The Influence of Individual Cognitive Style on Performance in Management Education

By S. Armstrong. 2000

114 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reports the outcomes of an empirical study undertaken to explore the possibility that cognitive style may be an important factor influencing performance on certain types of task in management education. A total of 412 final year undergraduate degree students studying Management and Business Administration were tested using the Allinson- Hayes Cognitive Style Index. Their cognitive styles were then compared with assessment grades achieved for academic modules, the task categories of which were deemed to be consonant with either the Wholist/Intuitive or the Analytic style of working. Overall ability defined by final degree grades was also tested against individuals' cognitive styles. As expected, students whose dominant cognitive styles were Analytic attained higher grades for long-term solitary tasks involving careful planning and analysis of information. However, contrary to expectations, performance on tasks believed to be more suited to the Wholist/Intuitive style was also higher for Analytic individuals, as was overall ability defined by final degree grades. The results were discussed in terms of the nature of the tasks and the need for methods of performance assessment that are independent of an orientation bias. Without this, it is argued, employment selection criteria may favour the wrong type of candidate in some circumstances.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Management of Technology and Innovation, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c799bb2aa909d5c29b86293885e605b495c5df8f

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Individual Differences in Cognitive Style and their Effects on Task and Social Orientations of Self-Managed Work Teams (2001, background): “Another recent study (Priola, Smith, & Armstrong, 2000), designed as a quasi-experiment, was conducted in a mechanistic setting.”
Cognitive styles, dynamic geometry and measurement performance (2009, background): “According to Armstrong (2000), wholists rely on impulsive synthesis of ideas and reasoning that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic (lateral thinking).”
Thinking Styles: Their relationships with modes of thinking and academic performance (2002, methodology): “Furthermore, previous research (e.g. Armstrong, 2000; Riding, 1996) has also shown that the effect of styles on an individual’s performance depends on the nature of the tasks and the methods of assessment used.”