The Population-Selection Model of Organization Development and the Scope of its Application

Studia Zarządzania i Finansów (The WSB University in Poznan Studies in Management and Finance) (Польша). 2018. No. 15. P. 57–78.

Vyacheslav Shcherbina, Elena Popova, Sadovnicova L.

The article is devoted to underlying causes and conditions and the content of the
theoretical model of organizational development, which is either a “population-selection version of
organizational ecology” or “a population-selection model of development.” The model was created
by sociologists within the framework of the organization theory. The presentation of a nontrivial explanatory
scheme of the process of organizational development, its prognostic opportunities, scope
and mechanisms that support the development process are the focus of this article. The authors
explain the origin of the model by the crisis of systemic representations in the organizational theory
and the rejection of these representations. They also discuss problems that stimulated the emergence
of this approach, as well as the prospects for its application in management and beyond.

Keywords: environment, organizational development, structural changes, ecological (resource) niches, niche width, organization repertoire, focus perspective, population perspective, structural inertia