Do organizations really co-evolve? Problematizing co-evolutionary change in management and organization studies

Gianpaolo Abatecola, Dermot Breslin and Johan Kask

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2020, vol. 155, issue C

Abstract: This conceptual article discusses and, from some aspects, also problematizes the state-of-the-art regarding co-evolutionary research in Management and Organization Studies (MOS). Analyzing 76 characteristic studies published since 2000, we address three simple, significant questions: What co-evolves? What causal relationships are considered? What are the theoretical processes? The motivation behind our contribution is twofold: on the one hand, the turn of the century witnessed the remarkable growth of inquiries which, at face value, have claimed to be “co-evolutionary”; but, on the other hand, specific analyses about where this fast-growing meta-theoretical perspective on social change is now, and where it could move towards in the future, are still missing in MOS. Our study reveals increasing heterogeneity in defining what co-evolves and the associated causal relationships. It also reveals the prevailing scarcity in explaining what processes substantially characterize co-evolution in MOS. With a view to shaping the future direction of research in this area, we propose four core principles that theoretically set the co-evolutionary project apart.

Keywords: Co-evolution; Adaptation; Management; Organization; Change; Conceptual (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162519305104
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:155:y:2020:i:c:s0040162519305104

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119964

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().