Organizational Populations and Fields
Title
Organizational Populations and Fields
Author
Haveman, Heather A.
Kluttz, Daniel N.
Research Area
Social Institutions
Topic
Complex Organizations and Bureaucracies
Abstract
This essay examines two major perspectives on organizations that have been prominent since the 1970s: ecology and institutionalism, both of which emerged as reactions against rationalist approaches to the study of organizations. Both take as their primary units of analysis collections of organizations, rather than individual organizations: “populations” for ecologists (groups of organizations with the same form) and “fields” for institutionalists (groups of organizations of different forms that interact with each other in some social sector). Ecologists seek to explain the changing distribution of organizations (rates of founding, failure, growth, and change) in terms of the features of organizations' environments. Institutionalists seek to explain organizational legitimacy, variety, and change by reference to cultural norms, values, and expectations about what is the “right” or “normal” way to organize. While ecologists seek general explanations that apply to all populations, institutionalists seek explanations that are sensitive to the peculiarities of the field under study. Ecological and institutional studies of organizations have converged in the past decade, which has yielded studies that minimize the weaknesses of each perspective and maximize their strengths. Ecologists have examined many explanatory factors, such as pressures to imitate legitimate organizational forms, which were originally highlighted by institutionalists. In the same vein, institutionalists have turned their attention to founding and failure, outcomes that were ecologists' original focus, and have used factors such as the number of organizations, much studied by ecologists, to explain these outcomes. We conclude by suggesting potential fruitful avenues for further integration between these perspectives.