The change in the public organizations during the membership process to the European Union

In this research, utilizing the literature of macro-institutional and organizational change, organizational factors of institutional change are examined. As a result of international integration, the effects of characteristics peculiar to organizations that affects institutional change in a country is focussed on. For this purpose, in this research, it is asserted that the level of the institutionalization of organizations, the level of resistance to change, the characteristics of the teams conducting twinning projects in organizations are effective on the change of organizations in an organizational field. In the framework of European Union (EU) twinning projects, the thesis of this study is tested by the changes in Turkish public institutions taking steps through the direction of analogy in corresponding organizations in European Union (EU). The data collected after surveys among 208 officials in twenty-four public institutions and examination of project final reports is analysed with quantitative analysis method. The findings of this research prove that the resistance to change in public institutions is changed depending on the size of the change, the level of the formality and autonomy of the organizations. The research also shows that the level of the success in the twinning projects is changed depending on the dimension of the change in the organization, the level of resistance, the autonomy of the organization and the educational level of the project team. The findings of this research not only support the partial change thesis of macro-institutional approach but also connote that the thesises in organizational change literature are disputable for public institutions. Keywords: institutional approaches, European Union (EU), twinning projects, organizational change, resistance to organizational change