About the chapter
A contract research organization within fine chemicals is described as for its main characteristics between 1972 and 2012 while identifying drivers pulling towards bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic traits within organizations. The drivers are in the form of three dimensions: Presence versus relative absence of centralized control, presence versus relative absence of specified targets, and presence versus relative absence of formal monitoring and reporting of performances. While identifying and analyzing these dimensions, the contexts in which they occur are conceptualized according to prevalent frameworks on a firm’s evolutionary stages or event tracks. The analysis shows that the firm has been through four distinct stages or event tracks during its 40 year period, and three of these stages had seemingly contradictory co-existence between bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizational principles