Change Management in the Context of Decision-Making Behaviour of Local Politicians Regarding Inter-Municipal Cooperation: A Look at the Example of Destination Management.

Change processes always go through various stages. Regarding political change projects, there are specific continuative aspects that influence the decision-making behaviour of local politicians. This also applies to specific decisions relating to issues of inter-municipal cooperation. The intended gain in knowledge of this article is to determine how council representatives decide towards inter-municipal destination management organizations as a form of inter-municipal cooperation, to what extent experiences already exist in this field, how open they are towards them, and which possible influencing factors have an impact on this decision behaviour. Mixed-methods research is the chosen research strategy for this study. Semi-structured focus group interviews are followed by constructing the initial research model, and a written survey of council representatives was conducted. Based on this the present study finds that the openness of local politicians on inter-municipal cooperation, using the example of destination management organisations, is significantly dependent on location issues, legal form, and information about weighing up the advantages and disadvantages. Finally, also the origin of a specific destination management initiative, meaning internal or external to the respective local parliamentary group, was found as significant independent variable for political decisions about intermunicipal destination management organizations. As last step of this study and building on these findings and relevant theoretical framework models, a six-phase change management model was constructed as support for the decisionmaking behaviour of local politicians regarding inter-municipal projects. This model includes the phases of initiation (1), persuasion (2), political decision-making (3), implementation (4), evaluation (5), and resolution amendment (6). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]