concepts
issues in organizational structure
How do organizations change over time? An evolutionary perspective on the fundamental problem of organizational change may be defined—inductively—on the basis of a number of distinctive underlying claims. Conceptual Overview To be recognized as evolutionary, attempts to understand processes of organizational change must be based on a combination of at least some of the following seven claims: (1) Evolutionary change is a process that requires little or no foresight; (2) organizations change is a consequence of problem-driven, trial-and-error search; (3) search is primarily local, conducted in proximity to current knowledge domains; (4) organizations learn by encoding past experiences into routines that guide and constrain future behavior; (5) routines evolve through variation, selection, and retention processes primed by external or internal stimuli; (6) organizational evolution is embedded in an environmental (e.g., industry) evolutionary process characterized by variation, selection, and retention processes based on the creation, growth, and decay of organizations and new organizational forms; and (7) the evolution of organizations and their environments unfolds in highly interactive and complex ways, impinging on each other's variation, selection, and retention processes. [Source: International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies; Organizational Evolution]
organizational evolution