Risk and Uncertainty in the Concept of Organizational Life Cycle

Constant change of phases in an organization's development signals the presence of a life cycle, the nature of which hides many important conceptual regularities. Particularly the ones concerning the dis‑ tribution of uncertainty and risks across life cycle, the factors behind them and their determining role in building organizational immunity. The study aims at elaborating on these issues. The paper examines the history of the concept of life cycle and specifies the possibilities to apply it in management research. The relevant literature is critically reviewed to theoretically systematize a number of propositions about sequence and continuity of stages' change, conditions of their identification and non-linear character of their trajectory. The hypotheses on the presence of the effect of compression (density) in developmental stages as well as about varying concentration of risks are brought up for the academic discussion. The author puts forward an idea about the presence of both the general and smaller life cycles in economic systems of different level. Having generalized about theoretical-methodological propositions concerning life cycle the author makes an attempt to integrate functional and evolutionary models. Finally, the paper lists peculiarities of uncertainty and risk management during various developmental stages.