ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what, if anything, one can learn about the intelligent behavior of economic and social systems from the growing body of research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. It attempts to explain the source of human systems intelligence by invoking the physical symbol hypothesis from artificial intelligence and extending it to include a description of economic and social systems. The chapter describes that with organizations, as with humans, intelligence is multifaceted. It shows organizational intelligence in terms of both formal and commonsense reasoning, the latter taken largely from developmental psychology. The chapter considers a wider variety of possible missions and, therefore, a more global spectrum of intelligent behavior. Economic and social systems—such as business organizations, free-market and centralized economics, and certain social groups—consist of networks of actors who often interact in an adaptive fashion. All organizations require resources to accomplish their mission, and the acquisition and management of these resources is of major importance.
