The work looked at east German senior industrial managers in transition under the condition of radical environmental change that followed the introduction of the west German political, economic, and societal system in eastern Germany. The enhancement of the understanding of managers in change in the transitional economies of central and eastern Europe is significant to the improvement of the effectiveness of western support in the introduction of market forces. Of wider significance is the study's contribution to the understanding of the issues at individual level that might equally emerge within the fundamental structural changes of current western industries. For decades, research into the management of change has focused on the group and systems level and failed widely to consider the crucial significance of individual behaviour in the realisation of change at organisational level. In view of the questions and the objectives of the research, a qualitative approach was adopted because it provides a particularly strong method for investigating processes, cultures, and new fields of scientific research. The analysis drew on a basis of 73 in-depth interviews with senior level managers in east German industrial organisations and structured questionnaires on the individual, organisational, and change profile of the sample. The work contributes to the understanding of managerial transition in transformative contexts. A model of the individual transition process was elicited from the data. It suggests that east German managers emerged from the experience of fundamental change with a transformed world-view. The initial belief in the existence of equilibria had been replaced by the notion of the permanency of change. Because of the way in which the experience of economic transformation was found to impact deeply on individuals' self-concept, the study concludes that individual development is a key transformation instrument, since it can specifically target the cultural and ideological underpinning of successful transformation.