Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory, 8, 315–335, 2002 c  2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands Towards an Organizational Model of Attitude Change LUIS ALMEIDA COSTA AND JO ˜ AO AMARO DE MATOS Faculdade de Economia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal email: lacosta@fe.unl.pt email: amatos@fe.unl.pt Abstract Building on the growing literature that views organizations as complex adaptive systems, this paper proposes a general model to analyze the relationship between organizational context and attitudes. In particular, we focus on how the system of formal and informal communication channels that characterize an organization and the timing of information flows affect the dynamic process of attitude change. We also use a stylized version of the model to illustrate how the general framework is able to generate insights that are relevant to particular situations. Keywords: social networks, influence, attitudes, alignment of attitudes, organizational design “I cannot imagine someone advancing a plausible argument that understanding the pro- cess of attitude change is unimportant to us—yet no body of organizational literature on attitude change exists.” (emphasis original) Arthur P. Brief, in Attitudes in and Around Organizations, 1998, page 82. 1. Introduction An extensive literature in the field of social psychology studies the relationship between individual attitudes and behavior (e.g., Fishbein and Ajzen, 1974; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977; Ajzen, 1987, 1988; Pratkanis and Turner, 1994; Brief, 1998). Attitudes are summary evaluations of persons, objects, ideas, or activities along a dimension ranging from positive to negative. As Fishbein and Ajzen point out, “there is general agreement that a person’s attitude towards some object constitutes a predisposition on his part to respond to the object in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner” (1974, p. 59). Since attitudes are presumed to influence behavior, an important dimension of the problem of organizational design is to choose the organizational structures and procedures that best contribute to the alignment of individual attitudes and collective goals. The relationship between the social context and the formation of attitudes has been extensively studied under a social information processing approach, following the important work by Salancik and Pfeffer (1978). This perspective builds on the fundamental idea that individuals adapt attitudes, behavior, and beliefs to their social context and to their own past and present behavior and situation. In particular, the social information processing model posits “the direct effect of the social environment, through the influence of social