Prolegomena on Coevolution: A Framework for Research on Strategy and New Organizational Forms

Decades of research in strategy and organization science and in branches of economics and decision sciences have not resolved the adaptation selection debate. This debate continues in the face of a concerted research effort and vast growth in the stock of knowledge in this area. A comparison of strategic management and organizational ecology theories highlights the nature and source of the debate. While organizational ecology theories focus on selection, variation, and retention processes for explicating the evolution of populations of organizations, strategic management theories focus on firm-level adaptation as a function of strategy and organization design. Organizational ecology research is disconnected from adaptation at the level of the individual organizational unit and therefore cannot directly contribute to explicating firm level adaptation. Research on the emergence or evolution of new organizations has been attracting more attention. Most research on evolution of organizations involves studies of short-term adaptations under various contingencies, or retrospective case studies and panel studies.