To be holistic or analytic? Understanding the influence of cognitive styles on managerial roles

Department of Management Research Seminar Series 2025/2026

• With speakers Professor Alexandros Psychogios (Loughborough) and Dr Rahmi Salviviani
• Host Kelly Rogers

Abstract

Middle managers operate at the intersection of competing strategic and operational levels, yet little is known about the cognitive foundations that influence how they interpret and enact these responsibilities. While prior research has examined cognitive style, role conflict, strategic role enactment, and attention as separate constructs, their integration within a comprehensive cognitive-behavioural framework remains underexplored.

Drawing on Organisational Role Theory and Attention-Based View, this research focused on how cognitive style (analytic versus holistic) influences middle managers’ experience of role conflict, strategic role enactment, and attentional performance. Combining survey and experimental methods, we identify three pathways. First, a holistic cognitive style predicts higher role conflict, which, in turn, is associated with greater enactment of the Championing, Facilitating and Implementing roles, situating role conflict as a cognitive-behavioural bridge. Second, cognitive style directly shapes attentional outcomes, with analytic managers responding faster in complex tasks but comparable efficiency to holistic style managers. Role conflict plays only a limited mediating role in attentional performance. Third, repeated enactment of strategic roles corresponds to distinct attentional outcomes: Synthesising role is linked to more efficient performance on complex tasks, whereas the Facilitating role predicts reduced efficiency on easy tasks, and the Implementing role predicts reduced efficiency on complex tasks.

These findings reconceptualise role conflict as a bridge linking cognition patterns to behaviour and refine the foundation of attention in organisations by demonstrating how cognitive orientation and role enactment shape managerial attention.

Bio

Dr Alexandros Psychogios is a Professor of HRM & OB and the Head of Work & Organisation Group at Loughborough Business School, Loughborough University. He is also Visiting Professor & Affiliated Researcher in Universities in Germany, Greece, and Cyprus. His research interests are on International & Strategic HRM; Organisational Neuroscience; Employee Voice; Performance & Reward Management.