Focussed on the deterministic potency of organizational age and development over time. At its most extreme, this perspective argues that organizations adopt evolutionary, incremental strategies of change in times of stability and revolutionary change strategies between historical periods. The life cycle is birth, transformation and death of organizations. Each stage provides the context for particular change strategies. The life cycle can be viewed as the deterministic process of bureaucratization as organizations grow.
Key issue is survival.
Professional managers are recruited, departments and functions begin to be defined. The organization has begun to establish its position, internal tasks are allocated and who has responsibility and autonomy to carry them out becomes pre-eminent. Division of labour is established. Requires learning of new skills to achieve change, may include rapid turnover of managers. This helps me to explain the magnitude and difficulty of the task I have taken on in trying to describe the process of change in the innovative Saskatchewan government of the 1970s.