EVOLUTION OF CORPORATE STRUCTURE IN TURBULENT TECHNOLOGICAL FIELDS.

This paper presents a model of co-evolution among technology-based firms and their technological fields. Evolutionary trends in the technological environment, generated in part by aggregate organizational forces, place strong selective pressures on the structure and behavior of technology-based corporations. Corporate structures appear to be adapting to these pressures through the process of dynamic restructuring and creative recombination. The basic units of corporate adaptation (quasi-autonomous subassemblies) may, in turn, generate new forces of environmental change by enabling mature corporate hierarchies to survive and exploit technological discontinuities.