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Individual differences cause many differences in human behaviour, and the first source of these differences is personality. In various organisations, employees are encouraged to manage conflict through conflict management styles. The way people think can be an essential factor in their ability to conflict management. Difficult employees are individuals who constantly use problematic communication styles to express their feelings and thoughts to direct the behaviour of others. This empirical study aims to investigate the effect of thinking styles on individuals’ conflict management in dealing with difficult personalities.

To achieve the research purpose, a gamified situation was designed, and a survey was performed in laboratory settings and on an online platform. At first, participants’ reactions were measured in the simulated conflict management situation dealing with difficult personalities; subsequently, the dominant thinking style of participants was measured by the rational-experiential inventory (REI) and the cognitive reflection test. At the end, participants answered a series of demographic questions.

The collected data were then analysed by regression analysis. Based on the findings of this study, the rational thinking measured by the REI40 has a significant and positive effect on the performance of individuals in conflict management with difficult personalities in an organisational context; in other words, rational thinking leads to better performance in conflict management than experiential thinking.

The value of this article lies in the direct study of the impact of thinking styles on conflict management, which was done by focusing on difficult organisational personalities. Also, using gamification in research design is another research initiative.

Any reasonably advanced practice is a blend of rational thinking, thinking structured by concepts and numerical representations rendering the world static and immovable, and intuitive thinking, a mode of knowing operating “in‐between” concepts and representations and, therefore, are apprehending the fluid and fleeting nature of being. When moving from being a novice to an expert practitioner, the actor must both appropriate rational thinking and increasingly, as experience is acquired, draw on intuitive thinking. For the novice, the concern is however that intuitive thinking is complicated to articulate or represent but is primarily acquired through years of experience and practice. The paper seeks to discuss practice as a term that includes both these two elements of thinking.

The paper uses empirical examples from nursing work, financial trading, and scientific research to further develop the concept of practice.

The paper suggests that “skilled coping” of expert practitioners are examined as a gradual appropriation and combining of rational and intuitive thinking. The difficulty of becoming a skilled practitioner is, inter alia, to acquire inarticulate know‐how through collaboration with experienced peers.

The paper seeks to discuss the concept of practice based on process philosophy underlining the distinction between rational and intuitive thinking, yet emphasizing their mutual constitution in the domain of practice. The concept of practice is thus anchored in a solid theoretical framework capable of exploring some of the difficulties involved in acquiring expert skills.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how multiple logic systems employed by project managers lead to manifold understandings of two foundational project management constructs (“project” and “planning”) that in turn influence both the practice of project management and project outcomes.

Largely conceptual in nature, this paper focuses on the language project managers use to make sense of projects and plans, seeking to get beyond the surface recitation of discourse to the underlying logic systems that influence practice. The discussion is illustrated with stories of practice, collected through interpretive phenomenological interviews with project managers perceived by their peers to demonstrate special skill or knowledge in successfully delivering projects, and reference to project management doctrine embedded in professional standards.

Expert project managers use multiple thinking styles to adapt their practice to emergent project issues. While instrumental rationality helps project managers focus on how to do things, other rationalities, particularly those labeled non‐rational, help them to decide what to do and why to do it. Expert judgment and practice supported by intuitive, holistic, and relational thinking allows project managers to navigate a sophisticated journey from ambiguity to accomplishment.

This paper illustrates how practice research can deconstruct interpretive phenomenological interviews to get beyond identifying the “what”, or empirical evidence, of practice to explore unique individual habitus that inform each individual's practice. Understanding the actions of expert project managers navigating between prescribed project management doctrine and their own praxis opens a space for us to rethink how we research, teach, and talk about project management.

This paper provides insight into the value and implications of practice‐based research by illustrating: how research grounded in practice identifies and raises more complex questions than professional doctrine currently reflects; and how simplifications utilizing duality as a means of theorizing (i.e. “hard” versus “soft”, rational versus non‐rational, etc.) is neither useful nor reflected in expert practice.

Leadership and organisational change starts with thinking: thinking about problems, thinking about possibilities and thinking about capabilities. But thinking never occurs in a vacuum. Long gone are the days when a chief executive officer would disappear for weeks with a towel over their head only to reappear to announce ‘the strategy’ to the organisation. Thinking is of course a social activity that sees people coming together to develop and share ideas. The job of leadership is to exercise mastery over the process of social thinking in order to engage workers, to generate innovative ideas and to bring about change where needed. This paper considers the habits of social thinking, with reference to those found in the UK Civil Service, and proposes tools for leaders to significantly enhance their success.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The last 15 years or so have seen the emergence of a powerful management philosophy known as value‐based management (VBM). The premiss underlying this philosophy is that management’s primary responsibility is to maximize value for shareholders. Much of the work which has been done in this field has focused on value measurement rather than value creation. Argues that we need to shift the focus from value measurement to value creation and to do this, we need to accept that shareholder value creation is a creative act, not an analytical process. Value creation requires a combination of creative and analytical thinking skills. These skills can be developed, and if properly integrated into a hybrid thinking process, can lead to better strategies, better financial performance and much more satisfied employees.

The role of intuition receives little attention in the literature on organizational creativity. This paper describes a study of the role of intuition and its implications for organizational creativity within pharmaceutical research. The study applies French philosopher Bergson's philosophy of intuition. The study is based on a series of interviews with employees in pre‐clinical research (discovery) in a major pharmaceutical company; in this context, creativity is defined as an organization's ability to bring forth a new candidate drug in the gastrointestinal and cardiovascular therapy areas. This paper concludes that intuition is a resource that facilitates new drug development. Pharmaceutical researchers perceive the roles of intuition and creativity as intertwined in ground‐breaking innovations. However intuition is a controversial phenomenon in the organization because it opposes reductionistic and analytical forms of thinking, which are highly prized in new drug development. Bergson's philosophy may form a fruitful foundation from which intuition and its relevance for organizational creativity can be exploited.

This chapter explores the nature of science and different values that underpin science as a way of thinking and acting. While teachers and learners can interpret values differently, the focus of this chapter will be on:

• Building a shared understanding of values and how they may manifest in the science classroom;

• How such a shared understanding can be developed in teachers through professional learning opportunities;

• How professional learning involves experiencing reaching consensus from positions of difference and looks at the role this plays in new scientific knowledge being accepted;

• How values might be embedded in teaching and learning of science and the implications of this for teaching a diversity of students. Teacher reflections captured in the form of cases provide various examples which identify what inclusive practices might look like in primary and secondary classrooms.

Building a shared understanding of values and how they may manifest in the science classroom;

How such a shared understanding can be developed in teachers through professional learning opportunities;

How professional learning involves experiencing reaching consensus from positions of difference and looks at the role this plays in new scientific knowledge being accepted;

How values might be embedded in teaching and learning of science and the implications of this for teaching a diversity of students. Teacher reflections captured in the form of cases provide various examples which identify what inclusive practices might look like in primary and secondary classrooms.

The dual process of thinking between conscious processes and unconscious processes generate a different decision. Thinking consciously produces rational decisions. However, a person’s cognitive limitation makes him or her simplify complex scenarios and think implicitly result in making decision in heuristics or rules of thumbs. This paper aims to evaluate patterns of decision-making relationships and dual motives for home purchasing by first home buyers and family life cycle in Indonesia.

Collecting data was done by distributing questionnaires to home buyers within three years (2013-2016). Further data were processed using ANOVA based on group of dual motives, time for buyer and family life cycle.

The results show that buyers have consumption motives in buying a residence and they behave rational, while investors prefer to buy an apartment and tend to behave heuristics. Dual motives of time for buyers are not significant to decision model. Family life cycle is significant to decision model based on dual motives.

This is an unpublished dissertation study to qualify for graduation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the knowledge dynamics process based on the energy metaphor and the thermodynamics framework. Knowledge dynamics is analyzed as a transformational process that goes beyond the Newtonian logic used to date.

The research design is based on metaphorical thinking, critical analysis of the mostly used knowledge metaphors to date, and the logic of thermodynamics, which is the science of energy transformation.

Knowledge is conceived as a field, composed of three fundamental forms: rational knowledge, emotional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. Each form of knowledge can be transformed into another form, thus generating an iterative and interactive dynamics. The unity of knowledge is supported by the brain’s organic structure.

Understanding knowledge dynamics as a transformational process helps managers in their problem-solving and implementation of strategies in their organizations. Knowledge dynamics is fundamental to the learning and unlearning processes, and for stimulating innovation. Knowledge dynamics, as a transformational process, is influencing both organizational behavior as well as consumers’ behavior.

The present research uses for the first time a thermodynamics approach in understanding and explaining the knowledge dynamics, which is a transformational process of three fundamental forms of knowledge: rational, emotional and spiritual.