Organization- and management science

Organizations need to continuously adapt in response to evolving circumstances and demands (Aguilera, 2018). One way to make organizations more responsive to their external environment is to drastically alter the organizational structure (for example, through mergers, acquisitions, splittings, or changes of task) and, thus, the way an organization functions. These incentives for change operate in both the private and public sector. The pace at which such structural changes are introduced has increased significantly over the last decade, leaving less or no recuperation time for organizations and their employees (Rees and Rumbles, 2012). The notion that change is an exceptional episode in an organization's lifetime (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991) is no longer valid; organizations experience intense, unwavering sequences of structural changes (Brunsson, 2009). Corporate governance practices and systems can facilitate the successful implementation of these changes, for instance, by supporting and creating openness in decision-making processes. However, each single structural change inherently threatens the transparency of and participation in decision-making processes. As organizational psychology literature has illustrated (e.g., threat-rigidity theory; Seo and Hill, 2005), structural changes are likely to introduce a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety, putting strain on organizations and their employees. This can lead employees to stick to established work procedures and to avoid new information that does not fit well with their established mode of thinking—thus directly affecting decision-making processes. Moreover, managers in various echelons of an organization will have a tendency to centralize decision-making in order to mitigate a perceived 'crisis' as swiftly as possible. These symptoms are expected to be reduced when organizations and employees are given time to recover from a structural change. However, the few studies on change sequences (e.g., Rafferty and Griffin, 2006) argue that intense structural change sequences can impede such a gradual recovery. This will, in turn, paralyze the working of an entire organization, threatening organizational adaptability (e.g., McMurray, 2010). Nevertheless, to date, little is known about how decision-making processes evolve in the light of continuous structural changes and how this impacts the adaptability of an organization. This research examines the effect of intense structural change sequences on innovation and organizational performance through their impact on decision-making processes while controlling for corporate governance structures. It relies on a mixture of small-N qualitative and large-N quantitative analysis on both private and public organizations. Because of its innovative character, the results will be highly informative to researchers in organization and management sciences, organizational psychology, innovation, and public management.

Keywords:ORGANIZATION THEORY

Disciplines:Organisation and management theory, Organisational management, Public and not for profit management, Public administration organisations, Public management