Organizational Change: The Role of Managers' Mental Models

The current work studies the role played by managers' mental models in organisational change processes. In particular, we consider managers' attitudes to organizational changes and how they influence decisions to initiate such changes. We have based our empirical analysis on the opinions of the company managers themselves, obtained through a questionnaire sent to a sample of Spanish firms. Our findings show that managers' evaluations of organizational change processes - whether favourable or unfavourable - condition their decision to initiate them. Likewise, we find that managers' evaluations of change processes will depend on the degree of acceptance and on its expected long-term effects.