Selected Articles by Art Kleiner

Artificial intelligence, technology, and society

How Authoritarians Will Use AI • The Bulwark • February 16, 2024 • https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-authoritarians-will-use-ai • The article details how governments could deploy AI for fine-grained social control, arguing that the most pervasive effect would come not from overt repression but from subtle, individualized friction in everyday life.

Europe's Audacious Attempt to Regulate AI • The Bulwark • July 25, 2023 • https://www.thebulwark.com/p/europe-audacious-attempt-regulate-ai • An early assessment of the EU AI Act, the piece made the case that an imperfect, unloved regulatory framework might nonetheless be necessary—a position that has gained force as the Act has taken effect.

Wakeup Call to CHROs: How GenAI Is Changing the Role of HR Leadership • Medium • February 25, 2024 • https://art-kleiner.medium.com/wakeup-call-to-chros-how-genai-is-changing-the-role-of-hr-leadership-9d5fbf9cf67e • The article argues that generative AI shifts human-resources leadership from administration toward the stewardship of human judgment, addressing a question now central to the chief people officer's role.

Strategic leadership and scenario thinking

Lessons in Strategic Leadership from Volodymyr Zelensky • Medium • March 25, 2022 • https://art-kleiner.medium.com/lessons-in-strategic-leadership-from-vlodymyr-zelensky-18bbd2fe1978 • Written in the opening weeks of the war in Ukraine, the article reads Zelensky's conduct through the "High Ground/Low Ground" neuroscience of The Wise Advocate, applying the framework to leadership under acute pressure.

The 30-Year Pandemic • Medium • June 23, 2022 • https://art-kleiner.medium.com/the-30-year-pandemic-a558e95fb400 • A worked "bright swan" scenario of life alongside an endemic, mutating Covid-19, the piece demonstrated the scenario-planning method applied to a crisis readers were living through.

Bright Swans: Hopeful Scenarios for Bleak Futures • Medium • June 23, 2022 • https://art-kleiner.medium.com/bright-swans-hopeful-scenarios-for-bleak-futures-cf2ff58a48dc • A counterpoint to the prevailing focus on catastrophic "black swans," the article argues that difficult conditions can resolve into unexpectedly positive futures, and sets out how to construct such scenarios.

Thought Leadership at the Deep End of the Pool • Medium • December 13, 2020 • https://art-kleiner.medium.com/thought-leadership-at-the-deep-end-of-the-pool-6ee4fe1c2a2e • Drawing on Kleiner's editorial career, the article examines why publishing has become easier while genuine thought leadership has become harder—an argument sharpened further by the subsequent flood of AI-generated content.

Management and organizational theory

Are You In with the In Crowd? • Harvard Business Review • July 2003 • https://hbr.org/2003/07/are-you-in-with-the-in-crowd • Kleiner's Core Group theory, presented here for HBR's readership, identifies the informal inner circle whose perceived interests an organization actually serves, and remains widely cited in writing on power and corporate decision-making.

The Man Who Saw the Future • strategy+business • February 12, 2003 • https://www.strategy-business.com/article/8220 • This profile of Pierre Wack is the standard popular account of how scenario planning was developed at Royal Dutch/Shell, and it is routinely cited in scholarship on the field's origins.

Karen Stephenson's Quantum Theory of Trust • strategy+business • October 11, 2002 • https://www.strategy-business.com/article/20964 • An early and influential popularization of social-network analysis, the article anticipated the now-common practice of mapping the informal networks and trust relationships that run beneath the org chart.

Elliott Jaques Levels with You • strategy+business • January 1, 2001 • https://www.strategy-business.com/article/10938 • The piece introduced a broad management readership to Requisite Organization and remains a frequently referenced English-language explainer of Jaques's theory of work levels and cognitive capability.

Climbing to Greatness with Jim Collins • strategy+business • October 1, 2001 • https://www.strategy-business.com/article/14367 • Published as Good to Great was reaching the market, the profile examined Collins's "Level 5 leadership" before the concept entered general management vocabulary.

The Organization Is Alive • strategy+business • 2010 • https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00028 • The essay argues that organizations behave less like machines than like living systems, and maps the four "circulatory systems"—hierarchy, network, market, and clan—through which an individual can act as an internal catalyst for change regardless of formal rank.