Institutional change and evolution

Abstract

In the midst of incessant talk about restructuring, downsizing, and reinventing national organizations and institutions, how do we account for the organizational, technological, and cultural change that has taken place so rapidly since 1989? In a recent book on managing and financing institutions of higher education (Johnson and Rush, 1995), one of the editors is quite emphatic in stating that, "Thus far, change in higher education has been an evolutionary, not revolutionary process" (p. 13). Can we find then a satisfying explanation in Darwin's theory of natural selection--should we look for more dramatic reasons in adaptation theory and what we used to call Social Darwinism? For colleges and universities, how much sense does it make to say that each societal institution has its own culture and evolves in its own way? No one should doubt that organizations and institutions change structurally and functionally over a period of time--but how quickly can institutions of higher education change in response to the organizational and technological changes evident in the international competition of multinational business corporations that are technologically driven? Most of us would agree that universities have changed significantly since the establishment of Johns Hopkins University in the 1880s; we would agree that they have changed even more since the end of World War II. We would not agree, however, on the usefulness of evolutionary theory in explaining the organizational and technological changes we have witnessed in the past decade. NATURAL SELECTION Once regarded as the mainstay of Social Darwinism, the "survival of the fittest" is surely a tautology that explains nothing. We must concede that some institutions survive while others perish (or decline in prestige, status, or reputation), and we should acknowledge that some institutions display a remarkable