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This paper aims to introduce an analytical focus on an individual’s integrative thinking capacity to further understand integrated thinking within the organisation. Integrated thinking is an elusive concept, gaining in prominence through its use by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), without specific guidance or a commonly understood framework. To date, the academic debate on integrated thinking addresses the organisational level only. However, thinking is a process occurring within the mind of an individual and therefore the prerequisites for integrated thinking at the individual level needs to be considered. Critical reflection is, therefore, provided on the interplay between integrative and integrated thinking.

This paper draws on conceptual systems theory and case site analysis to reflect how integrative thinking can be encouraged and supported within the individual and how integrated thinking can hence be fostered within organisations.

The paper analyses and discusses four sites of integrative thinking: the Athenian democracy; the Minangkabau community; the Quakers and consensus decision-making; and the Apis Mellifera and the hive mind. The findings from these different sites illustrate that integrative thinking can be supported by specific structural, organisational and individual contexts and stimuli.

Extending the context of integrated thinking analysis outside of the organisation and analysing these sites through components of integrative thought, this article provides further insights into how integrated thinking can be fostered within different organisations. The implications of these findings for accounting and professional institutions, organisations and the ongoing professional development of accountants are discussed.

The complexity of organizational decisions requires the ability to integrate diverse facts, ideas, issues, and connections into more comprehensive integrative thinking for decisions. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the relationship between common sense and integrative thinking. Common sense, on the surface, seems to be incompatible with integrative thinking yet common sense can enrich integrative thinking. Recommendations are made for leveraging the strengths of common sense thinking in identifying salient (relevant) factor stage of integrative thinking. Suggestions for future research are identified.

The approach of this paper is to use literature‐based research to identify how common sense tensions can enhance integrative thinking.

Five suggestions are presented to leverage common sense thinking when identifying salient factors in a situation. When common sense is successfully integrated at the first stage of integrative thinking, it will enhance the thinking in the other three stages.

This paper stresses that common sense and integrative thinking are compatible. Avenues for future research are identified.

The purpose of this paper is to present an interview with professor and noted author Roger Martin discussing three major topics— the future of capitalism, better executive decision making and innovations that boost customer value – all at the heart of current executive concerns.

The paper presents Martin's view, – that modern capitalism has come through two major eras over the last century, managerial capitalism (1930s to 1970s) and shareholder capitalism (1980s to 2000s). He argues that the time has come to embark on a new era, the era of “customer capitalism” and explains why.

In answer to another set of questions, Martin provides his own insight into one of the management field's most elusive and intriguing questions: what is the essence of outstanding leadership, particularly at the CEO level? His research has led him to the finding that exceptional leaders are distinguished most by the way they think, by their capacity for what he calls “integrative thinking.”

To a third set of questions, Martin offers his own solution to one of the major challenges facing senior executives today, how to become more innovative, not only in products and process, but also in the area of business management itself. His answer – executives should look to the concept of “design thinking” and learn how to apply it more widely to processes like strategy development and business model innovation.

Roger Martin believes that the shareholder value system has been rigged to the detriment of stockholders, that great managers are distinguished by how they think before they decide what to do and that design thinking is a key competitive competency. Martin offers groundbreaking ways to think about leading and management.

Because it involves the interests of multiple stakeholders, sustainable value is a “wicked problem” that evades definitive formulation and clear solutions. Traditional approaches to problem-solving emphasize formulation of the problem followed by analysis and solution development. However, these approaches are inadequate for solving such problems because of they are so difficult to define. Two ways of approaching wicked problems are discussed: positive design and integrative thinking. Both are more appropriate than linear “formulate-then-solve” approaches, because they emphasize careful reflection and framing, focus on understanding the system as a whole and the needs of its users, and learning. In design, the focus is on deeply understanding users and attempting trial solutions as a means of framing the problem; in integrative thinking, the focus is on exploring the problem by inquiring into the mental models of stakeholders. Tata Motors’ decision to locate its plant in West Bengal was a wicked problem that involved the interests of many stakeholders, and is presented to illustrate the two methods. The failure of this plant location project was extremely costly to Tata and to West Bengal, and it is argued that the decision process would have benefited from either positive design or integrative thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new elements to understand, measure and predict managerial creativity. More specifically, based on new approaches to creative potential (Lubart et al., 2011), this study proposes to distinguish two aspects of managerial creative problem solving: divergent-exploratory thinking, in which managers try to generate several new solutions to a problem; and convergent-integrative thinking, in which managers select and elaborate one creative solution.

In this study, personality is examined as a predictor of managerial creative problem solving: On one hand, based on previous research on general divergent thinking (e.g. Ma, 2009), it is hypothesized that managerial divergent thinking is predicted by high openness to experience and low agreeableness. On the other hand, because efficient people management involves generating satisfying and trustful social interactions, it is hypothesized that convergent-integrative thinking ability is predicted by high agreeableness. In all, 137 adult participants completed two divergent-exploratory thinking managerial tasks and two convergent-integrative thinking managerial task and the Big Five Inventory (John and Srivastava, 1999).

As expected, divergent-exploratory thinking was predicted by openness to experience (r=0.21; p<0.05) and agreeableness (r=−0.22; p<0.05) and the convergent-integrative thinking part of managerial creative problem solving was predicted by agreeableness (r=0.28; p<0.001).

Contrary to most research on managerial creativity (e.g. Scratchley and Hakstian, 2001), the study focuses (and provides measure guidelines) on both divergent and convergent thinking dimensions of creative potential. This study replicates and extends previous results regarding the link between personality (especially agreeableness) and managerial creativity.

This chapter uses reflexive praxis to advance a framework for developing creative virtuosities for entrepreneurs based on four interrelated aspects: finding their own voice and passion at work; unleashing creativity and imagination at work; working collaboratively toward innovation; and handling complexity and integrative thinking. These four creative virtuosities emerged from observations and exploratory interviews with training program participants on five different occasions in Turkey, the UK, and Canada. They are illustrated through four arts-based metaphors: poetry; theater; orchestra; and jazz. The core premise of this chapter is that these four virtuosities can provide entrepreneurs with a sound basis and a wealth of knowledge on developing creative solutions to new socioeconomic challenges of prospective radical technological and economic changes.

Previous research on the relationship between cheif executive officer (CEO) and organizational performance focused primarily on behavior and demographic variables, but was seldom based on the CEO cognition perspective. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between CEO cognition and organizational performance.

Taking CEO golden‐mean thinking as an independent variable, organizational performance as dependent variable, ambidextrous orientation as a mediating variable, interdependence and connectedness as moderating variables, and using a multi‐source data collection approach, data were collected from 193 Chinese firms to test the hypothesis by adopting hierarchical regression model.

CEO golden‐mean thinking is found to have significantly positive impacts on ambidextrous orientation and organizational performance. Ambidextrous orientation plays a partial mediating role between golden‐mean thinking and organizational performance, while independence and connectedness play joint moderating roles between ambidextrous orientation and organizational performance. The three‐way interaction among ambidextrous orientation, connectedness, and interdependence has a significantly positive effect on organizational performance.

CEOs should not only improve organizational performance through diversified, harmonious, and integrative thinking, but also enhance the ambidextrous ability by building ambidextrous orientation, connectedness, and interdependence mechanism in order to promote organizational performance.

As one of the most salient thinking characteristics in Chinese traditional culture, golden‐mean thinking increasingly has attracted scholars' attention. However, no previous scholar has applied this construct into leadership theory.

The main aim of the paper is to show the necessary convergence of two promising but under‐explored research fields, intellectics and inventics, into a new one, that of intellectual invention, and to discuss new ways of thinking which can be efficient in building an invention culture.

These purposes are achieved in an interdisciplinary way, in which the various scientific approaches are governed by a philosophical perspective that ensures the conceptual level and the unity of the discourse. The philosophical approach itself is practised in several specific fields and at various levels, being used in order to lay the foundations of a new domain of research. Specific theoretical problems are elucidated through concrete examples furnished by sciences and discussed from the perspective of inventics. Graphical representations help in giving a systemic and integrative perception of complex issues.

The paper defines in a comprehensive way the two partially studied and till now separately conceived research fields; delimitates and characterizes a new domain of study, of crucial theoretical and practical interest; analyses some types of intellectual techniques involved in all sorts of inventive activity; identifies the main new ways of thinking encouraged by the information technologies and shows their forms and manifestations, as well as the new values promoted by their development. There are proposed some improvements on sociological thinking from the perspective of inventive thinking. The emergence of an invention ethics is anticipated as a necessary component of an invention culture.

Proposes a new field of research, that of the intellectual invention, analyses the main instruments of its study and development, and uses the results of different sciences in order to lay the philosophical foundations of invention ethics as part of the future invention culture.

Chapter 16 is an introduction to systems thinking and analyzing the system dynamics of relationships within an organization or between organizations. Systems thinking builds on the propositions that (1) all variables or conditions have both dependent and independent relationships, (2) lag effects occur in relationships, (3) feedback relationships occur (e.g., A→B→C→A), and (4) seemingly minor relationships (i.e., “hidden demons”) have huge influence in causing a set of relationships (i.e., a system) to implode or explode. The propositions of building and testing a set of relationships apply in many contexts; this chapter examines systems thinking and system dynamics in one context as an introduction to this stream of case study research. Hall (1976) provides details of an advanced application of systems dynamics research – do not be fooled by the date of the study; Hall (1976) is an exceptional up-to-date case research study using system dynamics modeling. This chapter describes the issues and criticisms concerning golf, tourism, and the environment and considers how golf–tourism–environment relationships might achieve economic well-being for a region while avoiding vicious cycles of destruction to local environments and the quality of life of local residents. The examination proposes the use of systems thinking, cause mapping, and system dynamics modeling and simulations of golf, tourism, and environmental relationships to help achieve workable solutions agreeable to all stakeholders. Sustainable relationships that include golf, tourism, and environmental objectives require crafting government policies via stakeholder participation of all parties that such relationships affect – recognizing and enabling this requirement needs to be done explicitly – to reduce conflicts among stakeholders and avoid system failures.