Transforming Former State Enterprises in the Czech Republic

The study of organizational transformation has emerged from the foundations established by contingency theory and research. While institutional approaches to organizational analysis have preferred to focus on the tendency towards organizational continuity and inertia, recent developments have begun to con sider institutional pressures leading to change, and to provide clues about how contingency and institutional theories might complement each other in improv ing our understanding of organizational change. The evidence presented in this paper, drawn from a study of organizational transformation in the Czech Republic, allows exploration of the relationship between transforming state enterprises and the wider processes of social, economic and institutional change. The values, motives and actions of the key enterprise managers are shown to be essential factors in explaining both the process of transformation in state enterprises, and the role of institutional factors in that process.