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This paper aims to investigate the influence of cognitive style diversity on intra-group relationship conflict and individual-level organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). The role of leader-member exchange as a moderating variable is also examined.

The authors used hierarchical linear modeling and hierarchical regression analysis to analyze results from a sample of 344 members from 83 teams nested within 126 departments in six manufacturing organizations in the People’s Republic of China.

Results yielded general support for our hypothesized relationships between cognitive style diversity and intra-group relationship conflict. Leader-member exchange was also found to moderate the relationship between these two variables. Contrary to expectations, there were no relationships between these variables and individual-level organizational citizenship behaviors.

This research addresses calls from the team diversity and conflict literature to address the understudied area of deep-level cognitive diversity. Second, this study addresses previous calls for more team-level and mixed-level theory and methodology to inform OCB research. Third, this is the first study of group-level cognitive style diversity and the moderating influence of leader-member-exchange and provides valuable insights into ways of mitigating some of the negative effects of cognitive diversity on teams.

The paper aims to understand how individuals differ in individual absorptive capacity – their ability to recognize, assimilate, transform and exploit external knowledge. These individual absorptive capacities are a key knowledge management building block for an organization’s open innovation practices. The study examines individual antecedents – human capital, social capital and cognition – and innovation outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

This is a quantitative study of 147 employees in a single medium-sized Dutch industrial firm. Based on a survey and structural equation modeling, the antecedents’ prior knowledge diversity, network diversity and cognitive style are examined in relation to individual absorptive capacity. Further, the mediating effects of individual absorptive capacity on its antecedents and innovation outcome are investigated.

The main findings are that prior knowledge diversity, external network diversity and a bisociative cognitive style explain differences in individual absorptive capacity. A bisociative cognitive style appears to be the most important factor. Also, this study finds that individual absorptive capacity mediates between its antecedents and individual innovation performance and is therefore a relevant factor to capture value from external knowledge sources.

The study extends open innovation theory by exploring individual-level factors that explain the ability to capture value from external knowledge. It suggests that differences in open innovation practices are explained by heterogeneity at the individual level. Further, it explains how individuals’ potentials for open innovation are mediated by their absorptive capacities. These insights enable future researchers to further examine individual-level factors in knowledge management practices and to explore cross-level individual-organizational interactions for open innovation.

This paper highlights that individuals’ engagements in open innovation practices are explained not only by individuals’ motivations but also by their abilities to absorb external knowledge. Further, it helps managers to design knowledge management practices to promote employees’ absorptive capacities, to improve open innovation processes.

This study investigates the neglected individual-level factors of open innovation practices from a micro-foundational and knowledge management perspective. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine individual-level antecedents and outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

This study aims to determine how cognitive diversity at the workplace influences team creativity. In this regard, the authors examined knowledge sharing and team-focused inclusion through which team members’ cognitive diversity was expected to elevate their positive work outcomes.

A quantitative method is used to accumulate the data. The authors surveyed workers and their respective managers at a single China-based food company. The supervisors rated the outcome variables (creativity and team effectiveness) regarding their employees, whereas employees were asked to rate the cognitive diversity, inclusion and knowledge sharing within the workgroup. The final valid sample size (n = 391) consisted of 137 workgroups with an adequate response rate (62.3%).

Cognitive diversity is related to team effectiveness but not creativity. The research found that cognitive diversity can increase creativity only through enhanced inclusion and knowledge sharing. Inclusion, likewise, explained the impact of cognitive diversity on effectiveness.

The originality of the current research lies in its contemporary exploration of inclusion and cognitive diversity and their pathways to team creativity and effectiveness. The social capital theory was applied to explain the proposed relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to extend current discussion on the drivers of innovative work behavior (IWB) by exploring how individual perceived diversities (visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity) and climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) impact IWB.

Data had been collected from a cross-national study of working professionals (n = 584) from five different cultural contexts.

Findings of this study indicated that cognitive group diversity mediated the negative relationship between visible dissimilarity and IWB. Further, both innovative/entrepreneurial and team/clan climates moderated the relationship between visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity. Such a moderation effect reduced the negative effect that visible dissimilarity had on IWB.

A cross-sectional single-source data set.

From a managerial perspective, climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) are central for IWB in the diverse (visible and cognitive) working environment. Thus, organizations should pay attention to create a climate (team/clan or/and innovative/entrepreneurial) that reduces the negative impact of perceived diversity in the working environment while supporting IWB.

This study is the first of its kind that is based on social categorization theory, empirically examining how different types of diversity (visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity) simultaneously reduce individuals’ IWB. Furthermore, this paper provides insights that climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) are crucial for IWB in the diverse working environment.

Having a shared vision is crucial for innovation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of individual propensity to collaborate and innovate on the development of a shared vision.

The authors build a network in which each node represents the vision of one individual and link the network structure to individual propensity of collaboration and innovativeness. During organizational workshops in four multinational organizations, the authors collected individual visions in the form of images as well as text describing the approach to innovation from 85 employees.

The study maps individual visions for innovation as a cognitive network. The authors find that individual propensity to innovate or collaborate is related to different network centrality. Innovators, individuals who see innovation as an opportunity to change and grow, are located at the center of the cognitive network. Collaborators, who see innovation as an opportunity to collaborate, have a higher closeness centrality inside a cluster.

This paper analyses visions as a network linking recent research in psychology with the managerial longing for a more thorough investigation of group cognition. The study contributes to literature on shared vision creation, suggesting the role which innovators and collaborators can occupy in the process.

This paper proposes how an approach based on a cognitive network can inform innovation management. The findings suggest that visions of innovators summarize the visions of a group, helping the development of an overall shared vision. Collaborators on the other hand are representative of specific clusters and can help developing radical visions.

The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.

Using qualitative research and in-depth interviews, a sample of 32 project managers with experience in traditional and agile methods acting in Brazil and internationally participated in the research process. The analysis process, utilising coding techniques, involved stages: open, axial, coding and selective coding. These stages encompassed the evaluation of categories based on a hierarchy, in order to determine an appropriate level of abstraction that properly explains theoretical findings.

The results indicate that distributed team cognition is significant for collaborative problem-solving. The data from the interviews allowed the proposal of a model of cognition, and the identification of the elements that support it.

Understand how aspects of distributed team cognition can impact the behaviours of the project professional and contribute to problem-solving in the project environment.

The elements observed affects the collaborative problem-solving by presenting a model of distributed cognition, which is composed by directed communication, collective interaction, trust building and collaborative behaviour.

Adaptive capacity has commonly been defined as the “general ability of institutions, systems, and individuals to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences” (http://www.greenfacts.org). Adaptive capacity is herein described as the ability to facilitate the process of adaptive team performance and the resulting outcome of team adaptation (see Stagl, Burke, Salas, & Pierce, this volume). More specifically, although often spoken of with regard to environmental and global changes, it is spoken of here with regard to the ability of individuals (and correspondingly teams) to recognize and understand contextual changes, dynamically revise and implement plans accordingly, and learn from each implementation so as to be better prepared in the future.

Extensive research has been done to measure the effect of personality and cognitive styles on creativity. However, an in-depth study is required to identify the impact of cognitive style and creativity on organizational problem-solving. The objective of this paper is to look into this lacuna and study the effect of cognitive style and creativity of leaders on their organizational problem-solving.

The study uses a survey-based design. Data have been collected from 90 middle and senior-level managers from a diverse range of industries. The authors assessed their proposed hypotheses by conducting statistical analysis using SPSS and SmartPLS.

The results of the study reveal that leaders, who've scored high on intuition feeling (NF) cognitive style and proactive creativity, are suitable for solving open type of organizational problems. On the other hand, NF type of leaders with “contributory creativity” are ideal for solving closed type of organizational problems. Further, leaders scoring high on intuition thinking (NT) and proactive creativity are suitable for solving open types of organizational problems. Interestingly, the combination of NT with expected creativity is not suitable for closed type of organizational problems. On the other hand, a leader scoring high on sensing thinking (ST) cognitive style is more prone to perform contributory creativity.

The study would help the human resource (HR) planning processes of an organization. It would assist HR professionals while recruiting, selecting or deploying employees for creative works within an organization. Therefore, the paper would be useful for HR managers, personnel, management development specialists, consultants and HR academicians.

The relationship among cognitive style, creativity and problem type has not been adequately explored in extant literature on leadership and organizational development. This study would thereby enrich the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive diversity and structural empowerment on strategic flexibility in the context of business performance.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to statistically test the data that were collected from health-care organizations located in the USA.

SEM reveals the positive main effect of cognitive diversity on strategic flexibility, the moderating effect of structural empowerment on the effect of cognitive diversity on strategic flexibility and performance and the mediating effect of strategic flexibility on the joint effect of cognitive diversity and structural empowerment on business performance.

The study reveals that diversity in cognitive resources and workplace empowerment can jointly support business performance via strategic flexibility. The paper explains that this positive effect can take place because the two factors jointly enable business organizations to find better internal applications for new relevant information, thus allowing firms to quickly reorganize their internal resources in a way that leads to better performance.

When effectively synergized, uniqueness from employee diversity can be conducive to original ideas and solutions in the tourism services. The purpose of this study is to unfold how and when diversity-oriented human resource (HR) practices impact creativity among employees working in tour companies.

Participants in this research project comprised employees and their direct managers working in tour companies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The results provided evidence for the positive influence of diversity-oriented HR practices on employee creativity through the mediation channel of knowledge sharing. Diversity climate fortified the effects of diversity-oriented HR practices on knowledge sharing among employees. Besides, the findings lent support for the moderating role of group diversity regarding age, expertise, openness and extroversion in the current research model.

This study advances both diversity management and organizational research streams and marks the convergence between them.