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The purpose of this paper is to provide an interview with Eugene Sadler‐Smith, Professor of Management Development and Organizational Behaviour, at the University of Surrey's School of Management and author of The Intuitive Mind.

This briefing is prepared by an independent interviewer

Eugene Sadler‐Smith's research interests are centered upon the role of intuitive judgment in management decision making and management development. His research has been published widely in peer‐reviewed journals such as the Academy of Management Executive, Academy of Management Learning and Education, British Journal of Psychology, Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Management Learning, and Organisation Studies. He has researched and published widely in the field of learning and development (L&D) and is author of several books, including Inside Intuition (Routledge, 2008) and The Intuitive Mind (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). His intuition research has featured on BBC Radio 4 and in The Times.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

This interview give some insight into the underlying scientific principles that explain the intuitive mind, offering tools and techniques for developing and deploying informed intuition in leadership and management.

The paper reports upon the findings of a national survey of Personal Business Advisors (PBAs). It examines the nature of the client‐PBA relationship in terms of how relationships are established with growth firms and how they are maintained over the long term. Results show that a range of different approaches are currently used to identify growth businesses. Other findings indicate that the current role of the PBA is a broad one, extending beyond the client focus originally envisaged by the DTI. It is argued that financial targets are an important influence upon the nature of the client‐PBA relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a selection of papers from the 10th Annual European Learning Styles Information Network Conference.

The paper looks at problems, developments in the application of style and potential styles for practice in the area of cognitive and learning styles in education and training practice, with a brief look at the papers within this issue.

The paper finds that each of the papers presented here raises a number of pertinent issues which are significant in the ongoing debate regarding the value of cognitive and learning styles in education and training practice. These are presented in the form of ten key messages.

The paper presents a useful insight into the problems, politicisation and potential of learning styles in education and training.

The purpose of this paper is to examine conceptual and theoretical links between intuition and coaching; investigate accomplished coaches' practical experiences of intuition; identify skill set of an intuitive coach; discuss implications of findings for coaches', HRD professionals', and line managers' learning and development.

In‐depth, semi‐structured, individual interviews with 14 accomplished experienced executive coaches (eight males and six females) averaging 14.5 years as a coach.

Outline of core attributes of an intuitive coach.

Immersion in experience, a reflective approach to practice, effective feedback and supervision, and attending to personal well‐being are likely to enable coaches, HRD practitioners and line managers to take a more informed and intelligent approach to “going with their gut” in coaching and other situations where inter‐ and intra‐personal awareness are important.

The purpose of this research is to show that a key aspect of learning and development of individual employees is that of self‐directedness. This paper will consider the role of the leader in facilitating workforce development in terms of employees' self‐directedness for learning. The research was designed to investigate the views that “learning leaders” in organizations have towards the development of self‐directedness in employees; and to identify strategies that are feasible in developing self‐directedness in operating organizations.

This paper draws on a national research project undertaken in 12 organizations in Australia, representing a range of sizes and a number of industry sectors. Data collection involved interviewing learning and development managers in each organization to gauge the relative feasibility of the implementation of a number of pre‐identified strategies designed to develop self‐directedness among employees within operating work environments.

The research showed that: learning managers and leaders were generally well disposed towards the development of self‐directedness, and some had already moved to do so; and identified a number of possible strategies for implementation of varying degrees of feasibility. The paper will consider these findings in relation to the concept of a “learning leader”.

Although the research was conducted in a diverse set of 12 enterprises, applicability of the results across an even wider set of enterprises would need to be tested.

The findings of this research provide guidance to learning and development personnel on feasible strategies to use within their own organization to assist with the development of self‐directed learning among employees.

In recent years there has been a growth of interest in the role played by intuition in entrepreneurial cognition and behavior. However, the significance of the role of affect in intuitive judgment has been underplayed by entrepreneurship researchers. In response to this theoretical and empirical shortcoming we propose recognition-primed decision-making (RPD), the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH), and dual-process theories (in particular Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory: CEST) as complementary frameworks for advancing understanding of the dynamic interplay of cognition and affect in entrepreneurial judgment and decision-making.

This qualitative study of managers’ use of intuition in the selection process aimed to understand if and how managers use intuition in employee hiring decisions and suggest ways in which the use of intuition might be improved. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers from a range of backgrounds, and with varying experience of recruitment and selection.

Findings revealed that reasons for the use of intuition included personal preferences, resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more structured approaches. Intuition was used an indicator for performance, personality and person-environment fit. Intuition tended to be used with requisite caution; participants were aware of its limits, the potential for bias and the difficulties in justifying its use; several participants used their intuitions in concert with more structured, non-intuition based approaches.

The small-scale investigative study has limited generalisability. The paper concludes with five specific recommendations on how to improve managers’ understanding and use of intuition in employee selection.

Despite increased interest in intuition in management there is a paucity of qualitative studies of intuition-in-use in management in general and in personnel in particular. This research helps to fill this gap.

The study is an attempt to provide empirical elaboration, in the context of business and management education, for the “onion” and cognitive control models of cognitive style. Using a sample of 226 business and management undergraduates the research explored the relationship between cognitive style (measured using the cognitive style index and learning preference. Using principal components analysis, three categories of learning preference were discerned (active, reflective and individual). Correlational analysis and one way analysis of variance revealed statistically significant relationships between preferences for reflective and individual methods and cognitive style. The results provide some support for the “onion” and cognitive control models; the implications for business and management education, training and development are discussed.

This paper aims to explore issues that must be addressed in post‐secondary educational planning and delivery such that social cultural factors within the learning environment are recognized in ways that affirm the learner's cultural traditions.

The adoption of a multiple cultures model of instructional design with an emphasis on implementing flexible learning using instructional technology is proposed.

The paper finds that as student mobility continues to increase across educational programs and geographic borders, the need to accommodate cultural differences in an increasingly heterogeneous study will have to increase dramatically and, for this to occur, institutions and faculty will have to improve their insight into cultural and learning differences that affect teaching and learning.

Distance education courses are commonly offered in professional upgrading or “bridging” programs as one solution to addressing the apparent knowledge and experience gaps of newly immigrated internationally‐educated practitioners. Useful strategies for accommodating individual styles and preferences in a multiple cultures professional online learning context have been described.

Learning preferences and styles are inextricably related to cultural background as well as curricular and course design. This paper provides a much‐needed professional distance education framework that integrates the skills and values of the student with those of the local professional community to create a unified and authentic learning environment.