Archetypes of organizational success and failure

• Autor(a) principal: Fleck,Denise L.
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: BAR - Brazilian Administration Review
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1807-76922009000200002
• topic: organizational archetypes; corporate growth; healthy longevity of organizations; theory building

This paper presents inductive theoretical work inspired by the empirical study of the high-tech rivals General Electric and Westinghouse. Comparative historical analysis suggests that each firm's responses to five organizational challenges have affected their chances of enjoying long-term success. In addition, the theoretical work advances two polar ideal types of organizational success and failure: the self-perpetuating and the self-destructive archetypes, respectively. These should be seen as extreme states of the existence of firms since, in reality, firms operate in some intermediary state. A process-oriented perspective of theory building advances relations of necessity towards organizational long-term success, and integrates the responses to challenges into a requisites model for the development of a propensity for organizational self-perpetuation