Organization theory and the post-socialist transformation: contributions to organizational knowledge

This article has three main aims. First, it sets out the rationale for and logic of this Special Issue, which focuses on the formative relationship between organization theories forged essentially within the stable institutional contexts of advanced market economies and organizational research conducted within the institutionally unstable and ambiguous environment of post-socialist societies. Second, we seek to clarify the reasons why post-socialism has been a particular challenge to the conventional wisdom of ‘Western’ organization theory and lay out before the reader the range of contributions that transformation research has made to our understanding of organization and organizational change, both within the post-socialist context and beyond. Third, we introduce the five articles that comprise this Special Issue in order to outline their main lines of argument and contributions.