Cognitive style and connotative meaning in management accounting communication

Abstract

Successful management accounting communication requires that the parties involved have a mutual understanding of the terms employed. Connotative meaning, i.e., the personal way of seeing and stressing aspects of a term, is an important layer of meaning and, therefore, lacking consent on connotative meaning is a potential impediment to management accounting communication. The theory of linguistic relativity predicts that a person’s cognitive style has an impact on how the connotative meaning of management accounting terms is perceived. In our paper, we assess this link as a possible impediment to successful management accounting communication. We rely on the semantic differential technique to assess the connotative dimensions of selected management accounting terms and use the Cognitive Style Index as an explanatory variable for these connotations. Data for our analysis were gathered from 216 management accounting students with different levels of accounting knowledge. We find empirical evidence that a person’s cognitive style has an impact on the connotative meaning a person associates with management accounting terms. Additionally, we find that connotative meaning is also linked to the level of accounting knowledge. The contribution of our paper is twofold: First, we provide evidence for the link between cognition and connotative meaning in management accounting. Second, our research identifies diverging cognitive styles as a previously overlooked potential source of dysfunctional management accounting communication.