Lorenz Graf-Vlachy

Lorenz Graf-Vlachy
Prof. Dr. Lorenz Graf-Vlachy is Professor of Corporate Management at TU Dortmund and Senior Research Fellow at ESCP Business School’s Research Institute of Management. Prior to his current appointment, he was a Professor of Strategy at ESCP Business School in Berlin. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Passau. He was also a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, a Scholar in Residence at the University of Georgia, a Visiting Scholar at Penn State University, a Visiting Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University, and an Affiliated Research Fellow at IMD International in Lausanne. He holds a master’s level degree in Information Systems and a doctoral degree in Strategic Management from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. He also studied in Indiana University’s MBA program and at Tongji University. Prior to academia, he worked as a Project Leader at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Munich and at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva. His research focuses on behavioral strategy as well as innovation and digitalization.

CEO Cognitive Complexity

Firms’ strategic behavior is, to a substantial degree, a reflection of personality characteristics of their Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). One thus far understudied personality characteristic of CEOs’ is their cognitive complexity. Cognitive complexity describes mental structures, i.e., it is concerned not with what is on a person’s mind, but with how a person’s mind functions and is organized. The research program attempts to answer two central questions: 1) Which factors determine CEOs’ cognitive complexity? 2) Which consequences does the cognitive complexity of CEOs have for the firms they lead?