Evolution of Organizational Forms in Ecological Perspective

The view that selection processes govern the dynamics of organizational diversity shades naturally into a Darwinian evolutionary position. Such a position claims that long-run changes in organizational diversity reflect the accumulated effects of short-run differences in net mortality rates of popu- lations facing limited resource environments. Moving from a population ecology of organizations to

Dynamic and Comparative Analysis in Ecological Perspective

We think that research on organizational diversity must attend to dynamics and must analyze the entire range of variation within types of organizations. The remainder of this chapter summarizes these themes and previews the approach that we use in empirical analyses reported in Part III. 1. Dynamics The diversity of organizations in society depends on

Approaches to Defining Forms in Ecological Perspective

We have already noted that an organizational form gives unitary character to a population of organizations. But what does this mean concretely? A number of answers to this question have been given in the population- ecology literature. 1. Organizational Genetics One set of answers looks for an analogue to the genetic structure that reproduces

A Focus on Boundaries in Ecological Perspective

In the remainder of this chapter we argue that approaches emphasizing content and pairwise relations should be supplemented by others that emphasize the dynamics of boundaries in organizational space. To motivate this alternative perspective, it is instructive to consider a seemingly quite different problem. Social life in many societies is channeled by boundaries that

Boundary Dynamics and Diversity in Ecological Perspective

Segregating and blending processes have immediate implications for organizational diversity, a main concern of ecological theories. When segregating processes dominate, institutional and other constraints create holes in the social structure in the sense that some feasible kinds of organizations do not exist because of these constraints. Thus it appears that (1) strong segregating processes

Structural Inertia of the firm

The existing literature usually stresses the capacity of organizations to learn about and adapt to uncertain, changing environments. We think this emphasis is misplaced. The most important issues about the applicability of evolutionary-ecological theories to organizations concern the timing of changes. Learning and adjusting structure enhance the chance of survival only if the speed

A Hierarchy of Inertial Forces in the firm

So far we have considered organizations as unitary actors, either adapting to their environments or remaining inert. This is simplistic in that it ignores the obvious fact that some parts of organizations change more quickly than others, and that adaptive changes are sometimes not difficult to discern or implement. Universities, for example, constantly change

Variations in Strength of Inertia in the firm

New organizations presumably have lower levels of reproducibility than older ones. As Stinchcombe (1965) pointed out, new organizations typically rely on the cooperation of strangers. Development of trust and smooth working relationships takes time, as does the working out of routines. Initially there is much learning by doing and comparing alternatives. Existing organizations have

The Principle of Isomorphism

Until fairly recently, the sociological literature lacked explicit treatments of the causes of organizational diversity. The absence of theory and research on this issue is doubtless a result of the strong concentration of interest at the level of the individual organization. But recent theory on the organizational level does contain an implicit proposition about

The concept of Niche

The main point of contact between existing organization theory and modern ecological theory is the concept of the niche. The concept provides a useful general way to express how environmental variations and competition affect the growth rates of populations. The imagery of the niche expresses the role of a population (or species) in a

Classical Competition Theory

The development of competition theory in population bioecology was in- fluenced strongly by Gause’s (1934) experiments on the coexistence of closely related species of beetles in controlled environments. He found that mixing two populations in the laboratory invariably caused one population to disappear. Gause summarized his findings by proposing a general ecological law. His

Niche Overlap and Competition in Ecological Perspective

Competition, unlike conflict, is difficult to observe directly because it is often indirect. Therefore, empirically-minded analysts look for ways to study competition indirectly. One way is to exploit the relationship between niche overlap and competition that is implied by classical competition theory. This is the tack that population biologists have taken. They typically do

Variations in Intrinsic Founding Rates in Organizational Populations

We begin with variation among organizational populations in intrinsic growth rates, that is, the rates of growth in the absence of any resource or competitive constraint. One advantage of the ecological perspective is that it directs attention to the possible importance of such variations in the social world. Although the fact and its implications

Effects of Environments on Carrying Capacities in Organizational Populations

The notion of a carrying capacity for a population of organizations summa- rizes the dependence of the growth rate of the population on numerous dimensions of the social and economic environment. We have found that sociologists tend to assume that use of the notion of carrying capacity implies that a society has some fixed

Conceptualizing the Size of Organizational Populations

We have now developed an image of a set of interacting populations whose numbers are constrained by the speed of founding of new organizations and by social and material processes that set (time-varying) carrying capacities. The last step in model building considers the effects of interactions within and between populations on the growth and

Carrying Capacities and Density Dependence of Firms in Organizational Populations

In developing the LV model in the previous chapter, we noted that carrying capacities are simple functions of parameters expressing density dependence in rates of birth and death. The existence of a finite carrying capacity depends on the assumption that the birth rate falls with density and that the mortality rate rises with density.

Rate Dependence and Diversity Dependence of Firms in Organizational Populations

Delacroix and Carroll (1983) argue that the founding rate for a particular kind of organization depends on the flow of recent foundings (the crude founding rate) rather than on density per se. They found that founding rates in populations of newspaper firms have cycles and that the cyclic behavior can be fitted well by

Dynamics of Selection of Firms in Organizational Populations

As we have noted in previous chapters, evolutionary selection refers to processes of differential replacement in populations. A characteristic conveys a selective advantage if it increases the likelihood that actors with the characteristic will be represented in future populations. In the biotic case, where lifetimes are reasonably tightly controlled by genes and structural characteristics

Designs of Empirical Studies in ecological perspective: Defining Events

We collected information about the life histories of all (or most) members of the organizational populations under study. In concrete terms, this means obtaining information on the timing of a series of vital events. Because organizations differ from other social actors such as individuals, a number of special issues arise in defining these vital

Designs of Empirical Studies in ecological perspective: National Labor Unions

It may seem ironic that we studied unions at a time when labor historians have largely abandoned the subject, preferring to study noninstitution- alized forms of labor action (see Gutman 1976, for example). The American labor movement has lost its momentum. In each year since 1957, the fraction of the civilian labor force affiliated