Cognitive Styles in Creative Leadership Practices: Exploring the Relationship between Level and Style

This study investigated the relationship between two measures used to assist change and transformation efforts, the Kirton Adaption–Innovation Inventory which assesses style or manner of cognition and problem-solving, not level or capability, and the Leadership Practices Inventory which measures the extent to which leaders exhibit certain leadership behaviors associated with accomplishing extraordinary results. These two measures of level and style should be conceptually distinct and show no or only modest correlation. Analysis yielded statistically significant and meaningful relationships between scores on the Kirton inventory and two scales of the Leadership Practices Inventory. Implications and challenges for research and practice were outlined.

Cognitive Style

Many authors have drawn attention to the differences in psychosocial variables which exist between national cultures. This paper investigates Prato Previde's (1991) hypothesis that Adaptive-Innovative (A-I) cognitive style is a stable cognitive process within the individual which is largely uninfluenced by national culture. Empirical findings and statistical analyses are brought together from a range of studies in different countries to test this hypothesis. In all, the conclusion is drawn that the data are largely consistent with this hypothesis. The principal factors supporting this conclusion comprise: (1) the similarity between the psychometric properties and factor structures obtained for each of the current five language versions (English, French, Dutch, Italian, and Slovak) of the KAI — the measure of (A-I) cognitive style; and (2) the evidence that A-I cognitive style varies more by occupation and by work function than by nation.