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The present dissertation applies findings from the field of cognitive psychology to the business context. Specifically, it examines the influence of different types of similarity on decisions in the areas of innovation and strategy. Similarity and related concepts, such as strategic fit, play an important role in these fields, such as when generating or assessing the value of ideas. However, recent findings in cognitive psychology, indicating that a purely taxonomic, traditional model of similarity does not capture the entire picture of similarity, have widely been ignored in the business context.
Two entities are taxonomically similar if they belong to the same category based on features they share (e.g., dog and cat). In contrast, entities are thematically similar if they co-occur or interact in the same scenario or event (e.g., dog and bone). Thematic thinking builds on the latter type of similarity. The present dissertation focuses on the role thematic similarity plays in managerial decision making and takes the first steps toward establishing thematic thinking as a business-relevant concept, using a multi-study approach. After explaining the conceptual basis of thematic thinking, hypotheses are derived and tested, using four different samples of field data and applying different methods of data collection. The main body of the dissertation comprises four empirical studies.
The first study that is presented examines individual antecedents and outcomes of thematic thinking based on a sample using survey data from 199 individuals. Positive affect and experience are shown to be positively related to thematic thinking. A negative relationship is postulated for thematic thinking and formal education; the relationship found is indeed negative, yet not significant. The empirical findings related to the outcomes of thematic thinking turn out to be the opposite of the postulated relationships: creativity is found to be significantly negatively related to thematic thinking, while adaptation is significantly positively related to it.
The second empirical study investigates the relationship between thematic thinking and individual performance within the research and development (R&D) context. The findings are based on a sample of 172 R&D professionals. As hypothesized, a significant positive relationship between thematic thinking and innovativeness as well as job performance are hown. The relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is mediated by innovativeness. Furthermore, post-hoc analyses reveal that the relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is moderated by political skill.