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Research on organizations is increasingly informed by analysis of community context. Community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography. In both modes, organizations operate interdependently with social institutions and with other units of social structure. Because such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections. Such considerations encourage analyses of organizations in ways that spread the relevance of results beyond organizationally defined research problem areas.

Combining insights from organizational ecology and social network theory, we examine how the structure of relations among organizational populations affects differences in rates of foundings across geographic locales. We hypothesize that symbiotic and commensalistic interpopulation relations function as channels of information about entrepreneurial opportunities and that differing access to such information influences the founding rate. Empirical analyses of U.S. instruments manufacturers support this argument. The founding rate of instruments manufacturers rises with the densities of organizational populations that have symbiotic and commensalistic relationships with instruments manufacturers. These factors encourage the initial foundings of instruments manufacturers in areas where such organizations were not previously found. The dominance of organizational populations tied to instruments manufacturing by symbiotic or commensalistic relations increases the rate of foundings of instruments manufacturers, whereas the dominance of organizational populations that lack these relations decreases it. Finally, we find that interpopulation relationships that hinge on direct contact have less impact on initial foundings as geographic distance increases. These results have implications for research on organizational ecology, entrepreneurship, urban sociology, and economic geography.