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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

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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.

436 D. Chatterjee

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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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