Adapting and thriving in the modern workplace

By Alexandra Richter

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The ability to change the way you think in response to different situations is essential for success in navigating today’s unpredictable world, according to research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Annals, the article demonstrated that understanding the different aspects of flexible thought processes can help organizational scholars improve theories about employee behavior and decision making.

“Our review gives a systematic view that improves how we understand cognitive flexibility,” says study co-author Danielle Tussing, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management. “It also provides shared terminology for management scholars to use when conducting additional research in the future.”

The researchers analyzed 576 scholarly articles using text analysis and manual coding and discovered that cognitive flexibility involves five different thought processes. They further grouped these processes into three distinct forms of cognitive flexibility: changing how we think about a given stimulus, managing conflicting thoughts, and switching between different ways of thinking in response to the environment.

“Analyzing cognitive flexibility from multiple angles allows for greater nuance in understanding how it can influence creativity, adaptability, leadership, global work and conflict,” says Tussing.

Understanding different aspects of flexible thinking opens new research areas, like how adaptable thinking can be used in various situations, whether different thinking styles conflict, and how these styles can be taught and improved.

Tussing collaborated on the study with Shefali V. Patil, PhD, associate professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and Santosh Srinivas, PhD, assistant professor of management and human resources at HEC Paris.