Organizational Properties and Managerial Learning: Testing Alternative Models of Attitudinal Change

Abstract

This article is an initial attempt to work through some of the complex issues involved in organization development via the laboratory approach. Basically, the focus is on whether differences in managerial learning of new work-related goals/values, induced by a laboratory experience can be meaningfully associated with differences in the properties of organization units from which the managers came. The Likert Profile of Organizational Characteristics is used to differentiate organization units, and three models of attitudinal change are tested for their adequacy in helping account for the observed differences in managerial learning of new attitudes. Despite a variety of methodological inelegancies, the data suggests complex associations of learning and organizational properties. These associations at once provide potential enrichment of our notions about processes of change in organizations, and also constitute a formidable challenge for subsequent research.