Abstract:

One of the fundamental exploratory challenges in strategic management as well as in theories of business evolution concerns the role and the distinction between organizational adaptation and environmental selection when firms encounter problems. Following on existing studies, we can notice that researchers have typically sought to demonstrate whether and when adaptation or selection tends to be the most evident force. Our focus here is the selection process entailing the act of choosing or eliminating among a set of variations. Literature has more to say about the selection and sources and causes of structural inertia than about self-renewing organizations that might counteract such inertia. In this conceptual paper, we have made the effort to identify the selection process as well as selectors per se. The result of the paper is the conceptualization concerning on endogenous and exogenous selectors and relevant mechanisms organizations can adopt in order to continue its operations. In addition, we propose the systematization of endogenous and exogenous selectors due to different approaches in strategic management field.