Abstract

Complex Adaptive Leadership offers ways to shift the focus of practice to one that reflects, embraces multiple points of view, and changes in response to new knowledge and data. From a societal perspective, complex adaptive leadership provides organizations with the opportunity to grapple with the most significant and persistent problems of our time and potentially achieve real change. The paper explores complexity theory in more detail and its influence on social systems using gender bias and terrorism as examples. Using the Human Security Framework as a complex adaptive leadership approach in addressing Wicked Problems, this paper describes the Human Security dimensions to understand the wicked problems in which 21st-century organizations grapple with and the type of organizational leadership needed to confront these challenges.