Creating a Hybrid Organizational Form from Parental Blueprints: The Emergence and Evolution of Knowledge Firms

In: Human relations: towards the integration of the social sciences, Volume 53, Issue 1, p. 33-56

Abstract

Using a case study of a new biotechnology firm, we examine the formation of a new organizational form as a hybrid emerging from two `parent' organizational forms. We focus on key internal labor processes that are selected from existing organizations and replicated in the hybrid form and argue that this inheritance process strengthens the likelihood of survival of the new form. We propose that analyzing the micro-level processes of inheritance contributes to the understanding of macro-level phenomena of organizational births and deaths, examined by population ecologists.