Thematic Ideation - Antecedents and Consequences of Individuals' Thematic Similarity Recognition

Work on thematic thinking, an individual's preference for basing decisions and cognitive processes on thematic similarity, has been developed recently. These preferences also build the basis for idea generation (thematic ideation) and evaluation processes. Research results indicate that there are inter-individual differences in these preferences. We apply these findings from the field of cognition to the business context and theoretically develop and empirically test a set of antecedents and consequences of thematic thinking. Results indicate that experience and positive affect are positively related to thematic thinking. The consequences that were examined, adaptation and creativity, showed relations which were reverse to the ones hypothesized based on related prior literature. Counter-intuitively, adaptation is positively related to thematic thinking, while creativity is negatively related. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications and highlight avenues for future research on thematic thinking.