Minds at the edge of chaos

The concept of a mental model is increasingly becoming of interest to organisations, as it is a person's beliefs, thoughts, interpretations, or otherwise termed, 'mental model' that can affect our actions and therefore how people achieve organisational outcomes (Jensen & Rasmussen 2004). This paper establishes a robust definition of the concept of a mental model for future research. The research was conducted using coherent conversations as part of a complexity-based inquiry. This project seeks to understand and explore the views held by individuals about actual work practices and ideal work practices. This research concludes that the individuals, who make up the organisation, are in a state of chaotic edge thinking, where everything is perceived as a threat, procedures are formed to control, and people react radically. Moreover, this is concluded to be due to miscommunication and a lack of communicative connectedness between staff and supervising managers.