Organizational ecology is commonly seen as a Darwinian research program that seeks to explain the diversity of organizational structures, properties and behaviors as the product of selection in past social environments in a similar manner as evolutionary biology seeks to explain the forms, properties and behaviors of organisms as consequences of selection in past natural environments. We argue that this explanatory strategy does not succeed because organizational ecology theory lacks an evolutionary mechanism that could be identified as the principal cause (...) of organizational diversity. The “evolution” of organizational populations by means of selection, which organizational ecologists put forward as the mechanism responsible for the extant diversity of organizational forms, is not evolution in any proper sense, because organizational populations do not have what it takes to participate in evolutionary processes. This implies that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program and that it cannot explain organizational diversity. (shrink)

We propose a formal theory of multiple category memberships. This theory has the potential to unify two seemingly unconnected theories: typecasting and identity-based form emergence. Typecasting, a producer-level theory, considers the consequences of specializing versus spanning across category boundaries. Identity-based form emergence considers the evolution of categories and how the attributes of producers entering a category shape its likelihood of gaining legitimacy among relevant audiences. Both theory fragments treat the processes by which audience members assign category memberships to producers. This (...) article develops this common foundation and outlines the arguments that lead to central implications of each theory. The arguments are formalized using modal expressions to represent key categorization processes according to the theory -building framework developed by Hannan et al. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new typology and associated measure of social and environmental mission integration by conceptually framing a feature of hybrid organizations—the degree of integration of their revenue model and social–environmental mission. The SEMI measure is illustrated using a hand-collected sample of 256 North American Certified B Corporations. We explore the heterogeneity of SEMI scores by identifying external-facing correlates and demonstrate non-congruence with Certified B Corporation’s audit results. Overall, our findings advance existing knowledge of these hybrid organizations and how (...) they balance their social–environmental missions with their economic objectives. (shrink)

The sharing economy as an emerging field is characterized by unsettled debates about its shared purpose and defining characteristics of the organizations within this field. This study draws on neo-institutional theory to explore how sharing organizations position themselves vis-à-vis such debates with regard to (1) the values these organizations publicly promote to present themselves as “good” sharing organizations and (2) the business model features they make visible to appear as having the “right” organizational model. This study examines the online self-representations (...) of 62 prototypical sharing organizations in Germany with regard to value propositions and business model features. A semantic network analysis of the features reveals two distinct categories of sharing organizations: grassroots initiatives and platform-based organizations. By showing how value propositions and business model features are linked in the sharing economy, the findings indicate the different legitimation strategies of grassroots initiatives and platform-based organizations, which we term “sustainability by model” and “sustainability by feature.” These findings broaden our understanding of the strategies that organizations apply to cope with societal expectations in the emerging sharing economy. (shrink)

Organizational ecology applies Darwinian principles of natural selection to understand the evolution of new forms of organizations over time. The idea here is that there are different forms of human organizations, such as different business organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, etc. The growth of new forms of organizations within each of these fields is to be understood in terms of a struggle for existence among organizations with different traits. In a recent article, Reydon and Scholz (2009) argue that this Darwinian (...) view of the evolution of new organizational forms is highly problematic because organizational populations do not exhibit the levels of internal cohesion, isolation, and closure that are necessary for something like Darwinian evolution to occur. In this article, I defend organizational ecology by rebutting the arguments of Reydon and Scholz. (shrink)