Glenn R. Carroll

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

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 newspaper publishing industry is examined as an illustration. The ecological focus shows that many small, specialized organizations operate successfully in this industry, despite apparently high levels of local concentration. A resource-partitioning model is advanced to explain the interorganizational relationships between generalist and specialist organizations. Statistical tests of the model using historical data on 2,808 American local newspaper organizations show the merit of using the ecological perspective for analyzing industries.

Dynamics of organizational populations : density, legitimation, and competition

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.

Errata: Organizational Mortality in the Newspaper Industries of Argentina and Ireland: An Ecological Approach

This research was supported by NIMH Grant #2T232MH15149-03 to the Organizations Research Training Program at Stanford University and by NSF Grant #SOC78-12315 to Michael T. Hannan and Nancy Brandon Tuma. During part of the writing stage, Carroll was a guest professor at Zentrum fur Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen in Mannheim, Federal Republic of Germany. We wish to thank Michael Hannan and John Meyer for comments on an earlier draft.

Density Dependence in the Evolution of Populations of Newspaper Organizations

A model of density dependence is proposed to explain regularities in the growth and decline of organizational populations. Density -the number of organizations is assumed to be a function of the social processes of legitimation and competition. At low density, the model predicts that the legitimation process will dominate and will lead to high organizational founding rates and low organizational mortality rates. At high levels of density, competition will dominate, and consequently founding rates will decline and mortality rates will rise. The model is tested with hazard function models using data from nine newspaper populations spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and covering over 5200 newspapers. Analysis offounding rates provides strong empirical support for the model. Analysis of mortality rates reveals that the model holds for large populations.

Organizational Foundings: An Ecological Study of the Newspaper Industries of Argentina and Ireland

This research was supported by NIMH Grant #2T232MH15149-03 to the Organizations Research Training Program at Stanford University (W. Richard Scott, Director) and by NSF Grant #SES-8109382 to Michael T. Hannan. We appreciate the comments of Mike Hannan and Jack Brittain on an earlier draft of this paper. Using nineteenth-century historical data on the Argentine press and the Irish press, we explore the plausibility of an environmental model of foundings in populations of organizations. We show that both internal population dynamics and events external to the press account for the quasi-cyclical patterns of newspaper foundings. Prior demises and prior foundings of newspapers both have curvilinear effects on current foundings; however, political turbulence at the national level accounts for the launching of most new press ventures. Institutional regime changes and economic cycles appear to have no effect on newspaper foundings. These findings suggest yet another mode of ecological influence on the change of organizational populations over time.*

A stochastic model of organizational mortality: Review and reanalysis☆

Abstract An effort is made to integrate the research literatures of business policy and organizational sociology as they concern organizational mortality. The previous empirical studies of organizational mortality are reviewed and considered in light of current theoretical arguments. Three stochastic models are developed to test hypotheses concerning organizational mortality: the constant rate model, the Gompertz model, and Makehams Law. The parameters of these models are estimated for 52 sets of data on organizational mortality. The findings show that Makehams Law is the best-fitting model, although its estimation requires data with low levels of censoring. Substantively, the findings show strong support for Stinchombes liability-of-newness hypothesis [ A. L. Stinchcombe (1965) , “Organizations and social structure,” in Handbook of Organizations (J. G. March, Ed.), pp. 153–193, Rand McNally, Chicago].

Dynamics of Publisher Succession in Newspaper Organizations

Glenn R. Carroll This paper explores the effects of succession of the publisher in local newspaper organizations. Unlike much previous research, the analysis simultaneously took into account: (1) the organizational context of the succession event; (2) the timing of succession relative to the organizational life cycle; and (3) the type of transfer undertaken in control structures. Thefindings showthatthe rates of death of newspaper organizations increase following succession of the founder. This finding holds for all types of founder control structures and forms of newspaper organizations. The analysis also shows some weak evidence that succession has its greatest impact when the transfer of control occurs from and between organizations controlled by individuals.

ON THE SOCIAL NETWORKS OF MANAGERS

Using data from the National Opinion Research Centers General Social Survey, we compared the organizational membership networks and core discussion networks of managers and nonmanagers. For the tw...

In the bud? Disk array producers as a (possibly) emergent organizational form

This article develops and tests theory on when and where a new organizational form will emerge. Recent theory holds that as the number of organizations using a particular external identity code first increases beyond a critical minimal level, the code becomes an organizational form. Going beyond this formulation, we theorize about how an external identity code is established. We argue that when the identities of individual organizations are perceptually focused, they will more readily cohere into a distinct collective identity. We develop ideas about how two observable aspects of organizations might generate perceptually focused identities in a common market: (1) de novo entry and (2) agglomeration in a geographic place with a related identity. Using comprehensive data from the market for disk drive arrays, we test these ideas and an alternative by estimating effects of different specifications of organizational and product densities on rates of entry and exit for array producers. Overall, the analysis supports the notion that firms with perceptually focused identities aid in establishing an organizational form.

On the Historical Efficiency of Competition Between Organizational Populations

Much organizational theory and research uses an equilibrium assumption known as historical efficiency. This assumption implies that observed distributions of organizations at any point in time reflect the unique outcomes of underlying systematic processes, independent of historical details. In an attempt to assess the plausibility of this assumption in the context of organizational evolution, the authors use a well-established model to simulate trajectories of competing organizational populations. The findings show that path-dependent processes can often generate outcomes other than those implied by historical efficiency. Implications for theory and research are discussed.