grad-org-ecology

Installation
SKILL.md

Organizational Ecology (Hannan & Freeman)

Overview

Organizational ecology applies population-level evolutionary logic to organizations. Rather than asking why individual firms succeed or fail, it asks why certain organizational forms proliferate or decline across populations. The theory emphasizes selection over adaptation: environmental change is met more by the founding of new organizations and the failure of old ones than by incumbent transformation.

When to Use

  • Explaining industry-level patterns of organizational founding and failure
  • Analyzing why established organizations resist change (structural inertia)
  • Evaluating liabilities of newness, smallness, or adolescence for startups
  • Understanding density dependence in industry evolution (legitimation vs. competition)

When NOT to Use

  • When the focus is on individual firm strategy and managerial agency
  • When the analysis requires prescriptive recommendations for a single organization
  • When the population boundaries cannot be defined meaningfully
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Apr 10, 2026