Accounting in evolving organizations

Abstract

We investigate the self-transformations and shifting interactions of organizations in a transitional society, and the implications of these processes for that society from the evolutionary governance perspective. By means of an in-depth study of three types of agricultural service organizations in Uzbekistan’s Khorezm province we demonstrate how the complex succession of the system of collective farms created a situation where organizations are forced to transform themselves, their couplings, their mobilization of resources, to adapt to the new environment. In this process, not only legacies from the past and links with other organizations shape the options for self-transformation, but also the configuration of other, older, forms of differentiation: segmentation and hierarchy. Reliance on hierarchies, family, clan, administrative boundaries, can help the organization to reproduce itself, but, as a side effect, it can reinforce a lack of functional differentiation in society at large that in the long run makes the organization vulnerable.