In today's dynamic commercial landscape characterized by volatility, complexity, and uncertainty, chief executive officers (CEOs) particularly require advanced information processing capabilities for effective navigation. Dialectical thinking, an overarching and sophisticated information processing style that involves seeing the world in a changeable, contradictory, and holistic way (Peng & Nisbett, 1999), stands out such an capability well-suited for navigating uncertainty and has been widely examined in management at both individual and team levels. This article extends the existing research by integrating the dialectical thinking literature into upper echelons theory to explore its influence at the firm level. We argue that CEO dialectical thinking predicts firm R&D intensity and new product performance through the successive mediation of cognitive flexibility and information search. We further draw on information processing theory to elaborate how these sequentially indirect effects are more positive when environmental uncertainty is high versus low. The theorized model was tested across two studies: an online experiment (Study 1) and a field study with a large CEO sample from China (Study 2). Our results consistently supported our model, shedding light on the impact of dialectical thinking on innovation decision. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
