Research in organizational evolution: what comes next?

The literature about organizational evolution has been witnessing a tremendous amount of and continuous development among strategists since the second half of the 20th century and this critical review article aims to provide readers with a thorough discussion of past and contemporary research within this area. From the beginning, the article works through analogies with biology in attempting to trace the current boundaries of the field, with much of the review’s content thus structured around the proposed conceptual (and methodological) framework. In addressing the question of what forces drive organizational evolution, the article then takes on a middle ground by mainly focusing on the development of the dialectical and co-evolutionary approaches. It ends by prospecting what can come next for evolutionary (and co-evolutionary) research in the strategic management field.