In response to calls for changes to make management education more relevant in increasingly ‘messy’ unpredictable and complex business contexts, we report in this paper on a more situated, exploratory learning approach emphasizing experimentation, intuition and imaginative reflection. We explore an alternative approach to teaching management in a Thai Master's program using an emic-idiographic, interpretivist approach. In doing so, we do not claim generalizability of findings as the focus is in providing a ‘thick description’ of an innovative pedagogy and its effectiveness for a particular group of Thai learners in a business school in Bangkok. Through the literature on design thinking and embodied realism, we present an abductive tool particularly suited for the Thai cultural context as it encouraged students to uncover their intuitive insights and to experiment with imaginative exploration and reflection. We report on using this exploratory tool in Thai management classrooms and elaborate on cultural challenges as well as learning benefits we discovered, such as students developing a deeper level of intuitive understanding of organizational issues and exploring the pluralism of meaning-making among team members. We commend the approach as a potentially valuable alternative to what Kuepers & Pauleen (2015) call the dominant ‘cogni-centrism’ in management education. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd