BUS 374 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Organizational Ecology, Population Ecology, Natural Selection

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Business Administration
• Course: BUS 374
• Professor: Medha Satish Kumar

Document Summary

Hannan and freeman argue that organizations are largely inert, or can be treated as such. Building on stinchcombe (1965) they suggest that organizations are largely inert and detail a long enumerated list on constraints leading to inertia. They also argue external pressures can force inertia. They argue that a theory explaining variety in the face of inertia should be able should add selection at the level of a population of organizations (a concept they introduce and borrow from biology). They also suggest that there are communities which consist of multiple populations of organizations. Populations of organizations find an analog, the authors argue, in species. Using this metaphor, they argue that it"s possible to important some (but not all) of the tools developed for thinking about the selection of species and organizations within species. Of course, organizations are not perfect analogs for organism. For example, human social organizations can learn and adapt more than many organism.