Testing the Theory of Good Thinking and Deciding in Organizational Setting: Many Benefits of Leader’s Actively Open-Minded Thinking

Abstract

The aim of this work was to test the theory of good thinking and deciding in organizational context by examining the relationships between leaders’ Actively Open-Minded Thinking (AOT) and different employee level outcomes. Across two studies in which we surveyed managers and their subordinates, we have shown that manager’s AOT positively correlated with subordinate-rated decision-making quality and intellectual humility of their superiors, as well as with subordinates’ ratings of their teams’ psychological safety and their own job satisfaction and feeling of organizational support. We conclude that AOT is the disposition that predisposes some managers to patterns of thinking and behavior that are observable and highly valued by their subordinates, resulting in a range of beneficial outcomes for employees, and that it might be worthwhile to investigate how we can teach managers to think in more actively open-minded way.