What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

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The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/258788.pdf

Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches

To date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship has lacked a conceptual framework. In this note we draw upon previous research conducted in the different social science disciplines and applied fields of business to create a conceptual framework for the field. With this framework we explain a set of empirical phenomena and predict a set of outcomes not explained or predicted by conceptual frameworks already in existence in other fields.

The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research

Schwartz, Richard D. and James C. Miller 1964 "Legal evolution and societal complexity." American Journal of Sociology 70:159-69. Sheleff, Leon Shaskolsky 1975 "From restitutive law to repressive law: Durkheim's 'The Division of Labor in Society' re-visited." European Journal of Sociology 16:16-45. Spitzer, Steven 1975 "Punishment and social organization: a study of Durkheim's theory of penal evolution." Law and Society Review 9:613-37. Webb, Stephen D. 1972 "Crime and the division of labor: testing a Durkheimian model." American Journal of Sociology 78:643-56.

The Liability of Newness: Age Dependence in Organizational Death Rates

Most analysts of corporations and industries adopt the focal perspective of a single prototypical organization. Many analysts also study corporations primarily in terms of their internal organizational structures or as complex systems of financial contracts. Glenn Carroll and Michael Hannan bring fresh insight to our understanding of corporations and the industries they comprise by looking beyond prototypical structures to focus on the range and diversity of organizations in their social and economic setting. The result is a rich rendering of analysis that portrays whole populations and communities of corporations."The Demography of Corporations and Industries" is the first book to present the demographic approach to organizational studies in its entirety. It examines the theory, models, methods, and data used in corporate demographic research. Carroll and Hannan explore the processes by which corporate populations change over time, including organizational founding, growth, decline, structural transformation, and mortality. They review and synthesize the major theoretical mechanisms of corporate demography, ranging from aging and size dependence to population segregation and density dependence. The book also explores some selected implications of corporate demography for public policy, including employment and regulation.In this path-breaking book, Carroll and Hannan demonstrate why demographic research on corporations is important; describe how to conduct demographic research; specify fruitful areas of future research; and suggest how the demographic perspective can enrich the public discussion of issues surrounding the corporation in our constantly evolving industrial society. All researchers and analysts with an interest in this topic will find The Demography of Corporations and Industries an invaluable resource.

The Demography of Corporations and Industries

The number of small specialty brewers in the U.S. beer brewing industry has increased dramatically in recent decades, even as the market for beer became increasingly dominated by mass‐production brewing companies. Using the resource‐partitioning model of organizational ecology, this article shows that these two apparently contradictory trends are fundamentally interrelated. Hypotheses developed here refine the way scale competition among generalist organizations is modeled and improve the theoretical development of the sociological bases for the appeal of specialist organizations' products, especially those related to organizational identity. Evidence drawn from qualitative and quantitative research provides strong support for the theory. The article offers a brief discussion of the theoretical and substantive issues involved in application of the model to other industries and to other cultures.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/318962

Why the Microbrewery Movement? Organizational Dynamics of Resource Partitioning in the U.S. Brewing Industry1

This paper departs from the common practice of focusing on large, generalist organizations and shows that new organizational insights are obtined by adopting a broader, ecological perspective. The ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2779636.pdf

Concentration and Specialization: Dynamics of Niche Width in Populations of Organizations

This book seeks to deepen and broaden the understanding of change in organization populations by examining the dynamics of numbers of organizations in populations The authors have studied various kinds of organizations, including national labour unions, newspapers and newspaper publishers, brewing firms, life insurance companies, and banks

Glenn R. Carroll

Papers

The Liability of Newness: Age Dependence in Organizational Death Rates

The Demography of Corporations and Industries

Why the Microbrewery Movement? Organizational Dynamics of Resource Partitioning in the U.S. Brewing Industry1

Concentration and Specialization: Dynamics of Niche Width in Populations of Organizations

Dynamics of Organizational Populations: Density, Legitimation, and Competition