The structural positioning of individuals within organisational social networks plays a pivotal role in shaping cognitive processes, yet its influence on systems thinking remains insufficiently examined. Systems thinking, defined as the ability to recognise interdependencies, feedback loops, and emergent patterns in complex environments, is critical for effective decision-making and problem-solving. However, the extent to which an individual's network position enhances or constrains systems thinking remains unclear.

This study addresses this gap by employing Social Network Analysis and the Systems Thinking Scale developed by Davis and Stroink (2016) to assess how four centrality measures - degree, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality - affect systems thinking capabilities. Data were collected from 114 employees in knowledge-intensive firms, capturing workplace interactions and evaluating systems thinking through a Likert-scale survey.

Findings indicate a positive relationship between network centrality and systems thinking ability. Eigenvector centrality emerged as the strongest predictor, suggesting that individuals embedded within well-connected, influential clusters develop superior systemic insights. Closeness centrality also demonstrated a notable effect, highlighting the cognitive benefits of rapid access to diverse perspectives. In contrast, betweenness centrality had a weaker predictive effect, indicating that while brokers facilitate information flow, they may lack sustained engagement in systemic thought.

These findings highlight the critical role of social network structure in shaping individual's systems thinking. Organisations can enhance strategic decision-making and innovation by identifying and leveraging individuals in key network positions. Future research should explore causal mechanisms and longitudinal dynamics to further elucidate how social connectivity fosters the development of systems thinking over time.

Literature on team leadership tends to focus predominantly on individual attributes that make effective leader or on relational strategies that leaders should employ in order to get desired outcomes. Much less attention is paid to social relationships in which leaders are embedded. Following the classical structural approach, leadership is viewed as a role that is constrained by the structure of social relationship in the network. To explore these ideas, we used the data from a survey of teams and team leaders from Slovenian and Finnish organizations using a whole-network survey method. For each of the 23 teams in the sample the survey obtained complete network data for advice and socializing networks. We calculated network density, different measures of centrality and range and used the network properties in exploratory cluster analysis obtaining four distinct clusters. The analysis suggested that team leaders had four different types of networks indicating four different leadership roles with further implications on team performance. The key contribution of this paper is in the departure from standard analysis of “leadership styles” that leaders can pick at will, showing instead that leadership roles are based in the structure of social relationships that constrain and define their role as leaders.

While corporate strategy has traditionally been perceived as an exclusive and relatively ‘closed’ activity, recent research shows a shift towards more open approaches to strategy work. Benefits include the leveraging of expertise of a wider range of actors, enabling the creation of better strategies, as well as allowing the distribution of valuable strategic knowledge across different levels of a firm, facilitating strategy implementation. The scale of the open strategy literature is still relatively small, but the pace of publication is increasing.

The purpose of this project is to focus on the obstacles and enablers for participation in open strategy settings. In support of this, a systematic literature review and thematic analysis has been conducted; themes identified in this review focus on issues around inclusion, participation, transparency and technology. From a methodology perspective, the intention is to apply a mixed-method approach to gather data via a longitudinal study at a corporate organisation (access already secured). The intended methods are a mix of qualitative (semi-structured interviews/focus groups), quantitative (surveys collecting data on participation, inclusion, transparency and technology), and network data (to capture data on relational dynamics over time, largely missing in open strategy research to date). This combination of methods, network analysis in particular, is new in the open strategy literature.

The aim is to provide a response to calls from the literature for more empirical work on participation in open strategy; this research will also be of interest to organisations seeking to open up their strategizing processes.

This study investigates the role of communication ties in shaping the synchronization of social loafing behaviors among employees. While prior research has documented various antecedents of social loafing, the impact of social networks remains relatively underexplored. Grounded in social influence theory, this study examines how the existence of communication ties between dyadic pairs influences the disparities in their levels of social loafing. Furthermore, we differentiate the effects of strong and weak communication ties on social loafing and explore how these effects are contingent on age disparity. Our data were collected from all employees in a Chinese technology company. Communication ties were assessed using a roster-based survey, where participants identified colleagues they communicate with and reported the frequency of communication to characterize the strength of communication ties. Dyadic pairs were categorized as having no communication ties, weak communication ties, or strong communication ties. Our results reveal that dyads with strong communication ties exhibit significantly smaller differences in social loafing levels, while the presence of weak communication ties exhibits insignificant effects on differences in social loafing between dyads. Additionally, our findings show that age disparity negatively moderates the effect of weak communication ties, suggesting that larger age gaps may hinder the influence of weaker ties on the convergence of social loafing. However, age disparity does not significantly moderate the effect of strong communication ties. This study advances our understanding of how to leverage communication dynamics between employees to mitigate social loafing and enhance collective productivity within organizations.