COGNITIVE-STYLE AND EXTENT OF COMPUTER USE IN ORGANIZATIONS - RELEVANCE OF SUFFICIENCY OF ORIGINALITY, EFFICIENCY AND RULE-CONFORMITY

Investigation of the relationship between the extent of 34 senior managers' use of applications software and their adaptive-innovative cognitive style shows that the extent of software use correlates with total scores on the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory; it is also positively related to two of the subscales measuring Sufficiency of Originality and Rule-conformity but negatively related to the third subscale measuring Efficiency. Three forms of the Kirton inventory, the 32-item measure devised by Kirton and two abridged versions recently proposed by Taylor, produce substantially similar results when used as unitary measures of adaption-innovation and for the subscales.