Meet all changes with constancy: The dynamic adaptation process of county governments in China

Abstract

AbstractAs their task environments become more unstable, public organizations must build their adaptive capacities. Treating the organization as a problem‐solving system, we constructed an institution‐process framework to analyze how China's local governments use processes and mechanisms to adapt to the task turbulence from higher‐up governments. Based on the experiences of three Chinese counties in dealing with the Targeted Poverty Alleviation task, we found that they built an institutionalized adaptation process that included attention allocation, decision‐making system construction, and boundary work in a turbulent task environment. These processes were embedded in specific institutional structures. We define this institutionalized adaptation process as dynamic conservatism. In this adaptation mode, China's local governments rarely observe and manage the environment; instead, they integrate their existing structural and stable elements to cope with the task turbulence generated by higher‐level governments.