COGNITIVE STYLE AND BUSINESS POSTGRADUATES IN TURKEY:
PRELIMINARY FINDINGS
SALİM ATAY
Research Assistant
Doctoral Candidate
Tel.: 0212 507 99 25
Fax: 0212 575 43 64
e-mail: [email protected]
SİNAN ARTAN
Professor
Chair of Management and Organization
Marmara University
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences
İşletme Bölümü, İncirli/İSTANBUL
Key Words:
Cognition, Cognitive Style, Cognitive Style Index, Analytic, Intuitive.
Summary:
This study attempts to measure the cognitive style of business postgraduate students
and its variation with demographic variables. A recently developed Cognitive Style Index
(CSI), which is appropriate for this study was administered to 152 business postgraduates.
The CSI considers the intuitive and analytical dimensions of information processing, two key
elements which underlie cognitive style. Of the ten demographic categories, participants have
scored significantly different on the CSI index. These variables are, namely education level of
participant’s mother, religion, political affiliation, and income level. No significant
differences, however, found between the CSI index and the variables including gender, level
of graduate study, field of study, education level of participant’s father, religiosity, place of
grown up.
INTRODUCTION
During the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in cognitive style among
management researchers and practitioners. Cognitive style is a person’s preferred way of
gathering, processing, and evaluating information. It influences how people scan their
environment for information, how they organize and interpret this information, and how they
integrate their interpretations into the mental model and subjective theories that guide their
action (Hayes & Allinson, 1998).
Lezak (1995) conceptualizes behavior in terms of three functional systems: (1)
cognition, which is the information-handling aspect of behavior; (2) emotionality, which
concerns feelings and motivation; and (3) executive function, which have to do with how
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behavior is expressed. Of these aspects of behavior, cognition is the way a person acquires,
stores and uses knowledge. The four major classes of cognitive functions have their analogues
in the computer operations of input, storage, processing (e.g., sorting, combining, relating
data in various ways), and output.
The literature on cognitive styles has various implications for management practice as
well as organizational psychology. First, understanding one’s cognitive style is an important
facet of any self-development process and should begin to develop a knowledge and
understanding of their own cognitive style. Second a number of cognitive style dimensions
may be useful in personnel selection. Another work-oriented application of cognitive style is
in the area of careers guidance and counseling. Cognitive style can have also important
implications for task design, team composition, conflict management, training and
development. Finally, helping people understand the implications of their own and others’
cognitive style can provide a basis for team building and individual and group counseling
activities designed to foster better working relationships (Kirton, 1980).
The wide variety of previous studies on cognitive style dimensions have led to the
proliferation of empirical studies using different measures of cognitive styles, which have
resulted in a complex and confusing field of study. A more serious problem, however, has
been the lack of valid and reliable measures appropriate for use in various organization
settings (see Hayes and Allinson, 1994 for a detailed review). Building on an extensive
review of literature, Allinson and Hayes (1996) developed a new measure of cognitive style
that is psychometrically sound and convenient to administer in organizational studies.
Through this instrument, they were able to reduce the wide variety of styles conceptualized in
the literature to a single, superordinate dimension hypothesized by many theorists.
This measure of cognitive style, so-called Cognitive Style Index (CSI) (Allinson &
Hayes, 1996), is appropriate for this study, because it considers the intuitive and analytical
dimensions of information processing, two key elements which underlie cognitive style.
People tend to favor one cognitive style over another and their style may fall along a
continuum between the two end points of intuition and analysis.
Intuition, characteristic of the right brain orientation, refers to immediate judgment
based on feeling and the adoption of a global perspective. Analysis, characteristic of the left
brain orientation, refers to judgment based on mental reasoning and a focus on detail. These
right-left patterns are not merely transient; people seem to have a rather permanent stylistic
orientation to the use of one hemisphere. Intuitivists (right-brain dominant) tend to be
relatively nonconformist, prefer an open-ended approach to problem solving, rely on random
methods of exploration, remember spatial images most easily, and work best with ideas
requiring overall assessment. Analysts (left-brain dominant) tend to be more compliant, favor
a structured approach to problem solving, depend on systematic methods of investigation,
recall verbal material most readily and are especially comfortable with ideas requiring step by
step analysis.
A similar typology has been provided by Wilson, 1988 (quoted in Hayes and Allison,
1994), where he identified different functions associated with the right and left hemispheres.
These functions according to Wilson, are reflected in the characteristics of many cognitive
styles. Using Trotter’s (1986) functions to categorize a selection of styles, Miller proposed his
typology which is shown in Table 1.
As part of a broader, ongoing research project, the purpose of this paper is to develop
a preliminary examination of the cognitive style of postgraduate business students at Marmara
University of Turkey. The second and third stage of the project will explore the cognitive
style of managers across a range of organizations and nations as well as its relationship to
managerial values.
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The study essentially explores the cognitive styles of postgraduate business students
and examines how the measurement of the Cognitive Style Index varies in terms of students’
demographic characteristics. Next section provides the research methods used in the study.
Results and discussion of the findings are provided in the final section.
METHODOLOGY
The study involved a sample of 152 of postgraduate business students on the Faculty
of Economics and Administrative Sciences, at Marmara University, Turkey. In terms of the
demographic profile of respondents, as shown in Table 2, 78 participants (51.3%) are male
and 74 are female (48.7%). Nearly 78 per cent of the participants are enrolled in a master
program, with the remainder being enrolled in a Ph.D. program. In terms of fields within the
broader business program, 54 (35.5%) chose management and organization, 37 (24.3%)
marketing, 31 (20.4%) accounting, and 30 (19.7%) chose human resource management.
Majority of the participants are predominantly Muslim (84.2%) with the remainder belonging
to other religions. With regard to religiosity of participants, more than half of the participants
(54.6%) identified themselves as moderate, 21 (13.8) identified themselves as strong
believers, 26 (17.1%) less religious, and 16 (10.5%) identified themselves as non-believer. Of
the 152 participants, 113 (74.3%) were grown up in metropolitan cities, 23 (15.1%) in small
cities, and 11 were grown up in villages. In terms of income level, 72 (47.4%) belong to high
income group, 53 (34.9%) medium, and 26 (17.1%) belong to low income group. Fifty-seven
(37.5%) participants declared their political affiliation as center-left, 35 (23.0%) center-right,
16 (10.5%) radical, 29 (19.1%) others, and 15 (9.9%) did not declare their political affiliation.
The cognitive style of students was measured using the Cognitive Style Index (CSI)
developed by Allinson and Hayes (1996). The survey instrument included a self -report
questionnaire designed to assess the superordinate dimensions of cognitive style described
earlier. Subjects completed a demographic survey and the Cognitive Style Index. The former
solicited data regarding gender, level of graduate study, field of study, education level,
religion, religiosity, political affiliation, place of grown-up and income level. The CSI
comprises 38 self-report items and requires about 8-10 minutes. Each item has three choices,
true, false, or uncertain scored 0, 1, or 2, respectively. Of the 38 items, 17 are reverse scored.
For all 38 items responses which were “uncertain” were scored as “1”. This provides a central
category for subjects who wished to indicate genuine uncertainty on the grounds that the
extreme categories did not apply consistently. It also overcomes the problem associated with
Likert scales of five or more points that some subjects tend toward the extremes while others
habitually avoid them (Kline, 1993). Hence, total scores could range from 0 to 76. The closer
the respondent’s score is to 0, the more intuitive is the respondent said to be, and the closer
the respondent’s score is to 76, the more analytical the respondent is said to be.
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for total score on the Cognitive Style Index by
gender, level of graduate study, field of study, education level of parents, religion, political
affiliation, religiosity, place of grown up and income level.
Of the ten demographic variables, Table 2 shows that four variables have significant F
values. These variables are namely education level of participant’s mother (p < 0.1), religion
(p < 0.05), political affiliation (p < 0.01), and income level (p < 0.1).
In terms of education level of participant’s mother, participants whose mothers
education are of primary and high school scored higher than the overall CSI mean score, and
they differed significantly (p < 0.1) from the participants whose mothers’ are either illiterate
or have university and/or postgraduate degree.
Regarding the religion participants who are Muslim significantly differed (p < 0.05)
from the others with Muslim participants having higher CSI scores than the participants from
other religions.
In terms of political affiliation participants who tend to declare themselves as radical
scored significantly higher (p < 0.01) than those supporting other political parties such as
center left and center right.
On the basis of income level significant differences are found between income level of
participants and their CSI scores (p < 0.1) with the participants having low income scoring
higher on the CSI index.
The variables that have no significant variation in terms of demographic categories are
gender, level of graduate study, field of study, education level of participant’s father,
religiosity, and place of grown up.
With regard to gender differences, the CSI scores of male and female participants
indicate great similarity with the mean values of both groups being 44.8 and 44.2,
respectively. This finding, however, does not provide support to the findings of earlier studies
by Murphy et al. (1998), Doucette et al. (1998) and Allinson and Hayes (1996), where they
found that female participants scored significantly higher on the Cognitive Style Index than
male participants. Similarly, participants do not differ in terms on the CSI scores across level
of graduate study with the mean CSI score of master students being slightly higher than that
of doctoral students.
In terms of field of study, participants do not differ significantly on Cognitive Style
Index. However, students enrolled in marketing and accounting programs have mean sores
higher than the index’s overall mean value while students in management-organization have
the lowest score fallowed by accounting students.
No significant differences are found regarding the level of religiosity. As distinct from
other groups with varying levels of religiosity, participants having strong religious beliefs
scored above the overall CSI mean value.
There exist no significant variation on the CSI value in terms of both education level
of participant’s father and participant’s place of grown up.
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