ACADEMIA Letters An Analysis of Managerial Leaders’ Cognitive Styles and Their Decision-making Preferences in the Iranian Higher Education Sector Alireza Hejazi Abstract This research was designed to inspect the link between cognitive style and decision-making preferences among managerial leaders in the Iranian higher education system. Up to 150 academic managerial leaders, including 92 graduates of leadership and management studies and 58 graduates of other disciplines participated in this study. Diferences between the two groups in terms of cognitive processes and decision-making approaches were identifed. The study suggests that managerial leaders’ cognitive style has positive and negative relationships with their decision-making style preferences. The fndings of this study might be used to de- scribe not just how managerial leaders think, the precision of their vision, and how they absorb and recall information, but also how they make judgments. Keywords: cognitive style, leadership, manager, managerial leader, decision-making Introduction Managerial leaders possess both the talents of a manager and the attributes of a leader. Being a successful manager necessitates leadership that focuses managers’ attention on goals that address issues, as well as how people and processes may interact and work together to produce Academia Letters, December 2021 Corresponding Author: Alireza Hejazi , hejaziar@gmail.com Citation: Hejazi , A. (2021). An Analysis of Managerial Leaders’ Cognitive Styles and Their Decision-making Preferences in the Iranian Higher Education Sector. Academia Letters, Article 4516. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4516. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0