Strategic Leadership in a Changing World Order: Requisite Cognitive Skills.

Abstract : This document reviews the psychological literature for models and taxonomies of human cognition. It examines in some detail 20 such models and taxonomies by 18 theorists over a period of 67 years, from 1923 through 1989. The authors conclude that, while there are a number of interesting models, the scientific community does not have a widely accepted, comprehensive theory of cognition or a theory of learning that allows generalization of learning principles to specified complex tasks. Nor does it appear to have a consensus on the concept of intelligence. Above and beyond those considerations, there is little appearance of common purpose guiding the development of the more recently derived models of cognition. The field is more paradigm-driven than theory-driven. No taxonomy of requisite cognitive skills for executive leadership performance was found. The authors, drawing on an integration of the models and taxonomies reviewed, propose such a taxonomy.