Strategic Adaptation and Continuous Change

In the last blog we attempted to understand the punctuated equilibrium model and attempted to associate the organizational innovation component to it. In today's blog we look at Strategic Adaptation and Continuous Change. 

The theories of Strategic Organizational Adaptation and change emphasize on the role of managerial action. The strategic choices that managers make shape the organizational change. It is the choice of the actors that decide the outcome rather than passively accepting the environmental selection. Though we cannot claim that the organizational actors have a complete autonomy, the theory talks about a "bounded autonomy". These organizational actors through their actions and "enactments” are capable of redefining and modifying structures that open up new possibilities for the future.

Organizational change in this approach would be seen as a continuous process encompassing the paradoxical forces of continuity and change rather than an abrupt, discontinuous, episodic event described by the punctuated equilibrium model. The continuity maintains the sense of identity with the organizational learning, and factors in the political legitimacy and increase the acceptability of change among those who live with it.

It has also been argued by the management theorists of this school that consistently successful organizations have used a combination of "induced" and "autonomous" processes in strategy to initiate an organizational renewal. The induced initiatives work on the tasks that have an internal scope while the autonomous focus on tasks that have an external scope.