leadership in innovators and defenders: the role of cognitive personality styles
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This article was downloaded by: [University of Arizona]On: 17 December 2014, At: 16:34Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Leadership in Innovators andDefenders: The Role of CognitivePersonality StylesDevjani Chatterjeea
a International Management Institute Kolkata, Kolkata, IndiaPublished online: 21 Oct 2014.
To cite this article: Devjani Chatterjee (2014) Leadership in Innovators and Defenders:The Role of Cognitive Personality Styles, Industry and Innovation, 21:5, 430-453, DOI:10.1080/13662716.2014.959314
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2014.959314
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Research Paper
Leadership in Innovators andDefenders: The Role of Cognitive
Personality Styles
DEVJANI CHATTERJEE
International Management Institute Kolkata, Kolkata, India
ABSTRACT This research is based on a mixed strategic typology, combining innovators of Miller and Roth
(1994, “A Taxonomy of Manufacturing Strategies,” Management Science, 40 (3), 285–304) and defenders of
Miles et al. (1978, “Organizational Strategy, Structure and Process,” Academy of Management Review, 3, 546–
562)andsupportedby theperception–evaluationpersonalitymodel of Jung (1923,PsychologicalTypes, London,
Routledge&Kegan). Leadershipmodel having five underlying constructs—group cohesion, intellectual flexibility,
leader cognitive styles, leadership styles and leadership roles—is identified and studied. At first, respondent firms
from various sectors are classified as innovators and defenders.Second, the constructs are empirically tested on
them. Important findings suggest that innovators have intuitive-feeling leaders and defenders have sensing-
thinking leaders, two of the four personality types proposed by Jung (1923). It has also been found that innovators
are higher in the degree of intellectual adjustment; in the idea generation and nurturant phase leaders exhibit
intuitive-feeling personality style; concept creators also exhibit the same. These findings may be used in
organizations for leadership building, finding out best candidate job-fit and organization-fit during recruitment, and
also for training and development of the leaders.
KEY WORDS: Leadership, innovation, strategy, cognitive personality styles, Jung, MBTI, NEO-PI-R
1. Introduction
Intense global competition, proliferation of global firms into local markets, swift market
changes, changing preferences of consumers and technological developments have
created boundless pressure on organizations to innovate (Chatterjee et al. 2008). Effective
and planned innovation can take place when there is proper coordination and control among
all group and structural variables within the organization, which can be made possible with
the presence of a competent leadership. Many researchers also suggest that certain
q 2014 Taylor & Francis
Correspondence Address: Devjani Chatterjee, International Management Institute Kolkata, Kolkata, India. Tel.: þ 91
33 6652 9653. Fax: þ 91 33 6652 9618. Email: d.chatterjee@imi-k.edu.in
Industry and Innovation, 2014
Vol. 21, No. 5, 430–453, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2014.959314
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organizational and social phenomena facilitate innovation, and one such phenomenon is
leadership (Bolwijn and Kumpe 1990; Waldman and Bass 1991; Stoker et al. 2001).
So far, leadership literature has focused on a variety of outcomes such as satisfaction,
effectiveness and performance, but not on the impact of leadership on innovation, regardless
its increasing importance (Bass 1990; Howell and Higgins 1990). DeWeerd-Nederhof
(1998), as cited in Stoker et al. (2001), concludes that innovationmanagement is a concerted
action of teams, but little is known about leader role and the impact of the individual
characteristics of team members on the innovation process. A substantial literature survey
shows that there are few researches that examine the relationship between the leader’s
cognitive personality styles and the roles they play in the innovation process. In this paper,
we have focused on this gap in the literature and have tried to establish a different leadership-
capability dimension of innovator and defender organizations. The focus of this paper is to
associate leadership with cognitive styles such as sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling, and
verifying the assumptions of the association of leaders with personality types (arising out of
the cognitive styles) statistically on real-life data from innovator and defender organizations.
Innovator organizations (Miller and Roth 1994) are differentiated from others by the
emphasis they place upon their ability to make rapid changes in design, their high regard to
conformance and performance of quality, rapid and quick innovations of technology,
introducing new products quickly to markets, etc. Innovators put least importance to price and
most importance to R&D. On the other hand, defender organizations (Miles et al. 1978)
undertake little product or market development and have a narrow product range. For them,
increasing the operational efficiency of finance, production and engineering is a critical function
for organizational successes with little emphasis on marketing and R&D. They have little
flexibility and its primary weakness is in its poor reflex to respond quickly to major market
challenges.Therefore, ifweplace the innovatorsanddefendersonasinglescalemeasuring the
rate of change of products and innovation, innovators and defenders would be on the extreme
continuums, the former toward most change and innovation and the latter toward the least.
Asmentioned above, although there are few studies examining the relationship of leader’s
cognitive personality styles with their roles in the innovation process, Chell (2008), a noted
researcher in the field of personality, suggests that it is absolutely necessary to examine the
personality structure and the tool undertaken before initiating any study. The tool (model/
questionnaire, etc.) should also match with the objective of the study. She adds that it is
important to understand what are the fundamental dimensions of personality and how do
personality factors predict behavior in the work context? From the “great man” theory of
leadership to the “situational theory,” leadership literature has always put importance to the
behavioral part of the leaders. The importance of “personality,” as an individual variable of
leaders, can thus never be ignored. Therefore, understanding theoverall personality of a leader
is of utmost importance to any organization, and to assess this, plenty of personalitymeasuring
models such as Jungian principles, Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), five-factor model
(FFM) and NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) are used among others.
The perception–information processing model proposed by Jung (1923) forms the
foundation for this study. According to his theory, people use two types of perception modes,
i.e. sensing and intuition, whereas they process information in two modes, i.e. thinking and
feeling. Combining all, four personality types are born—sensing-thinkers, intuitive-thinkers,
sensing-feelers and intuitive-feelers. This research associates these personality types with
leaders of innovator and defender organizations. The underlying motivation of the research
Leadership in Innovators and Defenders 431
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is to identify and understand which kind of personality of leaders would be advantageous for
stimulating any innovation and change process and which would be favorable to handle a
stable and planned organizational process.
The next sections give a brief review to the literature of leadership, strategy and
personality, followed by proposed model and hypotheses development. Next section deals
with research methodology, followed by result and analysis, and lastly ending with
discussion and conclusions.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Leadership and Its Impact on Innovation
Leadership is defined in a multidimensional perspective by past researchers. Josefowitz
(1980) suggested that, in an organization, leaders’ responsibilities can be categorized under
four management functions: planning, controlling, organizing-coordinating and directing-
motivating. Whereas, Mulder (1987) believed in the trait theory and suggests that
purposefulness, directing the course of action, decision-making, self-confidence, risk-taking,
learning, leadership of people, communication, flexibility, generating creativity, etc., are the
qualities in which leaders must score high. Freeman (1974) proposed that innovation is the
key for those organizations that depend mainly on the rapid and continuous development of
new products. However, while stimulating innovation is the key, McDonough and Leifer (1986)
have pointed out that an equally important issue is to ensure the satisfaction of consumers
through proper product development, which is possible only through competent channeling
and controlling of innovation. Mumford, Connelly, and Gaddis (2003) and Basadur (2004) also
suggest that the coordination of a successful leader instigates efficiency, adaptability and
innovations for sustained competitive superiority. Howell and Higgins (1990) proposed that
leaders contribute significantly to the development of new products, and innovation leaders
function as catalysts and facilitators of the innovation process (Nonaka and Kenney 1991).
A leader motivates a group with enough power to lead the innovative effort (Eisenbach,
Watson, and Pillai 1999) and expedites the development of the innovation capabilities of
employees (Bossink 2004). Thus, based on this discussion, it can be observed that selection
of leaders is one of the keys to a planned innovation process and product development.
2.2. Strategic Typologies
Strategy is described as “a pattern of decisions about the organizations future which takes
on meaning when it is implemented through the organizations structure and processes”
(Miles et al. 1978).
It is associated with the long-term direction of the organization, the capacity of the
organization’s activities, matching of those activities to its environment and resources,
optimum allocation of major resources within the organization and, lastly, consideration of
the expectations and values of the organization’s stakeholders (Smith 1997).
Given the multifaceted character of the concept of strategy, a number of different
definitions have been developed, each based on a particular basis. The strategic tree in
Figure 1 demonstrates five of the most distinguished strategic typologies found in the
organizational strategy literature. The main stem of the tree signifies time and is shown with
432 D. Chatterjee
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an open end, and the branches represent the various strategic typologies evolved over time.
The branch leaves symbolize various strategic types. Five strategic typologies are shown by
the big bold branches, and the dotted leaves suggest other typologies that may also exist in
literature. Table 1 shows the characteristic features of each of the strategies in brief.
2.3. Personality Measuring Tools
There are many models in the organizational behavior and psychology literature to assess
human personality. Among the personality measuring tools, the NEO-PI-R is a commonly
used measure designed to assess the Big Five Factors (BFF) of personality. The NEO-PI-R
is a 240-item questionnaire that assesses the 5 factors with 30 specific traits/facets, 6 for
MILLER & FRIESEN
1982
GUPTA & GOVINDARAJAN
1982
MILLER & ROTH1994
PORTER1980
MILES & SNOW1978
Figure 1. Strategic tree
Leadership in Innovators and Defenders 433
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Table 1. Characteristic features of various strategic typologies
Details Typologies Characteristics
I Year: 1978
Proponents: Miles et al.
Basis: rate of change of
products or markets
(for details, see
Miles et al. 1978)
Defender † Stable form of organization is appropriate
† Limited product range
† Covers narrow segment of the total market
† Compete on price or high quality
† Efficient use of production and distribution of goods and
services
† Technological efficiency is highly emphasized
† Little product or market development
† Finance, production and engineering dominates marketing
and R&D
† Unable to respond to major shifts in market changes
Prospector † Continuously searching for market opportunity
† Creator of change and uncertainty
† Marketing and R&D dominates finance and production
†Maintaining industry leadership in product innovation ismore
important than profit earning
Analyzer † Combines the strongest of both the above types
† Avoids excessive risks, but excels in delivery of new
products and services
† Concentrates on limited range, but outperforms in quality
Reactor † React to environmental changes and not proactive
† Little control over their external environment
† Lack the ability to adopt to the external competition
† Lacking internal control mechanism
† Do not have a systematic strategy, structure or design
II Year: 1980
Proponents: Michael Porter
Basis: competitive
advantage (Smith 1997)
Cost
leadership
† Lowest cost producer in the industry
† Advantage may arise due to economies of scale or access
to favorable raw material or superior technology
Differentiation † Focuses on products highly valued by consumers
† Emphasis on quality and dependability of product, after
sales service
† Wide availability of product range
† Product flexibility
Focus † Dedicates to a segment poorly served by others
† Comparative advantage is based on either cost leadership,
or differentiation
III Year: 1982
Proponents: Miller and
Friesen
Basis: extent of product
innovation (Smith 1997)
Conservative † Engage in innovation with reluctance, as a response to
serious challenge
Entrepreneurial † Aggressively pursue innovation
† Control system is used only as a warning against excessive
innovation
(Continued)
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each of: neuroticism (N), extraversion (E), openness toexperience (O), agreeableness (A) and
conscientiousness (C). The original version of the measurement was NEO-I and measured
only N, E and O of the Five Factor model (FFM). It was later revised to include all the five
traits and renamed as NEO-PI-R (McCrae and Costa 1999), and includes A and C also.
A series of studies over the past 40 years have shown thatmost trait adjectives found in natural
language can be understood in terms of the NEO-PI-R, i.e. N, E, O, A, C (McCrae and
Costa 1991).
Table 1. (Continued)
Details Typologies Characteristics
IV Year: 1982
Proponents: Gupta and
Govindarajan
Basis: variations in strategic
missions (Smith 1997)
Build † Improve market share
† Improve competitive position even if it decreases short-term
earnings and cash flows
† Wants to gain competitive superiority
Hold † Protects market share and competitive position
† Obtains reasonable return on investment
† High market share and high growth industry
Harvest † Maximizes short-term profit and cash flow
† Market share is not important
Divest † Business plans to cease operations
V Year: 1994
Proponents: Miller and Roth
Basis: product innovation
(Miller and Roth 1994)
Caretakers † Low emphasis on development and competitive capabilities
† Price is dominant
† Less importance to after sales service and high-performance
products
Marketers † Key market-oriented capabilities
† Offers broad product lines
† Responsive to changing volume requirements
† Conformance quality
† Dependable deliveries
† Emphasis on product performance
Innovators † Relative emphasis placed upon ability to make changes
on design
† Introduce new products quickly
† Product performance and conformance are emphasized
† Quality and dependability of product is one of the prime
concern
† Does not carry a broad product line
† Price of the product is given least importance, satisfaction of
customers is what matters
† After sales service is emphasized
† Percentage expenditure of R&D on sales is the highest
among the other two groups
† Engineering/R&D influence is highest among the others
† Place emphasis on increasing market share by developing
new products for both old and new markets
Leadership in Innovators and Defenders 435
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Over the past decade, the FFM has become a dominant paradigm in personality
psychology, yet most attention has been given to the Big Five factors themselves neglecting
the specific traits that define these factors (Costa and McCrae 1995). The NEO-PI-R (Costa
and McCrae 1992) includes these facets into the questionnaire. Each item of the test is
answered on a five-point Likert scale (1 representing strongly disagree and 5 strongly
agree). Short descriptions of the five personality traits are: N—the general tendency to
experience negative effects such as fear, sadness and embarrassment; E—the general
tendency to be outgoing; O—the general tendency to be curious about both inner and outer
worlds; A—the general tendency to be altruistic; and C—the general tendency to be able to
resist impulses and temptations.
Jung (1923), in his path-breaking perception–information processing model, proposed
four cognitive personality types, according to which people use two types of perception
modes—sensing (S) and intuition (N), i.e. ways in which people receive data—and two types
of information modes—thinking (T) and feeling (F), i.e. ways in which they evaluate it (Haley
et al. [1989], cited in Gallen [1997]). The characteristic features of people using sensing/
intuition and thinking/feeling are given in Figure 2. Based on these modes, four personality
types are formed: sensing-thinking (ST), intuition-thinking (NT), sensing-feeling (ST) and
intuition-feeling (NF).
MBTI (Myers and McCaulley 1985) is another scale to measure personality types. This
is a 94-item questionnaire, determining preferences on four bipolar scales: extraversion-
intraversion (EI), sensing-intuition (SN), thinking-feeling (TF) and judging-perceiving (JP).
Respondents are classified into 1 of 16 personality types, based on the highest score they
receive on each of the four scales.
MBTI has been developed in order to make the theory of Jung’s psychological types
understandable and useful in people’s lives (McCaulley 1990). Similar to Jung’s theory, here
people use either sensing or intuition for perception and thinking or feeling for judgment.
Extroversion (E) and introversion (I) are seen as complementary attitudes or orientations to
life. Orientation to the outer world is measured by judgment (J) or perception (P) attitude
(McCaulley 1990). When different ways of perception and judgment are combined, 4
cognitive styles can be defined: ST (sensation-thinking), SF (sensation-feeling), NT
(intuition-thinking) and NF (intuition-feeling), and 16 MBTI types are identified (e.g. ESTJ or
INFP). Correlational analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of
four of the five major dimensions of normal personality. The FFM provides an alternative
basis for interpreting MBTI findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual
framework. Each of the four indices showed impressive evidence of convergence with one
of the five major dimensions of normal personality whether assessed through self-reports or
peer ratings. Most conspicuous is the lack of a neuroticism factor in the MBTI. Its absence is
understandable on two counts: first, because emotional instability versus adjustment did not
enter into Jung’s definitions of the types and, second, because the authors of the test were
apparently philosophically committed to a position which saw each type as equally valuable
and positive—a view that is difficult to hold with regard to neuroticism (McCrae and Costa
1989).
For the few last decades, the training community has relied largely on the MBTI
instrument for personality assessments. The FFM evolves fromMBTI instrument rather than
departing from it. Still, the FFM is different enough from the MBTI instrument to require a
significant shift in thinking.
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Studies have also found that extrovert, intuitive, feeling and judging scales of the MBTI
(Myers and McCaulley 1985) correspond to the E, O, A and C of the NEO-PI-R (McCrae and
Costa 1989). According to McCrae and Costa (1989), SN index is highly correlated with
openness to experience. Studies summarized in the MBTI manual show that creativity is
characteristic of intuitive types and measure aspects of openness to experience. Furnham,
Moutafi, and Crump (2003) also argue that the four MBTI indices measure aspects of four of
the FFM dimensions, (e.g. EI was correlated with extraversion, SN with openness to
experience, FT with agreeableness and JP with conscientiousness). Lastly, Furnham (1996)
also provided evidence supporting these results and found that Neuroticism to be correlated
to both EI and FT. These results are also supported by similar kind of studies carried earlier
by McDonald, Anderson, Tsagarakis and Holland in 1994 (Furnham, Moutafi, and Crump,
2003). Thus, from earlier studies, it has become evident that some or all of these same five
dimensions recur in MBTI.
The reason for the choice of MBTI over NEO-PI-R for this study is three-fold. Primarily,
NEO-PI-R is a 240-item questionnaire. Managers will not have time or patience to answer
them. Whereas, MBTI is only a 94-item questionnaire, and in our case it is only a 20-item
questionnaire since we chose to measure only the four Jungian cognitive styles rather than
all the 16 MBTI types. For categorizing leaders into 16 types, the sample must be very large
and would take more time than the research could have afforded. Hence, the study focuses
only on the Jungian types. Prior researchers like Gallen (1997) also used these four
heuristics to analyze his sample and categorize them efficiently. Moreover, Gallen (1997)
also argues and defends such prioritization and asserts that many researchers of the past
have selected cognitive style instead of the whole type in classifying managers’ behavior
(e.g. Henderson and Nutt 1980; Haley and Stumpf 1989). He said that this might be partly
due to difficulties in data collection: it might be difficult to gather enough data on managers to
cover all the 16 MBTI types. Second, he argued that selecting cognitive style can be
defended when a decision-making process or its outcomes are the subjects of the study, and
in his case, we too are relating decision-making processes of innovators and defenders,
which completely justifies our attempt to use only the cognitive styles rather than all the 16
MBTI types.
Third, we chose MBTI because NEO-PI-R is not adequately related to strategy in the
past literature but ample literature exists that relates MBTI to strategy of, e.g., Gallen (1997,
2006), Haley and Pini (1994), and Segev and Shenhar (1993).
Fourth, as already discussed earlier, authors such as McCrae and Costa (1989, 1991)
and Furnham, Moutafi, and Crump (2003) related MBTI to FFM and found relation between
them. Since there is an overlapping between MBTI and NEO-PI-R, the practical use of MBTI
is alleviated rather than diminished due to its old age. So, considering MBTI serves the
purpose of having the qualities of both MBTI and some of NEO-PI-R under a single umbrella.
3. Proposed Model and Propositions
3.1. Conceptual Framework—The Horizontal Ladder-Node Diagram
For this study, we have considered a mixed typology combining two types of strategic
organizations across two typologies, i.e. “innovators” from Miller and Roth’s (1994) typology
and “defenders” from Miles et al.’s (1978) typology.
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The conceptual framework shown in Figure 3 compounds all six hypotheses under the
five constructs considered in this study; it also represents the complex structuring of
leadership styles and roles for the innovators, represented by the fourth and fifth nodes from
the left, respectively.
The framework is coined “horizontal ladder-node diagram” because of its look, which is
similar to a horizontally laid ladder, with nodes at both the ends of each step. The defenders
and innovators are represented by the two bold horizontal parallel lines and the five vertical
steps corresponds to the five constructs, namely “group cohesion,” “intellectual flexibility,”
“leader cognitive style,” “leader style” and ‘leader role.” The initials given in each of the round
nodes attached to each of the steps to both the sides of innovators and defenders exhibit the
predicted characteristics with respect to the five mentioned constructs.
3.2. Hypothesis Development
Luria (2008) proposes, “Cohesion is a social bond that develops among peers who share
tasks and collective activities.” In cohesive groups, members exhibit high levels of
interaction with other group members and such groups are expected to generate higher
homogeneous perceptions (Shaw 1981; Luria 2008). Waldman and Bass (1991), as cited in
Basadur (2004), propose that one phenomenon improving innovation efficiency is
leadership. They suggests that in today’s innovative organizations, leaders induce
adaptability with efficiency for sustained competitive edge and this adaptability comes with
good leadership skills with a perfect balance of all the parameters responsible for innovation.
Regarding the effect of group cohesion (GC) on group decision-making, Jaussi and Dionne
(2003) suggest that team members share experiences that drive common attitudes and
DEFENDERS
INNOVATORS
Group Cohesion
Intellectual Flexibility
Leader Cognitive
Style
LeaderStyle
Leader Role
H
L
L
H
CC
S
NF
ST
NTSTSTNF STNF
H - HIGHL – LOWOM – OPERATIONALMANAGERDS – DIRECTIONSETTERCC – CONCEPTCREATORPD – PROCESSDEVELOPERN – NURTURANTP - PERSISTANT
C – COMPLEXS - SIMPLENF – INTUITION-FEELINGNT – INTUITION-THINKINGST – SENSING-THINKINGSF – SENSING-FEELING
OM DSPN PDCC
S
Figure 3. Horizontal ladder-node diagram
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mental models among them. These common moods and thought processes are reflected in
their group norms, values and goals. On the other hand, other past researches on groups
suggest that a more cohesive group would be more productive, provided their performance
norms are high, but at the same time existing research suggests that cohesion can increase
conformity within the group. The same researchers too have defined conformity as an
underlying process in groupthink, and they argued that when groupthink takes place,
activities and solutions are likely to be less creative and innovative in nature since ideas and
concepts would lack diversity (Waldman and Bass 1991; see also Evans and Dion [1991]
and Mullen and Cooper [1994] cited in Jaussi and Dionne 2003). Nystrom (1979, cited in
Mumford et al. 2002) also argued that available evidence from past literature indicates that
high cohesive teams tend to be less creative. Therefore, considering these views reflected in
these literatures and researches, we hypothesize that:
Hypothesis 1: More group cohesion in the organization leads to less innovation; thus, in
innovators, group cohesion is less than in defenders.
Intellectual flexibility (IF) is a psychological process that can be said as the degree to
which an individual is adjusting to its contingent environment. Caplan and Schooler (2006)
have considered IF and ideational flexibility as same, and defined it as the ability of an
individual to consider multidirectional perspectives. Schooler (2007), however, has provided
a definition of IF where he says that “ . . . is the ability to use an assortment of approaches
and vantage points in confronting cognitive problems in a non-stereotypical way.”
Schooler (1984, 1990, cited in Schooler [2007]), while defining the rough-hewn theory of
psychological processes, says that an environment’s complexity is based on the stimulus and
needof the individuals. After that it followsachain reaction; e.g.morediverse the stimuli,more
the number of decisions to be made, and larger the number of factors taken into account for
making these decisions, more ill defined and complicated the situation would become—thus
resulting to amore complex environment. Caplan andSchooler (2006) argued that a complex
environment puts premium on inaugural and independent judgment; they suggest that such
environments encourage self-directedness and independent act more than conformity to
external authority. Consequently, it is evident that it is well researched that individuals having
more IF have higher ability to adapt to changing environment. Earlier, we have already
discussed that innovators face a highly competitive market and a complex environment, and
have a dynamic environment leading to multidimensional factors and have to continuously
change themselves in order to adapt to the changing environment. We thus feel that to cope
with the changing dynamics of the market, innovators should be high on IF. Thus:
Hypothesis 2: Intellectual flexibility is high in innovators as they have a rapidly changing
and a complex environment.
It is well documented that innovations work out well in less centralized and organic
organizations (SharmaandAbidi 2006). Innovators are creative in thoughtsand through radical
innovationsmay introduce products inmarkets for which the demand was previously unknown
(GarciaandCalantone2002); they facea continuously changingandadynamically competitive
market (Miller andRoth1994). Inaddition,Simons (1995)proposed that inorganizations, facing
competitive markets, “ . . . new ideas and experiments must be encouraged at all levels.”
Now, we focus a little more on the NF leaders. According to Hellriegel, Slocum, and
Woodman (1992), intuitive-feeling leaders are those who would prefer uncertainty and
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experimentation, to working with facts; they are imaginative, creative and futuristic. These
leaders would base their judgments more on personal values than on impersonal reasoning
(refer Figure 2 for detail). Past researchers (Hellriegel, Slocum, and Woodman 1992; Gallen
1997) also proposed that intuitive persons are more interested to unfold new problems, they
dislike routinized work and wants everything in fast pace, better at coming up with new
ideas, even while recruiting, they paymore attention to applicant’s imaginative ability and the
degree of creativity in problem solving.
Chell (2008) asserts that the organic way of operating results is informal communication
flows, whereas decision-making is intuitive, and most importantly where innovation is
concerned, cost consciousness is not dominant. These are possible when the organization
is governed and the activities are conducted by a leader who initiates the informal
communication and supports it. Similarly, a survey of much of the literature supports the
assertion that the features exhibited by an NF leader are conducive to innovation.
The above features exhibited by an NF leader are to a large extent congruent to the
characteristics of an innovator (refer Table 1 and Figure 2 for matching). Considering the
above two concepts and matching them, we observe that:
Hypothesis 3: NF type of leaders is suitable for the innovators.
According to Miles et al. (1978), defenders are the strategic organizations positioned
lowest in the scale with respect to innovation and change (refer Table 1; for details, seeMiles
et al. 1978). They have a narrow product range, are least interested in product or market
development, maintain a narrow domain of products, etc. Defenders are poorly equipped to
make rapid structural and policy changes as they have little flexibility. Within their domain,
they strive aggressively to prevent competitors to enter. Sharma and Abidi (2006) proposed
that defender firms would be high in formalization, centralization, standardization and
specialization, and low in complexity of workflow and flexibility. In addition, the study of
Chatterjee and Sharma (2012) reveals that uncertainty avoidance and power distance are
also very high in them, whereas they have very less empowerment and follow production
line approach to management.
ST type of leaders, on the other hand, is best suited to defender organizations because,
according to Hellriegel, Slocum, andWoodman (1992), “sensing” means to work with known
facts than looking for unknown potentiality and “thinking” means judgments are based more
on logic than on personal values. Agreeing to Jung’s (1923) theory of perception–evaluation
model, these researchers also suggest that people of the latter type have a very rational
problem-solving style; they outline the plan and try to stick to it as far as possible, they are
very conservative and structured. Therefore, ST people dislike new problems, are not
creative in their approach to problems and prefer standard ways to solve problems—they
learn by doing and are less imaginative. Like defender organizations, they too are
uncertainty avoiders and avoid unstructured situations. Sensation-thinkers characteristics
match very appropriately with the defenders. Hence, we hypothesize that:
Hypothesis 4: ST type of leaders is suitable for the defenders.
Conventional research in line with the path-goal theory (House 1971) shows that
reactions of individual team members may vary to different styles of leadership and thus
suggests that, instead of considering any one leadership style, more than one
leadership style is effective for the smooth functioning of teams (Stoker et al. 2001).
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According to Waldman and Bass (1991), there is nurturant behavior style, which focuses
toward the development and support of new ideas. Such leadership is especially important
in the early idea generation phase of innovation (Kanter 1988). At this stage, when followers
lack confidence, leaders stimulate the generation of new ideas through inspiration and
support and thus nurturant behaviour style is most appropriate. However, they assert that
the persistent kind of leadership is more appropriate during latter stage when idea
generation is successful—and keeping up the good work and enthusiasm is more important.
Based on the personality types suggested by Jung (1923; see details in Figure 2), we
state that in the initial phase leaders must exhibit NF behavior as this phase is unstructured,
ill formed, requires attention, enthusiasm and encouragement of leaders. However, in the
latter stage of the production process, the job becomes more structured and well directed.
Thus, at the latter stage the organization will need an NT personality-type leader, as this
phase needs a leader who likes to work in familiar, harmonious and predictable situation but
at the same time depends on intuition for gathering information (Gallen 1997). The above
discussion leads to our next proposition:
Hypothesis 5: Leadership in innovators is a complex structure; in the nurturance phase the
leaders exhibit NF behavior, while in the persistence phase they exhibit NT
behavior.
Apart from the effect of different leadership styles on the innovation process, Chris
Yapp, the head of public sector innovation at Microsoft, Reading, UK, emphasized the
importance of the kind of problem a group, team or organization is dealing with. Yapp (2005)
identified four kinds of roles played by leaders in the innovation industry, namely operational
manager (OM), direction setters (DS), concept creators (CC), and process developers (PD),
based on two dimensions. These dimensions are “whether we know where we are going and
whether we know how to get there.” If the organization knows where it is going and how to
get there, the role of the leader involved is that of anOM, and the work is very structured and
can be preplanned, which perfectly matches the characters of a ST leader. The third
quadrant’s need is just the opposite of the OM. Here, the organization does not know where
it is going and how to get there, and CCs are most required. Therefore, here the task is
very vague, unstructured and uncertain, and full of risk. This type of work is suitable for NF
kind of leaders and what is needed here is new and novel ideas. In the second and fourth
quadrant lie the two other types of tasks, DS and PD, which are placed in between the two
extreme continuums. Therefore, putting together the two separate concepts of cognitive
styles and different leader roles faced by an innovative organization, the following
hypothesis is drawn:
Hypothesis 6: In innovators, operational managers are ST and concept creators are NF.
4. Research Method
4.1. Data Collection and Sample
It is a questionnaire-based study and responses are primarily collected online. Data
collection process is completed in two phases: (i) questions on organizational structure and
strategy are collected, and based on the conjugate score of strategy and structure,
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companies are classified as innovators and defenders; and (ii) questionnaires measuring
organization’s management problem-solving style, GC, IF and leadership roles and styles
are sent to these innovators and defenders. Data collection process included (i) identifying
mid- to top-level managers, selected on the basis of their minimum three years’ service in
the same organization and who has at least six people reporting to him directly but not at the
sales level; (ii) cover letters and questionnaire link sent to them; (iii) follow-up; and (iv) few
data collected in person from accessible companies.
Sample consisted of companies from varying sectors such as manufacturing and
information technology and was not restricted to any specific size or segment to make the
study universal. Out of 84 company responses received in the first phase, 21 companies are
innovators and 29 are defenders and to them the second phase questionnaire is sent.
Response rate is 76 per cent for innovators and 69 per cent for defenders and 72 per cent on
the whole, which is more than the usual figure for this kind of study. Please refer to the
percentage of responses received (i) from various sectors, (ii) leadership styles exhibited by
leaders of innovators, (iii) leadership roles played by leaders in innovators, (iv) cognitive
styles in innovators and (v) cognitive styles in defenders (refer Figures 4 and 6–9,
respectively).
4.2. Testing Samples for Independence
The samples of innovators and defenders organizations are in different phases of their
development process. Some are in the steady growth stage, some others in the start-
up phase and some in the accelerated growth stage. Since there is a mixture of the kinds of
industries that have been studied, we wanted to make sure that the stage of development
does not affect the kind of strategy a firm follows. Thus, x 2 test is conducted to verify
whether the firms are dependent or independent of the stage of development of the
respective organizations. Result displays (Table 2) that the standard x 2 test of
independence gives no evidence of an association between strategic typologies and
IT BSFinancial Oil and GasTraining & Recruitment Services ManufacturingAdvertising CommunicationConstruction Real Estate
14%
3%
3%41%
3%
3%3%
11%3%
16%
Figure 4. Firm sectors
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Strategy
0 1/3 (low) 2/3 (med) 1 (high)
1/3 (low) Defender Defender Prospector
2/3 (med) Defender Prospector InnovatorStructure
1 (high) Prospector Innovator Innovator
Figure 5. 3 £ 3 matrix
Nurturant; 81%
Persistant19 %
Nurturant Persistant
Figure 6. Leadership styles
Direction setter; 37%
Operational manager;
19%
Process developer;
3%
Concept creator;
31%
Operational manager Direction setterConcept creator Process developer
Figure 7. Leadership roles
Table 2. Pearson’s x 2
Sample Observed count Expected count values df Sig.
Stage of development I D I D
S.G. 3 7 S.G. 4.4 5.6 1.17 1 0.557
S.U. 3 3 S.U. 2.7 3.3
A.G. 10 10 A.G. 8.9 11.1
Note: I, innovators; D, defenders; S.G., steady growth; S.U., start up; A.G., accelerated growth.
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stage of development of the firms (x 2 ¼ 0.557). Thus, the test suggests that the strategies
followed by the firms are independent of their stage of development.
4.3. Survey Instrument
Twoquestionnaires are used in two phases: the first contained two sections each on structure
and strategy used to classify the firms. The response is generated on a seven-point Likert
scale for strategy (1 represents “not important” and 7 represents “critically important”) and
structure (1 represents “strongly agree” and 7 represents “strongly disagree”). Classification
mechanism according to conjugate scores of strategy and structure is given in Figure 5.
The logic behind the classification is that innovator firms should generally have a fluid
and less rigid strategy, as Miller and Roth (1994) proposed that this group has high design
flexibility and introduces products quickly to market. Therefore, to respond to quick market
changes, organizations must practice flexibility of all forms. High scores reflect more fluid
strategy and thus relate to innovators. The structural part deals with formalization,
centralization, standardization, specialization, complexity of workflow and flexibility, and as
proposed by Sharma and Abidi (2006), defenders will be high on all the above factors.
To maintain uniformity in the flow of the questions throughout the questionnaire, high scores
mean the respective firms are innovators and low scores mean they are defenders.
In the second phase, two different sets of questionnaires are delivered to the innovators
and defenders. Table 3 represents the questionnaire sections provided to both groups.
The management problem-solving style (MPSS) scale has been adopted from Hellriegel,
Sensing-thinking;
31%
Intuition-thinking;
6%
Intuition-feeling;
63%
Intuition-feeling (NF) Sensing-thinking (ST)
Intuition-thinking (NT)
Figure 8. Cognitive styles of innovators
Sensing-thinking;
90%
Intuition-thinking;
10%
Sensing-thinking (ST) Intuition-thinking (NT)
Figure 9. Cognitive styles of defenders
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Slocum, and Woodman (1992). It has 20 questions, each having two options and the
respondent has to number them according to their preference.
The next two sections on GC and IF are adopted and modified from Peterson (1998).
Since the questionnaire is partly novel, it demanded a reliability test, and a pilot testing was
also performed with few randomly selected company data. Reliability coefficients, the
standardized Cronbach’s a, are calculated by SPSS (refer Table 4).
5. Results and Analysis
Independent samples t-tests and x 2 tests are used to test the hypotheses. Independent
samples t-test is used to test the null hypothesis that the means of two populations are the
same and in x 2 test it is tested whether two classification criteria are independent of each
other or not (Aczel 2002).
5.1. Assumptions of Independent Samples t-Test
There are three assumptions taken for the calculation of independent t-test (Landau and
Everitt 2004). They are:
(i) The samples have an equal variance; verified by Levene’s test (refer Table 5).
(ii) The variable of the samples to be compared is assumed to have a normal distribution;
verified by Wilk–Shapiro test (refer Table 6).
(iii) The observations made on the sample members must all be independent of each
other; verified (refer Landau and Everitt [2004] for details).
Table 3. Questionnaire sections
Section no. Sections/scales Innovators Defenders
1 Contact information U U
2 Management problem-solving style (MPSS) U U
3 Group cohesion U U
4 Intellectual flexibility U U
5 Leadership style U x
6 Leadership roles U x
Table 4. Cronbach’s a for group cohesion and intellectual flexibility
Typology Sections Cronbach’s a
Innovators Group cohesion 0.85
Intellectual flexibility 0.72
Defenders Group cohesion 0.72
Intellectual flexibility 0.85
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5.2. t-Test and Analysis
The null hypothesis in this study is mI ¼ mD for H1 and H2, where I ¼ innovators and D ¼defenders, mi ¼ mean of the samples and i ¼ I, D. The main emphasis of this study is to
establish that innovators and defenders form separate groups and are different with respect
to GC and IF and that the innovators are high on IF and low on GC. It can be visibly seen
from the summary statistics (Table 7) that in innovators, mean, minimum and maximum
values are higher than defenders. The differences in mean are also statistically verified and
show that means for both the constructs are significantly different as shown in Table 8. Thus,
H2 is accepted, but for H1 the results seem to be contradictory to our hypothesis and the
supportive theory thereof. The result showed that even with GC as the underlying construct
innovators and defenders are significantly different, where innovators are more on GC.
Thus, contrary to our hypothesis, the result proposes that more the GC, more will it support
innovation. Jaussi and Dionne (2003), cited in Waldman and Bass (1991), stated that
research on groups suggests that a more cohesive group probably is more productive,
provided the performance norms of the group are high. Likewise, we may support the results
by concluding that cohesive group supports more innovation, provided the IF of the group is
high. So far, there has been no such evidence in literature that has considered the effect of
GC and IF together on innovation, so the joint impact may have remained unknown so far.
5.3. x2 Test and Analysis
H3, H4, H5 and H6 are verified by x 2 tests in the study, denoted by x 2. It is a statistical test
that helps to determine whether two classification criteria are independent of each other
(Aczel 2002). Our main objective is to examine whether the observed association between
row and column variables represents evidence for an association in the underlying
Table 6. Wilk–Shapiro test of normality
Hypothesis Constructs Typology Statistic df Sig.
H1 Group cohesion Innovators 0.94 16 0.35
Defenders 0.97 20 0.66
H2 Intellectual flexibility Innovators 0.916 16 0.144
Defenders 0.936 20 0.205
Table 5. Levene’s test for equality of variance
Hypothesis Constructs Innovator—defender Var
H1 Group cohesion 0.303 UEV
H2 Intellectual flexibility 0.001* EV
Note: Var, variance within the two groups; EV, assuming equal variance; UEV, assuming unequal variance.
*p , 0.05.
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population (Landau and Everitt 2004). Thus, here the null hypothesis states that u and l are
independent and no significant relationship exists between them, where u and l are two
separate classification criteria. In this study, the row classification criteria are denoted by u
and the column classification criteria by l and each row and column by i and j, respectively,
where i ¼ 1, 2 and j ¼ 1, 2 (Table 9). For explaining, we will denote each cell as uolo(i,j) for
the observed count and uele(i,j) for the expected count.
For H3 and H4, the results show that the observed frequency is above the expected
frequency uolo(i,j). uele(i,j), and the x 2 test shows high statistical significance. Thus, H3 and
H4 are accepted, which shows that innovators have NF type of leaders and defenders have
ST type of leaders.
Table 8. Independent samples t-test
Hypothesis Constructs
Innovator—defender
t df Sig.
H1 Group cohesion 7.591 23.76 0.000**
H2 Intellectual flexibility 3.370 34 0.002*
*p , 0.01; **p , 0.001.
Table 7. Summary statistics
Hypothesis Constructs Parameters
Typology
Innovators Defenders
H1 Group cohesion Mean 5.499 3.533
Median 5.500 3.500
SD 0.9074 0.559
Variance 0.823 0.312
Minimum 3.33 2.67
Maximum 7.00 4.67
Skewness 20.867 0.323
Kurtosis 1.324 20.763
H2 Intellectual flexibility Mean 5.900 4.750
Median 6.000 4.500
SD 0.657 1.229
Variance 0.432 1.511
Minimum 4.60 2.80
Maximum 6.80 6.80
Skewness 20.316 0.062
Kurtosis 20.951 21.379
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For H5, in the nurturant sub-table observed frequency is higher than expected, and x 2
test result shows high statistical significance, whereas in the persistent sub-table although
observed frequency is higher than the expected, it is not statistically significant.
Hypothesis H6 is a combination of two hypotheses and is partially verified (refer
Table 10). OM sub-table results showmarginally higher observed frequency, but statistically
they are not significant. CC sub-table result shows high statistical significance. Thus, it is
verified that CC in innovators exhibit NF behavior.
Table 9. x 2 test statistic and counts
Hypothesis Constructs
Observed
count Expected count Pearson x 2 values df Sig.
H3 Intuition-feeling (NF) NF O NF O 17.308 1 0.000**
I 10 6 I 4.4 11.6
D 0 20 D 5.6 14.4
H4 Sensing-thinking (ST) ST O ST O 13.298 1 0.000**
I 5 11 I 10.2 5.8
D 18 2 D 12.8 7.2
H5 (i) Nurturant (N) NF O NF O 5.236 1 0.022*
N 8 8 N 5 11
P 2 14 P 5 11
(ii) Persistent (P) NT O NT O 0.007 1 0.931
N 4 9 N 4.1 8.9
P 1 2 P 0.9 2.1
H6 (iii) Operational managers (OM) ST O ST O 0.007 1 0.931
OM 1 2 OM 0.9 2.1
O 4 9 O 4.1 8.9
(iv) Concept creators (CC) NF O NF O 4.364 1 0.037*
CC 5 0 CC 3.1 1.9
O 5 6 O 6.9 4.1
Note: NF, intuition-feeling; NT, intuition-thinking; I, innovators; D, defenders.
*p , 0.05; **p , 0.001.
Table 10. Classification criteria in x 2
Hypothesis Subparts
Classification criteria
u l
H3 – Cognitive style Organization typology
H4 – Cognitive style Organization typology
H5 Nurturance Cognitive style Leadership style
Persistence
H6 OM Cognitive style Leadership role
CC
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5.4. Fisher’s Exact Test
Fisher’s exact test is a statistical significance test used in the analysis of categorical data
where sample sizes are small and it is named after its inventor, R.A. Fisher (Landau and
Everitt 2004). The standard x 2 test might not always be appropriate when, as in the present
study, the sample size is small, that is below 50, and the expected cell counts are too small
to justify the x 2 approximation. Landau and Everitt (2004) suggest that a suitable alternative
test of independence in this situation is Fisher’s exact test. The test output simply consists of
the exact p-values for a two-sided and one-sided test. The comparison of the significance
level of the x 2 and Fisher’s exact tests confirms that all the previously verified hypotheses by
x 2 are also significant under the Fisher’s test (Table 11).
5.5. Continuity Correction
Landau and Everitt (2004) suggest that Yates’ correction for continuity is used when testing for
independence in a contingency table. The required assumption in a x 2 test is that the discrete
probability of observed frequencies can be approximated by the x 2 distribution, which is
continuous. To fulfill this requirement, correction for continuity adjusting the formula for
Pearson’s x 2 test, modifying the value in a 2 £ 2 contingency table, was suggested by Frank
Yates. This reduces the obtained x 2 value and thus increases its p-value, and it prevents
overestimation of statistical significance for small data (Landau and Everitt, 2004). Table 12
shows that H3, H4 and H5 are statistically significant as in x 2 and Fisher’s exact tests.
Table 12. Continuity correction
Hypothesis Constructs Value df Sig.
H3 Intuition-feeling 14.333 1 0.000***
H4 Sensing-thinking 10.874 1 0.001**
H5 Nurturant 3.636 1 0.05*
Persistent 0.000 1.000
H6 Operational managers 0.000 1 1.000
Concept creators 2.347 1 0.126
*p , 0.05; **p , 0.01; ***p , 0.001.
Table 11. Fisher’s exact test
Hypothesis Constructs Sig.
H3 Intuition-feeling 0.000***
H4 Sensing-thinking 0.000***
H5 Nurturant 0.03*
Persistent 0.70
H6 Operational managers 0.70
Concept creators 0.05*
*p , 0.05; ***p , 0.001.
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6. Discussion and Conclusions
GC leads to groupthink, and people echo their peers when they are part of a closed
group. This echoing may be because the person values the relationships and does not
want to hurt anyone with difference of opinion, or that he would not differ from the others
which might give him an out-group feeling. The reason whatsoever it is, but theories and
literature support that more GC would lead to more groupthink and hence it was assumed
here that groupthink will lead to less variant ideas leading to low innovation. But, the study
result shows that in innovators, GC is more! The result opposes the theories and
assumptions. But, since we have established that innovators may be associated also with
high IF, which might have some moderating effect on the impact of GC on innovation, thus
irrespective of the level of GC, innovations may be high when IF is high. The flexibility of
the intellectual ability of the group members prevents them from restricting to only one
idea and encourages creativity and innovation. Since the data set is small, only one
manager within the innovators in the persistent phase of innovation has been found to be
NT (H5). As an extension of this same study, the sample size can be enhanced so that the
hypothesis can be verified. In addition, if time can be afforded then a bigger sample size
can also test all the 16 MBTI dimensions. For H6, the observed count is 1 for OM (ST).
Hence, if the sample size is increased then some of these or all may be verified with more
accuracy.
In concluding this commentary on the conceptual framework, we note that Jung’s
(1923) perception/information processing model is the foundation of this framework, where
his proposed personality types are associated with innovator and defender strategies. The
study associates and relates cognitive styles of leaders of these organizations to five
different areas such as GC, IF, leadership roles, leadership styles and leader cognitive
styles. The results of the statistical tests conclude that the leaders of innovators and
defenders must follow different kind of cognitive styles. It is also evident that if there is a
mismatch of the cognitive style of leaders with the strategy it may interrupt the smooth
operation of the organizations. Consequently, it is necessary to properly identify the
cognitive styles of leaders compatible with the company strategy. The proposed model
focuses on the cognitive styles to be followed by the innovators and defenders, and
substantiates the hypotheses with real-life data. These results can be used by respective
strategic organizations while recruiting new talents or for proper training of the employees
and leaders. The proposed framework will be beneficial to the companies in achieving
proper management control and will be more effective in carrying out teamwork.
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