Research News
Organizational Ecology
Specializing Can Mean Bigger Sales
Customers like to feel they’re buying goods and services from businesses that are leaders in a specific category or two. Being a jack of all trades in too many categories may reduce profits say researchers. (June 2009)
When (Organizational) Change Hurts: Startups Need to “Think Employees” from the Get-Go
A decade-long study of Silicon Valley (California) technology startups
finds that companies were three times more likely to fail if at some
point they altered the founder’s blueprint for employee relations than if they
maintained their original employee model. (January 2007)
Diverse Immigration Patterns Change Church Communities
In the early 20th century, immigrants practicing their religions affected
the church-going habits of American communities, as longtime residents
either were drawn back into attending churches they had drifted away from or,
when faced with a variety of new beliefs, questioned religion and drew away from
faiths they had practiced in the past. The phenomenon attracted the interest of
Glenn Carroll and a colleague. (April 2006)
Founders
of Startups May Develop Itchy Feet
Founders of entrepreneurial firms are more likely to leave and start
a new business as their companies mature and their own roles become
more routine, say researchers. Unlike their bosses, employees are more
likely to leave early on and start a company. But if they stick around as
their company matures, employees find more opportunities to be creative
and thus are less likely to be lured away by an entrepreneurial
opportunity. (April 2005)
Failure Is a Key to Understanding Success
Studying success has become almost a cottage industry for writers and
consultants. Jerker Denrell warns that by not studying failure too, these
pundits may present a very skewed picture of what it takes to succeed.
(January 2004)
The Life Cycle of Business is Studied Through Organizational Ecology
Glenn R. Carroll and Michael T. Hannan, Princeton
University Press, 2000
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. (August 2002)