Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Cultural Analysis -- CHAPTER 1 Culture in Organizations -- CHAPTER 2 Modeling Culture with Simulation -- Part II Model of Cultural Transmission -- CHAPTER 3 Representing Culture -- CHAPTER 4 Cultural Transmission -- CHAPTER 5 Organizational Types -- CHAPTER 6 Growth and Decline -- Part III Applications and Extensions of the Model -- CHAPTER 7 Heterogeneity in Tenure -- CHAPTER 8 Cultural Influence Networks -- CHAPTER 9 Terrorist Networks -- CHAPTER 10 Merging Cultures -- CHAPTER 11 Culture, Aging, and Failure -- CHAPTER 12 Concluding Remarks -- Appendix A Notation -- Appendix B Simulation Parameter Settings -- References -- Index

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I: The Case for Corporate Demography -- 1 About Organizations -- 1.1 Aging and Learning -- 1.2 Inertia and Change -- 1.3 Competitive Intensity -- 1.4 Global Competition -- 1.5 Historical Efficiency -- 1.6 Employment and Entrepreneurship -- 1.7 A Look Ahead -- 2 The Demographic Perspective -- 2.1 Demography of Business Organizations -- 2.2 Organizing Principles of Demography -- 2.3 Formal Demography and Population Studies -- 2.4 Demographic Explanation -- 2.5 The Demography of the Work Force -- 2.6 Internal Organizational Demography -- 3 Toward a Corporate Demography -- 3.1 Earlier Efforts -- 3.2 Retaining the Classical Structure -- 3.3 Making Demography Organizational -- 3.4 A Research Strategy -- 4 Forms and Populations -- 4.1 Population versus Form -- 4.2 Identity and Form -- 4.3 Codes -- 4.4 Organizational Forms -- 4.5 Organizational Populations -- 4.6 Systems of Forms -- 4.7 Implications for Corporate Demography -- Part II: Methods of Corporate Demography -- 5 Observation Plans -- 5.1 Designs in Organizational Research -- 5.2 Trade-offs in Observation Plans -- 5.3 Impact of Observation Plans -- 6 Analyzing Vital Rates -- 6.1 Event-History Designs -- 6.2 Stochastic-Process Models -- 6.3 Life-Table Estimation -- 6.4 Constant-Rate Models -- 7 Modeling Corporate Vital Rates -- 7.1 Duration Dependence -- 7.2 Dependence on Covariates -- 7.3 Note on Left Truncation -- 7.4 Comparing Designs by Simulation -- 7.5 Simulation Findings -- 8 Demographic Data Sources -- 8.1 Criteria for Evaluating Sources -- 8.2 Commonly Used Sources -- 8.3 Using Multiple Sources -- 8.4 Data Realities -- Part III: Population Processes -- 9 Organizational Environments -- 9.1 Telephone Companies -- 9.2 Modeling Environments

This book examines transaction cost economics, the influential theoretical perspective on organizations and industry that was the subject of Oliver Williamson's seminal book,Markets and Hierarchies (1975). Written by leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists, the essays collected here reflect the fruitful intellectual exchange that is occurring across the major social science disciplines. They examine transaction cost economics' general conceptual orientation, its specific theoretical propositions, its applications to policy, and its use in systematic empirical research. The chapters include classic texts, broad review essays, reflective commentaries, and several new contributions to a wide range of topics, including organizations, regulations and law, institutions, strategic management, game theory, entrepreneurship, innovation, finance, and technical information. The book begins with an overview of theory and research on transaction cost economics, highlighting the specific accomplishments of scholars working within the perspective and emphasizing the enormous influence that transaction cost reasoning exerts on the social sciences. The following section covers conceptual uses for the transaction cost framework and major theoretical or methodological elements within it, such as bounded rationality. While advancing some interesting theoretical propositions, these chapters are in fact more ambitious: each examines a specific field, area, or research program and attempts to fashion a new way of thinking about research questions. In the section on industrial applications, contributors study the application of transaction cost theory to a range of problems in utilities, telecommunications, laser printing, and early international trade. The book closes with four microanalytical chapters that delve into the structures and behaviors of

Intro -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- Organizational Populations Studied -- Analytic Strategy -- Relation to Other Theory and Research -- The Plan of This Book -- 2. Theoretical Approach -- Competition Processes -- Legitimation Processes -- Density, Competition, and Legitimation -- Density Dependence in Vital Rates -- Reversibility of Processes -- Conclusion -- 3. Models and Modeling Strategy -- Classical Models of Population Growth -- Relating Vital Rates to Legitimation and Competition -- Density Dependence in Founding Rates -- Density Dependence in Mortality Rates -- Interpretations of Density Dependence -- 4. Density and Founding Rates -- Prior Research -- Methodological Issues -- Generalized-Yule and Log-Quadratic Models -- Logistic and Gompertz Models -- Theoretical Implications -- 5. Interactions Between Subpopulations -- Multi-Population Models -- Empirical Results -- 6. Density and Organizational Mortality -- Prior Research -- Results -- Controls for Size and Total Mass -- Implications of Unobserved Heterogeneity -- Theoretical Implications -- 7. Complications -- Levels of Analysis -- Apparent Reversals -- Left-truncated Observation Schemes -- 8. Population Trajectories -- Simulation Methods -- Simulating Historical Trajectories -- Density Dependence -- Discussion -- 9. Implications for Social Organization -- Extending the Theory -- Issues of Microfoundations -- Applications to Other Types of Problems -- Appendix A: Designs of Empirical Studies -- Labor Unions -- Newspapers and Newspaper Publishers -- Brewing Firms -- Banks -- Life Insurance Companies -- Appendix B: Methods of Analysis -- Event Data and Stochastic Models of Vital Rates -- Analysis of Organizational Founding Rates -- Analysis of Rates of Organizational Mortality -- Appendix C: Simulation Program -- References -- Name Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I.

The authors apply event history analysis to records on 90 countries from 1950-1975 to test hypotheses consistent with world systems and modernization hypotheses. The hypotheses predict factors associated with political change from/to one-party and multi-party governments. Modernization hypotheses predict that changes making a society more modern (that is, more like European societies) increase the chances for multi-party democratic governments. World systems hypotheses predict that governments are more affected by a country's place in the world economic system than by internal changes. Results here show small effects of modernizing on government form, and event history methods show a complex relationship between GNP per capita and form of government.

Recent sociological theory and research highlights food, drink, and restaurants as culturally meaningful and related to social identity. An implication of this view holds that the prevalence of corporate chain restaurants affects the sociological character of communities, as many activists, popular–based movements, and theorists contend. The analysis we report here seeks to identify the ecological niche properties of chain and independent restaurants—which kinds of communities support restaurant chains, and which kinds of communities tend to support independent local restaurants and food service providers instead. We analyze data from a 2005 sample of 49 counties across the United States with over 17,000 active restaurants. We argue that demographic stability affects the community composition of organizational forms, and we also investigate arguments about a community's income distribution, age distribution, population trends, geographic sprawl, and commuter population. We find that communities with less stable demographic make–ups support more chain restaurants, but that other factors, including suburban sprawl and public transit commuter, also have some impact.

Little theory and research addresses the ways organizational context affects the demography of products. We examine this question here by focusing on an organization's mode of market entry. Specifically, we explore differences between firms entering a market de novo (start-up) and those entering de alio (diversification from another market). We analyze all products ever shipped in the worldwide optical disk drive (ODD) industry, 1983–1999. We find an almost paradoxical empirical pattern, whereby de novo firms typically introduce products with widely agreed upon "better" (that is, universally more appealing) technological characteristics. Yet these products generally stay on the market for a shorter time than those of de alio firms, whose products generally display less appealing technological features.

This article asks a basic question of organizational evolution: When and where will a new organizational form emerge? Using a definition of organizational forms as external identity codes, we focus on two answers drawn from contemporary organization theory. The first holds that formal institutions such as industry associations and standard-setting bodies will result in a taken-for-granted organizational form. The second answer contends that increasing organizational density (number of organizations) will generate a legitimated organizational form. As reported here, a historical case study of the disk array market and its associated technologies finds both arguments limited. Although significant collective activity in association building and standard setting occurs among disk array producers, these have not yet led to an organizational form. Similarly, an observed trajectory of organizational density showing rapid growth followed by stabilization has not yet generated an organizational form. In our view, the diversity of origins and other activities of those organizations operating in this market work against institutionalization of the disk array organizational form. We reason that if firms in the market derive their primary identities from other activities (implying that there are few highly focused firms deriving their primary identity from disk arrays), then the disk array producer identity cannot cohere into a code or form. This conclusion suggests a respecification of the legitimation component of the density-dependent model of organizational evolution.