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This paper aims to focus on the thinking styles of a group of Accounting students, and to determine whether team teaching by two criteria-specific lecturers can be an effective collaborative teaching approach to accommodate students’ diverse learning preferences. Research on thinking and learning processes led to a four-quadrant whole-brain model of people’s thinking styles and associated learning preferences. The model can be used to identify and accommodate students’ diverse thinking styles and learning preferences.

A case study approach was followed, using multiple data collection methods. The thinking styles of 288 students and two lecturers were surveyed using a thinking style questionnaire and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. The results of the collaborative teaching approach were obtained by way of a survey questionnaire providing both quantitative and qualitative feedback, as well as a SWOT analysis completed by the involved lecturers.

The main results suggest that a collaborative teaching approach can address students’ diverse learning preferences, although some students may find constant switching between lecturers distracting.

The collaborative teaching approach in the teaching interaction cannot be isolated. Collaborative teaching was not repeated or extended due to resource constraints.

Academics from all disciplines recognise a need for a teaching practice that addresses students’ diverse learning preferences. Hitherto, outside of special education, collaborative teaching has received little scholarly attention, especially as an approach to address tertiary students’ diverse learning preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of a balanced or versatile linear and nonlinear pattern of thinking style in contributing to effective innovative capability of individuals and their organizations.

The relationship between these individual thinking style dimensions and the development of an innovative corporate culture that encourages linear/nonlinear thinking style balance and versatility, and how their mutual interaction may contribute to successful innovation management within organizations are considered.

The paper discusses how organizational leaders and other employees through collective development to a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style can develop a corporate culture that in turn is supportive of organizational innovation.

Implications for future research on organizational innovation are discussed involving composition of organizational executives and work group members relative to linear/nonlinear thinking style.

Individual linear/nonlinear thinking style balanced skill development and the formation of a supportive and reinforcing organizational culture have important implications for developing organizational intrapreneurship and innovation in medium‐sized and larger organizations leading to increased productivity.

This paper explores how the collective development of individual linear/nonlinear thinking style balance can contribute to a more supportive corporate culture for organizational innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to validate cognitive style (i.e. linear, nonlinear, and balanced thinking) with innovation intentions and behaviors. It was hypothesized that a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style and the inclination toward more innovative intentions are strongly related.

A survey questionnaire of business students in the USA and France was employed. Formally validated measures of thinking style and innovation were replicated in this project.

The results of an analysis of 186 respondents found a significant, direct relationship between balanced thinking style and innovative intention and behavior measures.

The results demonstrate that cognitive style and innovation are related, but the direct validation of actual innovative behaviors, in situ, needs to be included in the next step of this research stream. Further, the composition of groups can also be evaluated using these measures.

This is the first successful attempt to validate cognitive style measures with innovation outcome measures. These measures are now available for organizational testing, field research, and assessing team composition.

This is one of the first criterion-validity assessments of a cognitive measure related to linear and nonlinear thinking style. There are two important implications of these results. First, the authors now have a better understanding of one the links between cognition and innovation. Second, the authors have established a solid base for future research on this subject, including the importance of this effect in practice.

This study was to ascertain the validity of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government for Tibetan ethnic minority university students and to compare the thinking styles of Tibetan students with those of the Han Chinese majority students. Participants were 408 Tibetan students and 920 Han Chinese students. Furthermore, focus group interviews were conducted with two Tibetan scholars and 11 Tibetan students. Results indicated that compared with the Han students, Tibetan students scored significantly higher on the more norm-conforming thinking styles but significantly lower on the creativity-generating styles. Moreover, Tibetan students indicated a stronger preference for working with others as opposed to working independently. Discussions of these findings focus on the impact of Tibet's culture and economy upon students' thinking styles.

Integrating conceptual perspectives from social exclusion, thinking style and context effects, this study aims to examine how different types of social exclusion influence attraction and compromise effects.

Eight studies were conducted. To establish the causal relationship between social exclusion types and context effects, this study uses experimental designs in all studies.

The attraction effect is stronger when consumers feel rejected than ignored, whereas the compromise effect is stronger when they feel ignored than rejected. Consumers who feel rejected increase their propensity to think holistically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for asymmetrically dominant options. Conversely, those who feel ignored increase their propensity to think analytically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for compromise options.

The findings show that consumer preferences for one option over the other alternatives in choice contexts are susceptible to subtle differences in the manner that exclusion is communicated. The studies are limited to recall tasks and scenarios that previous research has shown to be effective. Future research may use actual exclusion to corroborate this study’s findings.

Marketing practitioners may benefit from this study’s findings when it comes to an increase in the relative share of their target brand against their competitor brands by introducing a third option.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to provide evidence that exclusion communicated in an explicit manner produces the attraction effect, whereas exclusion communicated in an implicit manner produces the compromise effect. Given that threatening situations often influence individuals’ preferences and choices, how social exclusion shapes cognitive processes is an empirical question worthy of investigation.

This article aims to examine how a person’s thinking style, specifically holistic versus analytic, and a firm’s crisis apology with the remedial solution framed in “why” (vs “how”) terms can interactively impact consumers’ perceived efficacy of the firm to respond to the crisis and their impression or evaluation of the brand.

Hypotheses were tested through three experimental studies involving 308 participants recruited in China. Participants answered survey questions investigating the interactive effects from consumers’ thinking style (culture as a proxy in Study 1, measured in Study 2 or primed in Study 3) and a brand’s crisis apology with the remedial solution framed in “why” (vs “how”) terms on consumers’ perceived efficacy and evaluation of the firm.

The frame of the remedial solution resulting in a higher evaluation improvement depended on a consumer’s thinking style. For holistic thinkers, a “why” (vs “how”) framed remedial solution resulted in a higher evaluation improvement; however, for analytic thinkers, a “how” (vs “why”) framed remedial solution resulted in a higher evaluation improvement. Additionally, the results showed that a consumer’s perceived efficacy of the brand being able to successfully respond to the crisis mediated the interactive effects of the remedial solution framing and thinking styles on the evaluation improvement.

The findings provide evidence that framing of the remedial solution can be leveraged as a tool to reduce negative impact resulting from a brand crisis. Specifically, the results suggest that companies may do well to employ a “why” framed remedial solution, particularly in cases where consumers are likely to process information holistically. Conversely, a “how” framed remedial solution may be effective in situations where consumers are likely to process information analytically.

This research contributes to the literature, being among the first to consider how the remedial solution framing in a firm’s apology can enhance people’s evaluation of the brand and decrease the perceived negative impact resulting from the brand crisis.

Drawing upon Sternberg's theory of mental self‐government, this paper aims to investigate the thinking styles and workplace experiences of 152 human resource (HR) practitioners pursuing Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) membership. It seeks to explore whether their thinking styles complemented their jobs and consider the implications for the CIPD's notion of the “thinking performer”.

A two‐part questionnaire, including the Thinking Styles Inventory‐Revised II (Sternberg et al.) is completed by the research participants to identify their Type I (creativity‐generating) and Type II (norm‐favouring) thinking styles. Six focus group sessions are also conducted to gather insights about the participants' workplace experiences.

On average, participants scored more highly on Type I thinking styles. Although this suggested their thinking styles are consistent with the “thinking performer” ideal, focus group participants doubted whether the creativity‐generating attributes of Type I suited the reality of the HR function, which is described as being awash with rule bound behaviours. Particularly, this is the experience of junior staff, who felt unable to challenge senior management or contribute to the bigger picture. Correlation coefficients revealed that age, length of service with current organization and perceived autonomy at work are the most significant socialisation variables.

Emphasis on strategic matters in CIPD courses needs to be balanced with a greater recognition of the operational and routine reality of much HR practice.

This represents the first known attempt to test thinking performer construct amongst HR practitioners. The study combines questionnaire and focus group methods.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the relationship between thinking styles with creativity in physical education teachers.

The research method is descriptive – applied and based on related purpose it was applicative. The study's statistical community includes all physical education teachers in the middle period in Iran and their numbers at the time of the study were 600 individuals. The statistical sample using a Morgan table was selected to be 235 individuals. To measure research variables two questionnaires (Sternberg thinking style and creativity, Torrance, 1972) were used. To calculate the validity of the questionnaire questions, Cronbach's α test was used, and the obtained α for the thinking style questionnaire and creativity were equal to 0.86 and 0.89, respectively. Descriptive and inferential statistics were also used in this study, which in statistical inference section (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman correlation coefficient, Friedman ranking test and t-test) were used.

The results showed that there is no significant relationship between individual characteristics (gender, education and work experience) and styles of thinking, but there is significant relationship between creativity and thinking style. Besides, there is a meaningful difference between creativity with thinking style. In the ranking between thinking style factors, significant differences were observed and at the end some proposals were stated.

The theoretical framework provides a new direction for conceptualizing research, development and practice, designed to promote thinking, creativity in education and other sectors in a new era of globalization and great transformation.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the underlying mechanisms of entrepreneurs' passion, orientation and behavior by investigating the role of rational and nonrational cognitive elements. Building on dual process theory and sociointuitionism, a conceptual model is proposed in order to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and strategic entrepreneurship behavior (SEB). Specifically, entrepreneurs' linear thinking styles (System 2) and nonlinear thinking styles (System 1) are hypothesized as being significant moderators of such a relationship.

Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) is used to empirically validate the proposed conceptual model and test the moderating hypotheses on a sample of 300 entrepreneurs actively involved in European small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Entrepreneurial passion is shown to be a significant antecedent of EO, which, in turn, strongly influences SEB. Moreover, entrepreneurs' linear thinking style positively moderates the EO-SEB relationship, but not the link between passion and EO. Instead, a nonlinear thinking style positively moderates the relationship between passion and EO, but not the links between EO and SEB.

Entrepreneurs should trust their nonlinear thinking style – related to affective/emotive and intuitive information processing systems – to foster the effect of their entrepreneurial passion on EO. Furthermore, entrepreneurs should rely on a linear thinking style, namely the rational and deliberative cognitive processes, to enhance the impact of their EO on SEB.

Dual process theory and sociointuitionism are integrated to simultaneously investigate the effect of nonrational and rational cognitive mechanisms on entrepreneurs' orientation and behavior. Moreover, the proposed model is empirically tested on a sample of entrepreneurs working in SMEs located in Europe, which have received little attention from entrepreneurship scholars in comparison to their US counterparts. The authors’ findings suggest important implications for entrepreneurs, policymakers and entrepreneurial universities educators.