Cognitive Flexibility, Leadership style on Decision Making among Self Employed and Employed

Abstract

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt one’s behavior to a changing environment. Cognitive flexibility allows a person to work efficiently and decouple from previous tasks, reconstruct a new response set, and implement that new response set into the task at hand. Leadership Styles are the behavioural patterns that a leader adopts to influence the behaviour of his followers, i.e., the manner in which he delivers directives to his subordinates and inspires them to achieve the set goals. Decision making is defined as the cognitive process of choosing between two or more alternatives, ranging from the relatively clear cut (e.g., ordering a meal at a restaurant) to the complex (e.g., selecting a mate). Psychologists have adopted two converging strategies to understand decision making: (a) statistical analysis of multiple decisions involving complex tasks and (b) experimental manipulation of simple decisions, looking at the elements that recur within these decisions. The aim of the study is to identify relationship between cognitive flexibility, leadership styles and decision making and also to compare the degrees it between Self Employed and Employed population.  Convenience sampling technique was used. Cognitive Flexibility questionnaire, Multifactorial leadership style and General decision-making style questionnaire was completed by 121 participants between age group of 21yrs to 60yrs. The results suggested that there is low positive relationship between Cognitive Flexibility and Decision Making. There is high correlation between cognitive flexibility and decision making on employed then Self-employed.