Impacts Of Cognitive Style And Strategic Reference Point On Decision-making Choices Of Managers

Nowadays, decisions-making choices play an important role in the enterprise,business managers are very concerned about how to improve the quality ofdecisions-making choices, and scholars are increasingly concerned about the impactof the manager personality on decision-making choices. For businesses, study theimpact of cognitive style and strategic reference point on decisions-making choiceswill help managers to improve the quality of decision-making choices.Based on extant literature on cognitive style, strategic reference point anddecision-making theory, this study constructs a theoretical model of the relationshipamong the three variables. By reference to the existing experimental material,combined with the characteristics of Chinese enterprises, experiments are designed.MBA students as well as all levels of management staff of the Harbin area businessesas the objects of the experiments. Experiments are consisted of Embedded FiguresTest and situational decision-making experiments. The typical field independence andfield dependence cognitive style objects each30, a total of60objects were validexperimental data. SPSS17.0statistical software is used for data analysis; consist ofvariance analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The results of the studyindicate that cognitive styles have influence on managers’ choices of decision-making:field independent cognitive style has obviously positive influence on the support ofProgram One, a more conservative decision whereas field dependent cognitive stylehas obviously positive influence on the support of Program Two, a more riskydecision. Cognitive styles have influence on choices of the strategic reference point.With joint influences from internal reference point, external reference point and timereference point, strategic reference point has influences on decision-making choices.Meanwhile, it has partial mediating effect between cognitive styles anddecision-making choices.Finally, a reasonable explanation is given to be proven and not provenassumption, and proposal is made on business management decision-making.Business managers can understand their own cognitive style, and learn from eachother, thereby improving the quality of decision-making choices, to enable enterprisesto benefit.