Cognitive Styles, Strategic Role Enactment, and Attention Performance of Middle Managers: A Role Conflict Mediation Model

Salviviani, Rahmi (2026) Cognitive Styles, Strategic Role Enactment, and Attention Performance of Middle Managers: A Role Conflict Mediation Model. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

Middle managers (MMs) operate in ambiguous positions that require balancing competing strategic and operational demands. Although they play a central role in translating strategy into organisational action, the cognitive foundations that shape how they perceive, prioritise, and enact their strategic responsibilities remain underexplored. Prior research has examined cognitive style, role conflict, strategic role enactment, and attentional performance as separate topics, yet little is known about how these factors interact within an integrated framework linking cognitive orientation to managerial behaviour and attentional performance. This thesis addresses this gap by examining how cognitive style (analytic versus holistic) influences the MMs’ experience of role conflict, enactment of the strategic role, and attention performance. Drawing on organisational role theory, the attention-based view, and cognitive psychology, the thesis proposes three pathways: the behavioural pathway, the cognitive pathway, and the behaviour-to-attention pathway. The research comprises a systematic literature review of 71 empirical studies and two empirical investigations.

Phase 1 examined the behavioural pathway through which MMs with analytic and holistic cognitive styles influence the four strategic roles (Championing, Facilitating, Synthesising, and Implementing) and whether role conflict explains these relationships. Holistic-style managers report greater enactment of the Championing role and higher role conflict. Role conflict predicts the enactment of the Championing and Facilitating roles, and further mediation analyses indicated that role conflict influences the relationship between cognitive style and the Championing and Facilitating roles. A small indirect effect for the Implementing roles was identified but received weak support. Therefore, role conflict functions as a selective mediator through which cognitive style is translated into role enactment.

Phase 2 extends this analysis to attentional performance using a visual search task to assess the processing speed and attentional efficiency under easy and difficult task conditions. In the cognitive pathway, analytic and holistic managers reported comparable attentional efficiency as task demands increased, but differed in the speed under difficult tasks, with the analytic type responding faster. Role conflict did not predict attentional outcome; however, under difficult task conditions, a compensatory mediator was found, and higher role conflict was associated with a marginal improvement in response speed among holistic managers. In the behaviour-to-attention pathway, the enactment of strategic roles predicted attention: the Synthesising role showed more efficient performance on a difficult attention task, whereas the Facilitating role predicted reduced efficiency on an easy task, and the Implementing role predicted reduced efficiency on a complex task. However, these relationships were not mediated by role conflict.

These findings show that cognitive style, role conflict, strategic role enactment, and attention performance form a partially interconnected system in middle management. Role conflict functions as a selective cognitive-behavioural bridge, explaining the influence of cognitive style on strategic behaviour in roles that involve influence and coordination-oriented behaviour, while playing a limited role in explaining attentional performance. Attentional performance shows both stable cognitive orientation and role-linked attentional routines, where the repeated enactment of particular strategic roles influences efficiency. This thesis bridges psychology and strategy work, reframing role conflict from a stressor into a contingent mechanism and positioning attention as a role-linked capability relevant to managerial development and role design.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 12 June 2026 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	cognitive style, role conflict, strategic role, attentional performance, middle manager, visual search, analytic-holistic
Subjects:	CAH04 - psychology > CAH04-01 - psychology > CAH04-01-04 - psychology and health CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-02 - business studies CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-04 - management studies CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-05 - human resource management
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Life and Health Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2026 09:27
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2026 09:27
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/17102

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