Schools of Organisational Theory Behind Mental Models

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The response addresses the queries posted in 1269 words with references.

// The paper deals with the case study based upon the mental models which are aligned with the theory of organization. In order to pursue with the paper like this, first we will understand the concept of mental model and its association with the school of organization theory. //

Mental model is a term used to describe the thought process and the images held about the working of the things in the real world. They have been used by the scientists to develop an insight about the way an individual behaves and the decision making ability of an individual. Mental model can be defined as the image of world that we carry in our mind which includes selected concepts, the relationships between them and their uses in the real system (Gentner& Stevens, 1983). They are conservative and limit our thinking.

An organization has many mental models, which sometimes need to be changed in order to reach better decisions and conclusions for the benefit of the organization. Mental models function in a simple way. They remind us of the solutions that we adopted in the past in similar situations and problems. They primarily align the available information to us to an incident experienced by us. Mental models are of two different types in their scope, frameworks and routines. The frameworks contain the knowledge or the thoughts component and the routines contain the actions that were taken. The two are related because the thought pattern led to the initiation of some action in the past by the individual.

As stated above, many mental models exist in an organization, and they emerge from the activities taken up by the organization, the services provided and its role in the society and the people that are a part of it. Whenever an organization needs to take a decision, it has a number of options and paths it can choose from, and mental models are the check points they need to pass through before their implementation. The models are formed by the experiences and learning of the organizational members. The individual learning involves ...