Long-Term Evolutionary Change in Organizational Populations: Theory, Models and Empirical Findings

Organizational ecology is a theoretical perspective on organizations that attempts to explain long-term social evolution, especially the rise and fall of organizational populations. This article reviews the most successful research program of the perspective, one based on the density-dependent model of legitimation and competition. It discusses the model and evidence that has been offered in its support as well as criticisms that have been registered. Unsolved research problems of the program are identified and models-in-progress attempting to address these open questions are discussed and compared

Foundations of a Theory of Social Forms

In the early transition era in Russia entry barriers for commercial banks were about absent. It resulted in the mushrooming of hundreds of small, poorly-endowed and inexperienced banks. In this paper we address the question whether the claimed benefits of low entry barriers - competition and market dynamics - have resulted. We use a sample of commercial saving banks for the 1994-97 period. We conclude that there were important mobility barriers and that the removal of entry barriers did not lead to intensified competition.forms;foundation of organization theory;identity;populations

On the genesis of organizational forms: Evidence from the market for disk arrays

This article asks a basic question of organizational evolution: When and where will a new organizational form emerge? Using a definition of organizational forms as external identity codes, we focus on two answers drawn from contemporary organization theory. The first holds that formal institutions such as industry associations and standard-setting bodies will result in a taken-for-granted organizational form. The second answer contends that increasing organizational density (number of organizations) will generate a legitimated organizational form. As reported here, a historical case study of the disk array market and its associated technologies finds both arguments limited. Although significant collective activity in association building and standard setting occurs among disk array producers, these have not yet led to an organizational form. Similarly, an observed trajectory of organizational density showing rapid growth followed by stabilization has not yet generated an organizational form. In our view, the diversity of origins and other activities of those organizations operating in this market work against institutionalization of the disk array organizational form. We reason that if firms in the market derive their primary identities from other activities (implying that there are few highly focused firms deriving their primary identity from disk arrays), then the disk array producer identity cannot cohere into a code or form. This conclusion suggests a respecification of the legitimation component of the density-dependent model of organizational evolution

The Handover in Hong Kong: Impact on Business Formation

Although the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China was a major political transformation, its impact on new business formation has not been fully scrutinized. Theory suggests contradictory forces may operate before, during, and after such a transformation: either a decline due to uncertainty or an increase due to opportunities created. To determine which force dominated, we first decomposed the analysis by the size of major affected social groups, then analyzed the expected impact. This led us to predict an aggregate depression of business formation, although this effect likely showed great variation and attenuated over time. Our empirical assessment relied on detailed monthly records of business registrations from 1975 to 2013, using GARCH time series modeling to analyze total registrations as well as the proportions for local and non-local businesses. Controlling for macro socioeconomic conditions, we find the registration rate dropped significantly throughout the post-handover era, implying a dominance of uncertainty. Further, new registrations displayed higher volatility following the 1984 announcement of the handover, reflecting shifting public sentiment in the interim about Hong Kong’s economic prospects. We also find a post-handover preference for forming non-local firms with higher asset mobility; this preference diminishes with time

The social lives of products: Analyzing product demography for management theory and practice

Despite the centrality of products in many strategic and managerial theoretical frameworks, little is known systematically about how and why specific products come and go from markets. We argue that narrowing this gap will likely enhance management theory, and we propose that research on product demography—the social lives of products—is a promising way to proceed. For organizing various theoretical ideas used in prior studies, we offer a classification framework. It defines four broad theoretical perspectives on product demography: market rationality, firm rationality, organizational bounded rationality, and institutional rationality. We also outline an approach to product demography that studies empirically the rates of product launch, growth, and withdrawal using stochastic models and data on all products ever appearing in bounded industrial domains. Finally, we discuss the challenges presented by such a fragmented approach to research on product demography and propose a generic research program intended to avoid stagnation

The fog of change: opacity and asperity in organizations

Initial architectural change in organizations often induces other subsequent changes, generating lengthy cascades of changes in subordinate units. This article extends a formal model of cascading organizational change by examining the implications for organizational change of the limited foresight of those who initiate such change about unit interconnections (structural opacity) and the normative restrictiveness imposed on architectural features by organizational culture (cultural asperity). Opacity leads actors to underestimate the lengths of periods of reorganization and the associated costs of change, thereby prompting them unwittingly to undertake changes with adverse consequences. Increased opacity and asperity lengthen the total time that the organization spends reorganizing and the associated opportunity costs; and the expected effect of an architectural change on mortality hazards increases with the intricacy of the organizational design, structural opacity, and the asperity of organizational culture. We illustrate the theory with an interpretation of the 1995 collapse of Baring Brothers Bank

Foundations of a Theory of Social Forms

In the early transition era in Russia entry barriers for commercial banks were about absent. It resulted in the mushrooming of hundreds of small, poorly-endowed and inexperienced banks. In this paper we address the question whether the claimed benefits of low entry barriers - competition and market dynamics - have resulted. We use a sample of commercial saving banks for the 1994-97 period. We conclude that there were important mobility barriers and that the removal of entry barriers did not lead to intensified competition

Improved design of a DFB Raman fibre laser

A Raman fibre laser based on phase shifted DFB structures is modelled for the first time. Using parameters of realistic devices, the model predicts low-threshold and highly-efficient laser output. The change of position and width of the phase shift were found to have a substantial impact on laser performanc

Some Adventures in the Search for a Modified Gravity Explanation for Cosmic Acceleration

The discovery of cosmic acceleration has raised the intriguing possibility that we are witnessing the first breakdown of General Relativity on cosmological scales. In this article I will briefly review current attempts to construct a theoretically consistent and observationally viable modification of gravity that is capable of describing the accelerating universe. I will discuss f(R) models, and their obvious extensions, and the DGP model as an example of extra-dimensional implementations. I will then briefly describe the Galileon models and their very recent multifield and curved space extensions - a class of four-dimensional effective field theories encoding extra dimensional modifications to gravity. This article is dedicated to the career of my friend and former colleague, Joshua Goldberg, and is written to appear in his festschrift.Comment: 17 pages, to appear in a festschrift for Joshua Goldber

Model for a Universe described by a non-minimally coupled scalar field and interacting dark matter

In this work it is investigated the evolution of a Universe where a scalar field, non-minimally coupled to space-time curvature, plays the role of quintessence and drives the Universe to a present accelerated expansion. A non-relativistic dark matter constituent that interacts directly with dark energy is also considered, where the dark matter particle mass is assumed to be proportional to the value of the scalar field. Two models for dark matter pressure are considered: the usual one, pressureless, and another that comes from a thermodynamic theory and relates the pressure with the coupling between the scalar field and the curvature scalar. Although the model has a strong dependence on the initial conditions, it is shown that the mixture consisted of dark components plus baryonic matter and radiation can reproduce the expected red-shift behavior of the deceleration parameter, density parameters and luminosity distance.Comment: 11 pages and 6 figures. To appear in GR