Organizational evolution and strategies for change of Bulgarian firms.

The purpose of this paper is the study of organizational evolution of Bulgarian firms and their strategies for change. We applied a research approach based on a longitudinal study comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods. Our objective is double: on the one hand, we wish to explore and analyze the real practice of Bulgarian firms while dealing with changes in market environment, while on the other hand we attempt to develop a model of organizational evolution, which incorporates the notions of evolutionary economics and chaos theory. With respect to our objectives we developed a conceptual model of organizational evolution which has been further tested. Firstly, a desk research covering a time span of ten years (1993–2003) has been accomplished. The main research goal was to identify and to evaluate the key external drivers of organizational evolution in Bulgaria. Then a detailed representative study among the managers/CEOs of Bulgarian firms has been conducted in years 1999 and 2001. Based on the research results several conclusions about the applicability of the proposed conceptual model have been drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]