How to Thrive in Turbulent Business Environments: Case Colombia’s Mobile Telephony Industry

Abstract

Coevolution originated as a biological concept has traditionally been associated with the biological sciences to describe those cases of mutual evolutionary influence involving two (or more) species. This concept is fairly new in the study of organizations as it was introduced only two decades ago, specifically refers to a process involving successive changes between businesses and the environment. More recentrly, researchers began to employ the coevolution as an alternative to overcome the business turbulence with great success that would otherwise put its existence at risk. This article delimits the organizational coevolution concept making a direct association with business turbulence. It is being presented in the form of a multiple-case study of the mobile telephony industry in Colombia with a qualitative methodology. As part of the information-gathering process, approximately 300 public and private documents were consulted and 50 interviews with key stakeholders of the industry were conducted. Content analysis is the main data analysis technique, and the ATLAS/ti is used for processing. Thus, the final results show that when a sector faces turbulence, businesses can efficiently manage this phenomenon if they undertake a structural coupling process between the turbulent environment and strategic behaviour.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2017.v8n3p133