Co-evolution between institutional environments and organizational change: The mediating effects of managers’ uncertainty

The purpose of this paper is to interpret organizational change from a co-evolutionary perspective. It examines the co-evolution between institutional environments and organizational change with the mediating role of uncertainty as perceived by managers.

The author employed an inductive case study to explore how institutional environments interact with organizational change in a novel context: a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

The author developed a co-evolutionary model of organizational change that emphasizes the interaction between institutional-level factors and organizational-level change as bridged by top management perceptions of uncertainty. The model also illustrates the dynamics of organizational uncertainty and its effects on organizational change.

The study implies that uncertainty may not be an inevitable negative influence on organizational development, and tell managers how to manages the dynamics of uncertainty through two principles.

This study contributes to the organizational change literature by interpreting organizational change as the results of interaction between multi-level factors from institutional, organizational, and team levels. The author also expand the understanding of uncertainty from a dynamic perspective.