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

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.