Under the impact of various exogenous factors, such as Europeanization, internationalization and crises, it is assumed that governmental organizations face adaptive pressure. Due to increasing problems of complexity and uncertainty, organizational change becomes necessary in order to improve intra- and inter-organizational coordination and performance. However, so far the focus of research has been mainly on the ‘external transnationalization’, i.e. new forms of transnational governance, and not on the ‘internal transnationalization’, the retroactive effects of these new forms of governance on the state, in the sense of a need for organizational change among governmental organizations. The few studies that focus on organizational change concentrate on the formal dimension, e.g. modifications that are reflected on formal organization charts. However, in depth analysis of organizational adaptation of governmental organizations, which takes into account the informal dimension of institutional change, has not been a major focus of research. Based on the neo-institutionalist approach and an organization theory-perspective, the paper aims at analyzing changes in the various dimensions of the dependent variable – organizational adaptation – as well as the influence of different internal factors in the course of a qualitative analysis of governmental organizations, using the German ‘core executive’, the functional unit of the Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance, as a starting point of analysis. Initially, the paper will deal with the questions of what kind of organizational modifications can be observed. In this regard, it is of interest to determine whether changes in processes entail changes in structures and whether the observed changes correspond to different modes of adaptation put forward by the literature: centralization, differentiation and innovative modes of adaptation. Subsequently, the focus will be on the question of why these changes are observable, i.e. what explanatory variables can be regarded as influencing factors.
