strategic
needs, or function independently from it. Enabling leadership exists primarily to enable adaptive
leadership, but must also foster the conjunction of adaptive and administrative leadership.
A need for administrative and adaptive leadership to co-exist and work in tandem exists
because bureaucracy cannot be disentangled from CAS in a formal organization. They
necessarily interact with each other – there are times when one must be emphasized more than
the other. For example, in a stable environment, the organization may emphasize a rationalized,
hierarchical structure to enhance profits. But during a time of change and intense competition,
the organization will emphasize complexity and CAS.
3 A. Administrative Leadership
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Administrative leadership, being the bureaucratic function, is defined as the actions of
individuals in formal managerial roles who plan and coordinate organizational activities.
Examples of tasks that administrative leaders perform include structuring tasks, planning, building
vision, acquiring resources, managing crises and personal conflicts and managing
organizational strategy.
Inherent in administrative leadership is the power to make decisions for the organizations, since it
is a function based on authority and position. But under the CLT, administrative leadership should
be conscious of its power over the firm’s creative, learning, and adaptive capabilities (adaptive
leadership). For example, it should not pursue profitable efficiency in an unstable environment
where adaptive capabilities will be needed.
3 B. Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership is defined as an interactive, collaborative dynamic that produces adaptive
outcomes in a social system. It originates in struggles over conflicting needs, ideas or preferences
and results in alliances of people, ideas, technologies, and cooperative efforts. It is a complex
dynamic and a key source of change in an organization.
Asymmetrical interaction causes adaptive leadership to emerge. A one-sided, authority-based
asymmetrical interaction leads to a top-down or bureaucratic leadership event, but asymmetry
that is less one-sided and driven by differences in preference will lead to a leadership event
more based on interactive dynamics. Differences in preference will foster adaptive change
outcomes, since conflicting ideas, knowledge, and technologies inspire new knowledge,
creative ideas, and learning. An example of this is gaining new understanding of a situation
when debating an opposing perspective.
Recognition of adaptive leadership occurs when it has significance and impact. Significance in
this context is defined by the expertise of those who generated the adaptive moment and by
their capacity for creative thinking. Impact is influenced by the authority and reputation of the
agents in question, by the degree to which the implications of the idea are understood or by the
degree of success it has in generating enough support to create an impact.
Characteristics of Adaptive Leadership
Network Dynamics
 The contexts, mechanisms (dynamic patterns of behavior
that produce complex outcomes) that enable adaptive
leadership
 Contexts include networks of interaction, patterns of
conflicting constraints or tension, direct/indirect feedback
loops, rapidly changing environmental demands
 Mechanisms include resonance (correlated action) and
aggregation of ideas, catalytic behaviors, information flow
and pattern formation, nonlinear change
 Interaction of agents and CAS produce ideas and
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knowledge; interaction of ideas and knowledge produce
even more complex ideas and knowledge
 Primary output: adaptability, learning, creativity
Emergence
 Involves
self-organization (resonance), reformulation of
existing elements to produce outcomes distinct from original
elements
 Reformulation: amplification, transformation, combination
of multiple interacting, often conflicting, elements under
conditions of tension; product of complex interactive
mechanisms; outcomes can be unpredictable
 Resonance: behaviors of two or more agents are
interdependent
 Self-organization
is therefore defined as different
reformulation activities finding common cause
Multi-level Adaptive Leadership  Emergent outcomes, significance, impact of adaptive
behaviors differ across hierarchical levels
 Upper hierarchical level adaptive outputs: emergent
planning, resource acquisition, strategic relationships with
environment
 Middle hierarchical level adaptive outputs: emergence of
focused planning, resource allocation
 Lower hierarchical level adaptive outputs: development of
an organization’s core products, including knowledge
development, innovation, adaptation
3 C. Enabling Leadership
Enabling leadership in the CLT seeks to cultivate conditions (contexts, complex networks) that
catalyze adaptive leadership. It promotes these networks by fostering interaction and
interdependency and by injecting adaptive tension.
Interaction, creating the network across which information moves, is the first catalyst of ideal
network conditions. While enabling leaders cannot create the connections that lead to an
effective network, they can create the general structure of complex networks and the
conditions that will allow them to develop from an organizational level (e.g., open architecture
work places, self-selected work groups, electronic work groups). At the strategic level, enabling
leadership helps promote interactions between organizational CAS and environmental
dynamics. This enables the use of new information into the creative dynamic and it increases the
organization’s capacity to adapt to environmental changes and conditions. Individual agents
can act in an enabling role by widening their personal networks, monitoring their environment,
and keeping themselves informed of issues important to the firm and its field.
Agents in a system must go beyond interacting to functioning effectively and complexly; they
must also be interdependent, a characteristic that creates pressure to act on information. One
way to encourage interdependency is to allow measured autonomy which will permit the
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emergence of conflicting constraints and enable agents to work through those constraints
without formal authorities interfering. The CLT urges administrative leaders to resist creating an
environment in which workers bring problems to management, as interventions of this type can
stifle interdependency and adaptive mechanisms. At the strategic level, enabling leaders can
promote interdependency with rules that encourage coordination. At the individual level,
enabling leaders or agents can refine their information relative to that of other agents,
contributing to the co-elaboration of ideas and information that creates a potential to discover
new information.
Lastly, enabling leadership aims to foster tension. Heterogeneity (differences in skills, preferences,
and perspectives among agents) can enhance internal tension by stimulating interdependency.
Its value, in an interdependency context, lies in encouraging agents to adapt to their
differences. In the upper organizational levels, enabling leadership can foster heterogeneity by
creating an organizational norm of respecting diversity and tolerating divergent perspectives on
problems, and by structuring work groups that will interact with diverse ideas. Enabling
leadership can also foster external tension (injected tension that is not a natural characteristic of
informal dynamics). Upper and mid-level enabling leaders can promote this tension with
managerial challenges and by creating demands for results, which ultimately aim to foster
creativity and learning. At the individual level, instead of looking to authority for answers, agents
can commit to the adaptive problem solving process. They can also embrace task conflicts and
expose a working group to diverse perspectives.
An additional function of enabling leadership is to manage the entanglement between
administrative and adaptive leadership. It also aims to facilitate the integration of creative
solutions and outcomes into the formal system. Accomplishing this involves using authority,
access to resources, and influences to encourage the conjunction of formal and informal
organizational systems.
Enabling leaders helps protect the CAS from top-down hierarchical systems of authority by
influencing administrative leadership and helping to align organizational strategy to
accommodate the needs of adaptive structures. CLT has concerns about whether
administrative planning might hinder creativity, but also acknowledges that creative and
adaptive behaviors need to be focused, at the risk of compromising the organization’s strategic
mission. It proposes striking a balance by using a creative planning model that includes idea
identification, plan development, and plan execution and suggests that the planning model
imposes certain limitations to ensure that the creative outputs of the process are consistent with
the core themes of the organization. At the same time, the creative process itself should be
separated from administrative planning and coordination. Enabling leaders also coordinates the
acquisition and allocation of resources that will increase the availability and flow of information,
thereby supporting the creative, learning, and adaptive capabilities of CAS. Lastly, enabling
leaders should influence the direction of adaptive behaviors to be consistent with the
organization’s strategy and mission by articulating a mission that allows for enough flexibility to
support the creative process.
Enabling leadership is needed to help facilitate, orchestrate, and share innovative ideas and
outcomes throughout the organization, since formal organizations inherently tend to inhibit the
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transfer of innovation into the organization. It also works with adaptive and administrative
leadership to decide which creative outputs are most appropriate to pursue and incorporate
into the broader bureaucratic structure.
Conclusion
Complexity Leadership Theory, which is based in complexity science, was developed with the
consideration that leadership is too complex to be attributed to the acts of only an individual or
individuals, and is rather a complex relationship of many interacting forces. It focuses on the
complex interactive dynamics of Complex Adaptive Systems and introduces three types of
leadership: administrative, adaptive, and enabling. In sum, CLT offers a new perspective of
leadership and leadership theory that will aid organizations in their transition from the 20th
Century Industrial Age to the 21st Century Knowledge Era.
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