if you would like to see the abstract or introduction of the
paper. Journal Articles and Book Chapters: ask for these by their number .
For a biographical sketch of me and my work, please click here Chapter written by Hands Landstrom for his book, Pioneers of Entrepreneurship Research.
The following publications are available via regular mail by emailing me. Please include your mailing address when requesting a publication: Howard_Aldrich@UNC.EDU
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if you would like to see the abstract or introduction of the
paper.
1. Howard E. Aldrich. 1969. "Error in the
Definition of Central Place Function: Comments on an Article by Mark
and Schwirian." American Journal of Sociology, 74, (March): 534-536.
2. Howard E. Aldrich and Albert J. Reiss,
Jr. 1969. "A 1968 Follow-up Study of Crime and Insurance Problems of
Businesses Surveyed in 1966 in Three Cities. " Pp. 144-176
in Crime Against Small Business, Washington, DC: USGPO.
3. Howard E. Aldrich and Albert J. Reiss,
Jr. 1970. "The Effect of Civil Disorders on Small Business in the Inner
City." Journal of Social Issues, 2 6, (Winter):
187-206.
4. Howard E. Aldrich and Albert J. Reiss,
Jr. 1971. "Police Officers as Boundary Personnel." Pp. 193-208 in Harlan
Hahn (ed.), The Police in Urban Socie ty. Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
5. Howard E. Aldrich. 1972. "Organizational
Boundaries and Inter-Organizational Conflict." Human Relations,
24, 4 (August): 279-293.
Reprinted in Frank Baker (ed.). 1973. Organizational Systems: General Systems Approaches to Complex Organizations, pp. 379-393. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
6. Albert J. Reiss, Jr. and Howard E. Aldrich.
1971. "Absentee Ownership and Management in the Black Ghetto: Social
and Economic Consequences." Social P roblems, 18,
3 (Winter): 319-339.
Reprinted in Russell Doll (ed.). 1971. Educating the Disadvantaged: Yearbook 1970-71, pp. 538-558. New York: AMS Press.
7. Howard E. Aldrich. 1971. "The Sociable
Organization: A Case Study of Mensa and Some Propositions." Sociology
and Social Research, 55, 4 (July): 4 29-444.
8. Howard E. Aldrich. 1972. "Technology and
Organization Structure: A Re-examination of the Findings of the Aston
Group." Administrative Science Quarter ly, 17,
(March): 26-43.
9. Howard E. Aldrich. 1972. "Sociability in
Mensa: Characteristics of Interaction Among Strangers." Urban Life
and Culture, 1, (July): 167-186.
10. Richard Berk and Howard E. Aldrich. 1972.
"Patterns of Vandalism During Civil Disorders as an Indication of Target
Selection." American Sociologica l Review, 37,
(October): 533-547.
11. Howard E. Aldrich. 1972. "An Organization-Environment
Perspective on Cooperation and Conflict Between Organizations in the
Manpower Training System." Pp. 11-37 in A.R. Negandhi
(ed.), Conflict and Power in Complex Organizations: An Inter-Institutional
Perspective. Kent, OH: Kent State University Center for Business
and Economic Research.
12. Howard E. Aldrich. 1973. "Employment Opportunities
for Blacks in the Black Ghetto: The Role of White-owned Businesses."
American Journal of Sociolo gy, 78, 6 (May): 1403-1425.
13. Howard E. Aldrich. 1974. Review of Bloom,
Fletcher, and Perry, "Negro Employment in Retail Trade," Monthly
Labor Review 97 (July): 75-76.
14. Howard E. Aldrich. 1974. "Housing Market
Discrimination and Black Housing Consumption." Pp. 185-188 in von Furstenberg,
Harrison, and Horowitz (eds.), Patterns of Racial Discrimination,
Vol. 1: Housing. Lexington, MA.: DC Heath.
15. Howard E. Aldrich. 1974. Review of Frederick
Thayer, "An End to Competition!" American Journal of Sociology,
80, 3 (November): 781-785.
16. Howard E. Aldrich. 1975. "Ecological Succession
in Racially Changing Neighborhoods: A Review of the Literature." Urban
Affairs Quarterly, 10, ( March): 327-348.
17. Sergio Mindlin and Howard E. Aldrich.
1975. "Interorganizational Dependence: A Review of the Concept and
a Re-examination of the Findings of the Aston Group."
Administrative Science Quarterly, 20 (September): 382-392.
18. Lex Donaldson, John Child, and Howard
E. Aldrich. 1975. "The Aston Group Findings on Centralization: Further
Discussion." Administrative Science Qu arterly, 20
(September): 453-460.
19. Howard E. Aldrich and Albert J. Reiss,
Jr. 1976. "Continuities in the Study of Ecological Succession: Changes
in the Race Composition of Neighborhoods and Their Businesses."
American Journal of Sociology, 81, 4 (January): 846-866.
20. Howard E. Aldrich. 1976. "Resource Dependence
and Interorganizational Relations: Relations Between Local Employment
Service Offices and Social Service s Sector Organizations."
Administration and Society, 7 (February): 419-454.
21. Howard E. Aldrich and Jeffrey Pfeffer.
1976. "Environments of Organizations." Pp. 79-105 in A. Inkeles (ed.),
Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. II. Palo Alto:
Annual Review, Inc.
22. Howard E. Aldrich. 1976. "An Interorganizational
Dependency Perspective on Relations Between the Employment Service and
Its Organization Set." Pp. 23- 266 in R. Killman et al.
(eds.), The Management of Organization Design. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
23. Howard E. Aldrich and Sergio Mindlin.
1977. "Uncertainty and Dependence: Two Perspectives on Environment."
Pp. 149-170 in L. Karpik (ed.), Organiza tion and Environment.
London: Sage Publications.
24. Howard E. Aldrich. 1977. "Visionaries
and Villians: The Politics of Designing Interorganizational Relations."
Organization and Administrative Scien ces, 8 (Spring):
23-40.
25. Howard E. Aldrich and David Whetten. 1981.
"Organization-Sets, Action-Sets, and Networks: Making the Most of Simplicity."
Pp. 385-408 in P. Nystrom an d W. Starbuck (eds.), Handbook
of Organizational Design. New York: Oxford University Press.
26. Howard E. Aldrich and Diane Herker. 1977.
"Boundary Spanning Roles and Organizational Structure." Academy
of Management Review, 2 (April): 217- 230.
27. Jane Weiss and Howard E. Aldrich. 1977.
"The Supranational Organization of Production." Current Anthropology
(December): 630-631.
28. Howard E. Aldrich. 1978. "Centralization
Versus Decentralization in the Design of Human Service Delivery Systems:
A Response to Gouldner's Lament." Pp . 51-79 in Rosemary
Sarri and Yeheskel Hasenfeld (eds.), Issues in Service Delivery in
Human Service Organizations. New York: Columbia University Press.
29. David Whetten and Howard E. Aldrich. 1979.
"Organization Set Size and Diversity: Links Between People Processing
Organizations and Their Environments. " Administration
and Society, 11, 3 (November): 251-282.
30. Howard E. Aldrich. 1979. "Asian Shopkeepers
as a Middleman Minority: A Study of Small Businesses in Wandsworth."
Pp. 389-407 in David Eversley and Ala n Evans (eds.), Inner
City Employment. London: Heinemann.
31. Lena Kolarska and Howard E. Aldrich. 1980.
"Exit, Voice, and Silence: Consumers' and Managers' Responses to Organizational
Decline." Organization S tudies, 1, 1 :41-58.
32. Howard E. Aldrich and Clare P. Sproule.
1983. "The Impact of Corporate Mergers on Industrial and Labor Relations."
Pp. 293-308 in Walter Goldberg (ed. ), Mergers: Motives,
Modes, Methods. London: Gower.
33. Howard E. Aldrich and Susan Mueller. 1981.
"The Evolution of Organizational Forms: Technology, Coordination, and
Control." Pp. 33-87 in Barry Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.),
Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. IV. JAI Press.
34. Howard E. Aldrich and Jane Weiss. 1981.
"Differentiation Within the U.S. Capitalist Class: Workforce Size and
Income Differences." American Sociolo gical Review,
46, 3 (June): 279-289.
35. Howard E. Aldrich, John Cater, Trevor
Jones, and Dave McEvoy. 1983. "From Periphery to Peripheral: The South
Asian Petite Bourgeoisie in England." Pp. 1-32 in Ida Harper
Simpson and Richard Simpson (eds.), Research in the Sociology of Work,
Vol. 2. JAI Press.
36. Robert N. Stern and Howard E. Aldrich.
1980. "The Effect of Absentee Firm Control on Local Community Welfare:
A Survey." Pp. 162-181 in John J. Siegfr ied (ed.), The
Economics of Firm Size, Market Structure, and Social Performance
(July). Washington, DC: USGPO.
37. Howard E. Aldrich, John Cater, Trevor
Jones, and Dave McEvoy. 1981. "Business Development and Self-Segregation:
Asian Enterprise in Three British Citi es." Pp. 170-190
in Ceri Peach, Vaughan Robinson, and Susan Smith (eds.), Ethnic Segregation
in Cities. London: Croom Helm Ltd.
38. Howard E. Aldrich. 1982. "The Origins
and Persistence of Social Networks." Pp. 281-293 in Nan Lin and Peter
Marsden (eds.), Social Structure and Ne twork Analysis.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
39. Howard E. Aldrich, Trevor P. Jones, and
Dave McEvoy. 1984. "Ethnic Advantage and Minority Business Development."
Pp. 189-210 in R. Ward and R. Jenkins (eds.), Ethnic
Communities in Business: Strategies for Economic Survival. Cambridge
University Press.
40. Ellen Auster and Howard E. Aldrich. 1984.
"Small Business Vulnerability, Ethnic Enclaves, and Ethnic Enterprisee."
Pp. 39-54 in Robin Ward and R. Jenk ins (eds.), Ethnic
Communities in Business: Strategies for Economic Survival. Cambridge
University Press.
41. Bill McKelvey and Howard E. Aldrich.
1983. "Populations, Natural Selection, and Applied Organizational Science."
Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 1 (March): 101-128.
42. Howard E. Aldrich and Robert Stern. 1983.
"Resource Mobilization and the Creation of U.S. Producers' Cooperatives,
1835-1935." Economic and Industr ial Democracy,
4, 3 (August): 371-406.
43. Lance Kurke and Howard E. Aldrich. 1983.
"Mintzberg Was Right!: A Replication and Extension of the Nature of Managerial
Work." Management Science , 29, 8 (August): 975-984.
44. Udo Staber and Howard E. Aldrich. 1983.
"Trade Association Stability and Public Policy." Pp. 163-178 in R. Hall
and R. Quinn (eds.), Organization T heory and Public
Policy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
45. Howard E. Aldrich and Bill McKelvey. 1983.
"The Population Perspective and the Organizational Form Concept." Economia
Aziendale, II, 1 (April): 63-86.
46. Howard E. Aldrich, Bill McKelvey, and
Dave Ulrich. 1984. "Design Strategy from the Population Perspective."
Journal of Management, 10, 1 (Sprin g): 67-86.
47. Howard E. Aldrich, John Cater, Trevor
Jones, David McEvoy, and Paul Velleman. 1985. "Ethnic Residential Concentration
and the Protected Market Hypothe sis." Social Forces,
63, 4 (June): 996-1009.
48. Howard E. Aldrich. 1986. "Ecological Theory:
A Critique of Hannan and Freeman." Pp. 173-175 in Siegwart Lindenberg,
James Coleman, and Stefan Nowak (e ds.), Approaches to
Social Theory. New York: Russell Sage and Basic Books.
49. Howard E. Aldrich and Ellen Auster. 1986.
"Even Dwarfs Started Small: Liabilities of Age and Size and Their Strategic
Implications." Pp. 165-198 in Ba rry Staw and L. L. Cummings
(eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. VIII. Greenwich,
CT: JAI Press.
50. Howard E. Aldrich and Peter Marsden. 1988.
"Environments of Organizations." Pp. 361-392 in Neil J. Smelser (ed.),
Handbook of Sociology. Sage P ublications.
51. Roger Waldinger, Howard E. Aldrich, and
Robin Ward. 1985. "Trend Report: Ethnic Business and Occupational Mobility
in Advanced Societies." Sociolog y, 19, 4 (November):
586-597.
52. Howard E. Aldrich and Catherine Zimmer.
1986. "Entrepreneurship Through Social Networks." Pp. 3-23 in Donald
Sexton and Raymond Smilor (eds.), The Art and Science
of Entrepreneurship. New York: Ballinger.
53. Howard E. Aldrich, Robin Ward, and Roger
Waldinger. 1985. "Minority Business Development in Industrial Society."
European Studies Newsletter, 1 4, 4 (March): 4-8.
54. Howard E. Aldrich, John Cater, Trevor
Jones, David McEvoy, and Paul Velleman. 1986. "Asian Residential Concentration
and Business Development." New Community, XIII,
1 (Spring): 52-64.
55. Howard E. Aldrich, Catherine Zimmer, and
Trevor Jones. 1986. "Small Business Still Speaks with the Same Voice:
A Replication of 'The Voice of Small Bu siness and the Politics
of Survival.'" Sociological Review, 34 (May): 335-356.
56. Udo Staber and Howard E. Aldrich. 1987.
"A Population Perspective on Underemployment in Alternative Organizations."
International Journal of Sociol ogy and Social Policy,
7, 4: 43-53.
57. David McEvoy and Howard E. Aldrich. 1986.
"Survival Rates of Asian and White Retailers." International Small
Business Journal, 4 (Spring): 28-3 7.
58. Howard E. Aldrich and Udo Staber. 1988.
"Organizing Business Interests: Patterns of Trade Association Foundings,
Transformations, and Deaths." Pp. 111 -126 in Glenn Carroll
(ed.), Ecological Analysis of Organizations. New York: Ballinger.
59. Howard E. Aldrich. 1988. "Paradigm Wars:
Donaldson Versus the Critics of Organization Theory." Organization
Studies, 9, 1 (January): 19-25.
60. Catherine Zimmer and Howard E. Aldrich.
1987. "Resource Mobilization Through Ethnic Networks: Kinship and Friendship
Ties of Shopkeepers in England." Sociological Perspectives,
30, 4 (October): 422-455.
61. Howard E. Aldrich. 1988. "New Paradigms
for Old: The Population Perspective's Contribution to Health Services
Research." Medical Care Review, 4 4, 2 (Fall): 257-277.
62. Howard E. Aldrich, Catherine Zimmer, and
David McEvoy. 1989. "Continuities in the Study of Ecological Succession:
Asian Businesses in Three English Ci ties." Social Forces,
67, 4 (June): 920-944.
63. Howard E. Aldrich, Ben Rosen, and Bill
Woodward. 1987. "The Impact of Social Networks on Business Foundings
and Profit: A Longitudinal Study." Pp. 154 -168 in Neil Churchill
et al. (eds.), Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 1987.
Wellesley, MA: Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Babson College.
64. Udo Staber and Howard E. Aldrich. 1987.
"An Evolutionary View on Changes in Employment Relationships: The Evolution
of Organizational Control in the U nited States." Pp.
46-58 in Guenter Dlugos, Wolfgang Dorow, and Klaus Weiermair (eds.),
in collaboration with Frank Danesy, Management Under Differing Labour
Market and Employment Systems. Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter.
65. Udo Staber and Howard E. Aldrich. 1989.
"An Ecological Critique of the Human Resource Strategy Literature."
Industrial Relations Journal, 20, 2 (Summer): 110-118.
66. Howard E. Aldrich, Arne Kalleberg, Peter
Marsden, and James Cassell. 1989. "In Pursuit of Evidence: Five Sampling
Procedures for Locating New Business es." Journal of
Business Venturing, 4, 6 (November): 367-386.
67. Howard E. Aldrich. 1989. "Networking Among
Women Entrepreneurs." Pp. 103-132 in Oliver Hagan, Carol Rivchun, and
Donald Sexton (eds.), Women Owned Businesses. New
York: Praeger.
68. Howard E. Aldrich and Udo Staber. 1989. "Le relazioni industriali che cambiano." Sviluppo and Organizzazione, N. 111 (Gennaio-Febbraio): 45-58.
69. Howard E. Aldrich, Udo Staber, John J.
Beggs, and Catherine Zimmer. 1990. "Minimalism and Organizational Mortality:
Patterns of Disbandings Among Amer ican Trade Associations
in the 20th Century." Pp. 21-52 in Jitendra V. Singh (ed.), Organizational
Evolution, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
70. Howard E. Aldrich and Roger Waldinger.
1990. "Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship." Annual Review of Sociology,
16: 111-135. Palo Alto, CA: Annual R eviews, Inc.
71. Howard E. Aldrich, Pat Ray Reese, and
Paola Dubini. 1989. "Women on the Verge of a Breakthrough?: Networking
Among Entrepreneurs in the United States and Italy."
Journal of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 1, 4:
339-356.
72. Howard E. Aldrich. 1990. "Using an Ecological
Perspective to Study Organizational Founding Rates." Entrepreneurship:
Theory and Practice, 14, 3 (Spring): 7-24.
73. Howard E. Aldrich and Paola Dubini. 1989. "Le Reti E I Processi Di Sviluppo Delle Imprese." Economia e politica industriale, No. 64: 363-375.
74. Arne L. Kalleberg, Peter V. Marsden, Howard
E. Aldrich, and James W. Cassell. 1990. "Comparing Organizational Sampling
Frames." Administrative Scie nce Quarterly, 35, 4:
658-688.
75. Howard E. Aldrich. 1992. "Paradigm Incommensurability:
Three Perspectives on Organizations." Pp. 17-45 in Michael I. Reed
and Michael D. Hughes (eds.) , Rethinking Organization:
New Directions in Organizational Theory and Analysis. Newbury Park,
CA: Sage
76. Howard E. Aldrich and Peter V. Marsden.
1992. "Complex Organizations." In Edgar F. Borgatta and Marie L. Borgotta
(eds.), The Encyclopedia of Socio logy. New York:
Macmillan.
77. Howard E. Aldrich, Pat Ray Reese, and
Paola Dubini. 1991. "The Go-Between: Brokers' Roles in Entrepreneurial
Networks." Pp. 554-555 in Neil Churchill et al.
(eds.), Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 1990. Wellesley,
MA: Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Babson College.
78. Howard E. Aldrich and Mary Ann von Glinow.
1992. "Personal Networks and Infrastructural Development." Pp. 125-145
in David V. Gibson, George Kozmetsky , and Raymond Smilor
(eds.), The Technopolis Phenomenon: Smart Cities, Fast Systems, Global
Networks. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
79. Howard E. Aldrich and Gabriele Wiedenmayer.
1993. "From Traits to Rates: An Ecological Perspective on Organizational
Foundings." Pp. 145-195 in Jerome Katz and Robert Brockhaus
(eds.), Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence, and Growth,
I. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
80. Howard E. Aldrich. Forthcoming. "Population Ecology and Firm Structure." In Frederico Butera and Gianfranco Dioguardi (eds.), The Network Enterprise. Rome: Franco Angeli.
81. Paola Dubini and Howard E. Aldrich. 1991.
"Personal and Extend Networks Are Central to the Entrepreneurial Process."
Journal of Business Venturing, 6: 305-313.
82. Howard E. Aldrich. 1992. "Methods in Our
Madness? Trends in Entrepreneurship Research." Pp.191-213 in Donald L.
Sexton and John D. Kasarda (eds.), The State of the Art
of Entrepreneurship. Boston: PWS-Kent Publishing.
83. Howard E. Aldrich and Mary Ann Von Glinow.
1992. "Business Start-Ups: The HRM Imperative." Pp. 233-253 in Sue Birley
and Ian C. MacMillan (eds.), I nternational Perspectives
on Entrepreneurship Research. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland
(Elsevier).
84. Howard E. Aldrich, Catherine R. Zimmer,
Udo H. Staber, and John J. Beggs. 1994. "Minimalism, Mutualism, and
Maturity: The Evolution of the American Trade Association Population in
the 20th Century." Pp. 223-239 in Joel Baum and Jitendra Singh (eds.),
Evolutionary Dynamics of Organizations. New York: Oxford. University
Press.
85. Howard E. Aldrich and Toshihiro Sasaki.
1995. "R&D Consortia in the United States and Japan." Research
Policy, 24, 2 (March): 301-316.
86. Howard E. Aldrich. 1996. "Entrepreneurial
Strategies in New Organizational Populations." In Ivan Bull, Howard
Thomas, and G. Willard (eds.), Entrep reneurship: Perspectives
on Theory. Pergamon Press.
87. Howard E. Aldrich and Toshihiro Sasaki.
1995. "Governance Structure and Technology Transfer Management in R&D
Consortia in the United States and J apan." Pp. 70-92
in Jeffrey Liker, John E. Ettlie, and John C. Campbell (eds.), Engineered
in Japan: Japanese Technology-Management Practices. New York: Oxford
University Press.
88. Howard E. Aldrich and Pat Ray Reese. 1994.
"Does Networking Pay Off? A Panel Study of Entrepreneurs in the Research
Triangle." Pp. 325-339 in Front iers of Entrepreneurship
Research 1993. Wellesley, MA: Center for Entrepreneurial Studies,
Babson College.
89. Howard E. Aldrich and C. Marlene Fiol.
1994. "Fools Rush In? The Institutional Context of Industry Creation."
Academy of Management Review, 19, 4: 645-670.
90. Howard E. Aldrich, Sally W. Fowler, Nina
Liou, and Sara J. Marsh. 1994. "Other People's Concepts: Why and How
We Sustain Historical Continuity in Our Field." Organization,
1, 1: 65-80. London: Sage.
91. Pat Ray Reese and Howard E. Aldrich. 1995.
"Entrepreneurial Networks and Business Performance: A Panel Study of
Small and Medium-Sized Firms in the Research Triangle." Pp. 124-144 in
Sue Birley and Ian C. MacMillan (eds.), International Entrepreneurship.
London: Routledge.
92. Gabriele Wiedenmayer, Howard E. Aldrich, and Udo H. Staber. 1995. "Von Gründerpersonen zu Gründungstraten: Organisationsgründungen aus Populationsökologischer Sicht." Die Betriebswirtschaft, 55, 2 (April): 221-236.
94. Ted Baker and Howard E. Aldrich. 1994.
"Friends and Strangers: Early Hiring Practices and Idiosyncratic Jobs."
Pp. 75-87 in William Bygrave et al., (e ds.), Frontiers
of Entrepreneurship Research 1994. Wellesley, MA: Center for Entrepreneurial
Studies, Babson College.
95. Howard E. Aldrich and Tomoaki Sakano.
1998. "Unbroken Ties: How the Personal Networks of Japanese Business
Owners Compare to Those in Other Nations." In Mark Fruin, editor, Networks,
Markets, and the Pacific Rim: Studies in Strategy. New York: Oxford
Press.
96. Howard E. Aldrich and Tomoaki Sakano.
1995. "Is Japan Different? The Personal Networks of Japanese Business
Owners Compared to Those in Four Other I ndustrialized
Nations." KSU Economic and Business Review, 22 (May): 1-28. Kyoto
Sangyo University.
97. Howard E. Aldrich. 1997. "My Career as
a Teacher: Promise, Fall, Redemption." Pp 14-26 in Rae Andre and Peter
Frost (eds.), Researchers Hooked on Teaching: Noted Scholars Discuss
the Synergies of Teaching and Research.. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Download the
chapter as a PDF file
98. Ted Baker and Howard E. Aldrich. 1996.
"Prometheus Stretches: Identity, Knowledge Cumulation, and Multi-Employer
Careers." Pp. 132-149 in Michael Arth ur and Denise Rousseau (eds.),
The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New
Organizational Era. New York: Oxford University Press.
99. Udo Staber and Howard E. Aldrich. 1995.
"Cross-national Similarities in the Personal Networks of Small Business
Owners: A Comparison of Two Regions in North America."
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 20 (4): 441-467.
100. Howard E. Aldrich, Amanda Brickman Elam,
and Pat Ray Reese. 1996. "Strong Ties, Weak Ties, and Strangers: Do
Women Business Owners Differ from Men i n Their Use of Networking
to Obtain Assistance?" Pp. 1-25 in Sue Birley and Ian MacMillan, editors,
Entrepreneurship in a Global Contest. London: Routledge Ltd.
101. Howard E. Aldrich and Ted Baker. 1997.
"Blinded by the Cites? Has There Been Progess in Entrepreneurship Research?
Pp. 377-400 in Donald L. Sexton a nd Ray W. Smilor (eds.),Entrepreneurship:
2000. Chicago, IL: Upstart Publishing Co.
102. Howard E. Aldrich and Amanda Brickman
Elam. 1997. "A Guide to Surfing the Social Networks." Pp. 143-148 in
Sue Birley and Dan Muzyka, editors, Mastering Enterprise. London:
Pitman.
103. Howard E. Aldrich, Ted Baker, Michele
Kremen Bolton, and Toshihiro Sasaki. 1998. "Relational Contracting in
U.S. and Japanese R&D Consortia: Tec hnological, Organizational
and National Influences." IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
104. Ted Baker, Howard E. Aldrich, and Nina
Liou. 1997. "Invisible Entrepreneurs : The Neglect of Women Business
Owners by Mass Media and Scholarly Journ als in the United
States." Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 9: 221-238.
105. Howard Aldrich, Linda Renzulli, and Nancy
Langton. 1998. "Passing on Privilege: resources provided by self-employed
parents to their self-employed c hildren." In Kevin Leicht,
editor, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. Greenwich,
CT: JAI.
106. Courtney Shelton Hunt and Howard Aldrich.
1998. "The Second Ecology: The Creation and Evolution of Organizational
Communities as Exemplified by the Commercialization of
the World Wide Web." Pp. 267-302 in Barry Staw and L.L. Cummings, editors,
Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 20. Greenwich, CT: JAI
Press.
107. Howard Aldrich and Sølvi Lillejord. 1999.
"Stop Making Sense! Why Aren't Universities Better At Promoting Innovative
Teaching?" Pp. 301-308 in Bernice A. Pescosolido
and Ron Aminzade (eds.), The Social Worlds of Higher Education.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
108. Howard E. Aldrich. 2001. "Asleep on
the Job. Who's to Blame?" National Teaching & Learning Forum.
Vol. 11, No. 1, p. 11.
109. Annetta Fortune and Howard E. Aldrich.
2002. “ Acquiring Competence at a Distance: Application Service Providers
as a Hybrid Organizational Form.” The Journal of International Entrepreneurship,
1, 1: 105-121.
110. Linda Renzulli, Howard E. Aldrich,
and Jeremy Reynolds. 2003. "It's Up in the Air, or is It?" Teaching
Sociology. 31, 1 (January): 49-59.
111.Stephen Lippmann and Howard E. Aldrich..
2003. "The Rationalization of Everything? Using Ritzer's McDonaldization
Thesis to Teach Weber." Teaching Sociology, 31, 2 (April): 134-145
112. Howard E. Aldrich and Jennifer E. Cliff.
2003. "The Pervasive Effects of Family on Entrepreneurship: Toward
a Family Embeddedness Perspective." Journal of Business Venturing,
18, forthcoming.
113. Howard E. Aldrich . 2002. "Your
Paper's on the Floor, Outside My Door." National Teaching & Learning
Forum, 12, 1: 10.
114. Johann Peter Murmann, Howard Aldrich,
Daniel Levinthal, and Sidney Winter. 2003. "Evolutionary Thought in Management
and Organization Theory at the Beginning of the New Millennium." Journal
of Management Inquiry, 12, 1 (March): 1-19.
115. Howard E. Aldrich. 2004. "Entrepreneurship."
Forthcoming in Richard Swedberg and Neil Smelser, editors, Handbook
of Economic Sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press and Russell
Sage Foundation. To be published July 1st, 2004. .
116. Howard E. Aldrich. 2003. "Learning
from My Students."Contexts. .
117.Jennifer Cliff, Nancy Langton, and
Howard E. Aldrich. Forthcoming. "On Their Own Terms? Gendered Rhetoric
versus Behaviour in Small Firms."Organization Studies. .
119. Howard E. Aldrich. 2001. "Preface." In Joel A. C. Baum, editor, Companion to Organizations. Oxford: Blackwell.
120. Jerome A. Katz, Howard E. Aldrich, Theresa M. Welbourne, and Pamela M. Williams. 2000. "Special Issue on Human Resource Management and the SME: Toward a New Synthesis." Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 25, 1 (Fall): 7-10.
121. Howard E. Aldrich and Martha A. Martinez-Martinez. Forthcoming. "Entrepreneurship as Social Construction: An Evolutionary Approach." In Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch, editors, Handbook of Entrepreneurship
122. Howard E. Aldrich. 2001. "Who Wants to Be an Evolutionary Theorist?" Journal of Management Inquiry. 10 (June): 115-127
123. Williamson, Ian O., Dan M. Cable, & Howard E. Aldrich. 2002. "Smaller but not necessarily weaker: How small businesses can overcome barriers to recruitment." Pp. 83-106 in J. Katz & T. Welbourne (Eds), Research in Entrepreneurship and Firm Growth: Managing People in Entrepreneurial Organizations. Volume 5. Elsevier Science Ltd.
124. Howard E. Aldrich. 2001. "Asleep on the Job. Who's to Blame?" National Teaching & Learning Forum. Vol. 11, No. 1, p. 11.
125. Annetta Fortune and Howard E. Aldrich. 2002. "Acquiring Competence at a Distance: Application Service Providers as a Hybrid Organizational Form." The Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 1, 1: 105-121.
126. Linda Renzulli, Howard E. Aldrich, and Jeremy Reynolds. 2003. "It's Up in the Air, or is It?" Teaching Sociology. 31, 1 (January): 49-59.
127. Stephen Lippmann and Howard E. Aldrich. 2003. "The Rationalization of Everything? Using Ritzer's McDonaldization Thesis to Teach Weber." Teaching Sociology, 31, 2 (April): 134-145
128. Howard E. Aldrich and Jennifer E. Cliff. 2003. "The Pervasive Effects of Family on Entrepreneurship: Toward a Family Embeddedness Perspective." Journal of Business Venturing, 18, 5 (September): 573-596.
129. Howard E. Aldrich. 2002. "Your Paper's on the Floor, Outside My Door." National Teaching & Learning Forum, 12, 1: 10.
130. Johann Peter Murmann, Howard Aldrich, Daniel Levinthal, and Sidney Winter. 2003. "Evolutionary Thought in Management and Organization Theory at the Beginning of the New Millennium." Journal of Management Inquiry, 12, 1 (March): 22-40.
131. Howard E. Aldrich. 2004. "Entrepreneurship." Forthcoming in Richard Swedberg and Neil Smelser, editors, Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Foundation. To be published July 1st, 2004.
132. Howard E. Aldrich. 2003. "Learning from My Students." Contexts, 2, 3 (Summer): 71-72.
133. Jennifer Cliff, Nancy Langton, and Howard E. Aldrich. Forthcoming. "On Their Own Terms? Gendered Rhetoric versus Behaviour in Small Firms." Organization Studies.
134. Martin Ruef, Howard E. Aldrich, and Nancy Carter. 2003. "The Structure of Organizational Founding Teams: Homophily, Strong Ties, and Isolation Among U.S. Entrepreneurs." American Sociological Review, 68, 2 (April): 195-222.
135. Amy Davis and Howard E. Aldrich. 2004. "Work Participation History." Forthcoming in Wiliam B. Gartner, Kelly G. Shaver, Nancy M. Carter, and Paul D. Reynolds, editors. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Organizational Creation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
136. Phillip Kim, Howard E. Aldrich, and Lisa A. Keister. 2004. "Household Income and Net Worth." Forthcoming in Wiliam B. Gartner, Kelly G. Shaver, Nancy M. Carter, and Paul D. Reynolds, editors. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Organizational Creation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
137. Nancy M. Carter, Howard E. Aldrich, and Martin Ruef. 2004. "Entrepreneurial Teams." Forthcoming in Wiliam B. Gartner, Kelly G. Shaver, Nancy M. Carter, and Paul D. Reynolds, editors. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Organizational Creation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
138. Howard E. Aldrich and Nancy M. Carter. 2004. "Social Networks." Forthcoming in Wiliam B. Gartner, Kelly G. Shaver, Nancy M. Carter, and Paul D. Reynolds, editors. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Organizational Creation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
139. Stephen Lippmann, Amy Davis, and Howard E. Aldrich. Forthcoming. "Inequality and Entrepreneurship." In Lisa A. Keister, ed., Research in the Sociology of Work: Entrepreneurship, Vol. 14. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
140. Linda Renzulli and Howard E. Aldrich. 2005. "Who Can You Turn To? Tie Activation within Core Business Discussion Networks." Social Forces.
141. Amy Davis, Linda Renzulli, and Howard E. Aldrich. Forthcoming."Mixing or Matching?" The Influence of Voluntary Assocations on the Occupational Diversity and Density of Small Business Owners' Networks." Work & Occupations.
142. Phillip Kim and Howard Aldrich. 2005. "Entrepreneurship and Social Capital." In Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch, editors. Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship.
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143. Howard E. Aldrich. 2005. "The Professionalization of Distrust: Recent Developments in the United States." Constructif, number 11, June 7th. [In French]
144. Phillip Kim, Howard E. Aldrich, and Lisa Keister. Forthcoming. "Access (Not) Denied: The Impact of Financial, Human, and Cultural Capital on Entrepreneurial Entry in the United States." Small Business Economics. Forthcoming
145. Howard E. Aldrich and Phillip Kim. Forthcoming. "A Life Course Perspective on Occupational Inheritance: Self-employed Parents and Their Children." In Martin Ruef and Michael Lounsbury, Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Elsevier JAI.
Until quite recently, little was known about how crime affects small businesses in the United States. Although police department statistics in the Uniform Crime Reports of the FBI provide some information on crimes against businesse s, little is known about how crime affects the conduct of a business, how businessmen cope with losses from crime, and what steps they can and cannot take to prevent crime or cover their losses.
To provide some answer to these questions, during the summer of 1966 the Center for Research on Social Organization at the University of Michigan undertook surveys of crimes against small businesses for the National Crime Commission. The s urveys were part of a larger study of crime and law enforcement in eight high crime rate areas of three major metropolitan cities: Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC. Two high crime rate police precincts were selected in both Boston and Chicago: one of t hese areas was predominantly Negro in population composition, the other was predominantly white. Four high crime rate police precincts were selected in Washington, DC. A probability sample was designed for each police precinct to select 100 nonresidential establishments. The results of this study are reported in Field Surveys III, Volume 1 of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice.
This 1966 study describes the crime and insurance problems of business and industrial establishments in each of the police precincts. Such a cross-section study of businesses at a particular point in time does not permit the testing of pre dictions over time. The Small Business Administration provided an opportunity to test some predictions by sponsoring a resurvey of these same businesses approximately two years later in the summer of 1968.
Almost all recent investigations of racially oriented civil disorders in the United States deal either with the precipitating causes of disorders or with the characteristics of participants in the disorder. Much less attention has been pai d to the consequences of these disorders on the social and economic conditions in areas where they take place.
This paper deals with the impact the disorders had on small business firms in the Negro ghetto. Taking the causes of civil disorders and participation in them as given, the study examines what has happened to the business organizations in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC that were most directly and immediately affected by the wave of arson, looting, and destruction that broke out in 1967 and after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in April, 1968.
A panel study of 659 small businesses in the inner cities of Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC permits us to assess not only the extent of damages to them following disorders, but also changes in the types of problems confronting them an d changes in the attitudes of their managers or proprietors. Specifically, data are presented on the survival and damage rate for businesses in riot affected area, on changes in the ability of small businesses to obtain insurance and their consequences, a nd on changes in the attitudes of businessmen toward crime and law enforcement with accompanying behavior changes.
Organizational roles that bring incumbents into contact with members of other organizations where the boundaries of organizations intersect have been labeled boundary-spanning roles (Thompson, 1962). These roles provide a connecting link through which information flows among organizations. Beliefs and attitudes should be affected by contact with personnel in the boundary roles of an organizations, and the boundary role perspective provides a way of explaining how contact between gro ups changes attitudes. Traditionally, attitude change resulting form intergroup contact has been dealt with either in the framework of intergroup relations or that of balance theory, as will be discussed in this paper. Using the boundary-personnel perspec tive, this paper reports a study of factors making for a high degree of similarity in the attitudes policemen and small businessmen in metropolitan areas hold toward their city governments. We will examine the effects of exposure to common environmental p ressures and personal contact between policemen and businessmen on attitude congruence between the two groups, using data from three large urban areas.
Open systems theory has stimulated a number of theoretical discussions, yet many implications of the theory still remain to be explored (Katz & Kahn, 1966; Miller, 1955; Buckley, 1967). The purpose of this paper is to suggest two appli cations of the concept of organizations as boundary maintaining systems to the study of organizational phenomena: (1) power and authority, and (2) inter-organizational conflict and member compliance. It will be shown that conceptualizing organizations in terms of boundary maintaining systems provides a theoretical link between several concepts that have previously not been treated together.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of absentee ownership of small businesses in the black ghettoes of three large American cities and to derive quantitative estimates of the impact that absentee ownership and management hav e on social and economic conditions in such areas. Non0ghetto businesses are compared with ghetto businesses to separate the effects of common business conditions from the fact of location in a particular area. Data are from a survey of 659 small business es in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, DC. The findings support the contentions of critics that absentee owned or managed businesses dominate the economy of the black ghetto. However, the same conclusion also applies to non-ghetto, low-income white areas. The paper concludes with estimates of the degree to which absentee owned or managed businesses control the flow of important resources in the areas studied.
This article applies Simmel's conception of sociability in a participant observation study of the structure and functioning of Mensa, a voluntary association with unique entrance criteria and goals. It indicates that, given an organization , with certain values and human inputs, sociability emerges as a major activity of that organization. The findings from this study are used to generate three propositions about the behavior of sociable organizations.
Investigators of organizational behavior disagree about the importance of technology in a theory of organizational structure. The Aston group asserts that its research shows technology to be much less important than other variables, such a s size. Their findings are reanalyzed, using path analysis to investigate the implications of their conclusions. A plausible theory, which treats technology as an independent variable is then developed. Finally, a fairly complex model of organizational st ructure is reconstructed from the Aston group's data. Both these efforts reaffirm the value of treating technology as an independent variable and of using theory-oriented path analysis.
This paper is an analysis of Mensa, a voluntary association of high IQ persons, as an organized setting for sociable interaction and an explication of the way in which this sociability is interactionally maintained. The paper begins with a discussion of the difference between sociable interaction and sociability and goes on to briefly consider some of the forces leading us to expect to find an increase in specialized settings for sociable interaction. The major portion of the paper consist s of an explication of the interactional requirements for the maintenance of sociability in Mensa and systematized Georg Simmel's portrayal of sociability, breaking it down into six components. A previous paper dealt with the development of Mensa as a Soc iable organization and so that topic will not be covered here (Aldrich, 1971).
Using data from two independent surveys, this paper examines those ghetto retail merchants who are likely to have their business establishments attacked during civil disorders. The findings, unusual in their complementarity, suggest that r iot participants select many of their targets and that the pattern of selection reflects a variety of concerns, from personal gain to "pre-political" motivations. Interpretations of these findings undercut theories of collective violence that rest on such concepts as suggestability, contagion, and "animal spirit."
Organizational theorists have been concerned for some time with conflict between organizations, e.g., conflict between staff and line (Dalton, 1959), between departments (Crozier, 1964), and between labor and management (Kerr and Siegel, 1 954). Conflict between organizations has received less attention, and most of it has been at the theoretical rather than empirical level (e.g., Litwak and Hyltin, 1962; Warren, 1967; and Ridgeway, 1957). The problem of studying conflict between organizati ons is part of the larger problem of investigating relations between organizations; thus, progress in the former awaits new developments in the latter (Aldrich, 1971). In this paper I wish to argue that an open-systems perspective, which focuses on a popu lation of organizations in interaction with its environment, provides an approach to the study of conflict between organizations that is theoretically sound and open to empirical test.
After summarizing the major components to an organization-environment perspective on organizational behavior, I will present typologies of environmental dimensions and interorganizational dimensions. Since my current research involves the study of manpower training and related organizations, examples used in these sections will be taken from the manpower training system. The final section of this paper is a brief discussion of propositions about conflict and cooperation between organizatio ns, based upon and organization-environment perspective.
Black-white relations in economic institutions are important determinants of the life chances of blacks. Black leaders and civil rights groups argue that white ownership of businesses in black communities retards the economic and political achievement of blacks. This paper explores the empirical basis for such arguments using a panel study of small businesses in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC. The following propositions are supported: (1) white-owned businesses are much larger than bl ack businesses and dominate the labor market of the ghetto, (2) white owners are more likely than black owners to hire "outsiders," and (3) white owners hire white employees in greater proportions than the racial composition of the ghetto population would imply. Ghetto economic development is often seen as a solution to the problems of the black community, but this research points out several important limitations of a development strategy.
Negro Employment in Retail Trade is Volume VI of the Studies of Negro Employment series published by the Wharton School, and is a collection of three previously issued reports in the Racial Policies of American Industry series, plus a concluding essay by Gordon Bloom. The purpose of this series is "to determine why some industries are more hospitable to the employment of Negroes than are others and why some companies within the same industry have vastly different racial employment p olicies." The authors succeed admirably in documenting the complex mix of factors affecting black employment in retail trade, and the thrust of their analysis is quite pessimistic as far as future large scale gains are concerned. Black employment in the d epartment store, drugstore, and supermarket industries has been characterized by steady but slow growth since World War II, with a much higher proportion of blacks than whites employed in blue-collar occupations within these industries and very few blacks promoted into managerial positions. Although the book is not organized in this manner, for purposes of review the analysis can be divided into three parts: factors with a positive impact on black employment, factors with a negative impact, and factors wi th no effect or at least an effect of uncertain weight.
Two different questions are being addressed by the literature on housing discrimination, with a great deal of confusion by our frequent tendency to mix the two. The first and logically prior question to be asked is: What are the barriers t o blacks or other minorities buying houses where ever they choose? This question directs our attention to the process by which potential black home owners are systematically excluded from certain residential areas. The second question is: What is the cost of being black, i.e. how much of a price differential do blacks pay because of their race? This question directs our attention to comparisons of the prices blacks and whites pay for the same standardized unit housing, with any residual price differential remaining after standardizing for physical housing characteristics and area factors being attributed to "discrimination." While the second question is important insofar as it provides us with objective information on the cost of being black in American s ociety, it provides little information that can be used in the formulation of public policy, as will be discussed below.
The exclamation points in this book's title provide a clue to its intended audience and to the nature of the analysis one can expect to find within it. Academics never get that excited when writing only for other academics, and Thayer clea rly has a bigger audience in mind. In short, he has a "message" to push, based on his diagnosis of the faults in modern society that "repress" and "alienate" modern man.
Thayer's message is straightforward: modern man is alienated because of the subordinate role he plays in social and organizational hierarchies, and organizations are prevented from reaching their true potential because of needless competit ion with other organizations. The first three chapters of the book elaborate on this diagnosis, and the remaining three chapters are devoted to outlining and illustrating at "new social theory," based on "structured non-hierarchical social interaction."
This paper reports on a review of the literature on ecological succession on racially changing neighborhoods undertaken as a part of a larger study of the process of changing racial ownership of small business in inner city neighborhoods ( Aldrich and Reiss, forthcoming). I have divided the literature on ecological succession, the process of racial change, and the social and economic consequences of succession. A major concern in this review is the extent to which the succession process can be described, as Park proposed, as a normal and orderly process of social change in an urban community. In this regard, special attention will be paid to studies of attitude change before and during succession. The concluding section will attempt to draw out the policy implications of the picture of racial succession that emerges from the review.
In this paper the development of interorganizational dependence is reviewed. The conceptualization and operationalization of dependence in the research of the Aston Group is criticized on conceptual and methodological grounds. We suggest t hat future research incorporate the idea of interorganizational networks of interdependence and distinguish explicitly between intra- and inter-organizational dependence.
Recently, Child (1972) has argued that the results obtained from a number of studies of the dimensions of organizational structure indicate a general compensatory relationship between greater delegation of decision making and greater struc turing through bureaucratic controls. This was manifested in the National study (of 82 manufacturing and service organizations in England and Scotland) by moderately high negative correlations between the variables comprising the two clusters of "structur ing of activities" and "centralization." The "structuring of activities" cluster is composed of several variables the most important of which are "functional specialization," "overall role specialization," "overall standardization," and "overall formaliza tion (Pugh et al. 1968). The second cluster will here be treated as consisting purely of "overall centralization" (Child 1972: 171). The results from the earlier Aston study of 52 organizations of diverse sorts (manufacturing, retail, government, utility) were broadly consistent in that the direction of the correlations were similar, but the magnitude of the negative correlation between the two clusters was lower (Child 1972: 170). In particular there were lower correlations between "overall centralizatio n" and "standardization," and "formalization," and these were not improved when the manufacturing only organizations in the Aston sample were isolated. Since the Aston results were somewhat discrepant to those obtained both in the National and the Coventr y studies (Hinings and Lee, 1971), this provided a puzzle which Child attempted to resolve by reference to the heterogeneity in organizational status in the Aston sample (Child 1972).
This paper concerns the problem of how residential succession affects the character of one set of local organizations: small businesses in racially changing neighborhoods. A key issue examined is the extent to which the causes and conseque nces of residential succession account also for the succession of small-business organizations. Only one type of succession is examined in this paper: the movement of blacks into areas previously occupied by whites. The impact of the transition in residen tial population on the abandonment of business sites and/or the turnover of business from white to black or Puerto Rican ownership is the particular focus of inquiry. Results of the analysis indicate that the residential succession model fits our data on business succession quite well.
In this paper the resource dependence model is used in an attempt to account for the pattern of transactions and relations between local Employment Service offices and social service organizations. Social service organizations are defined as all public and private nonprofit or noncommercial organizations that are relevant to a community's manpower training system, either because they are employers or because of the services they provide. The community manpower training system has at its co re manpower programs which focus on providing or upgrading the work-related skills of individuals and/or on instilling or improving attitudes and beliefs that are assumed to make individuals employable. Local Employment Service offices, in theory, stand a t the center of the quasi-system of manpower programs and associated organizations that has evolved from federal, state and local efforts over the past several decades.
Employment Service offices are people-processing organizations, and establishing and maintaining relations with other organizations is the central element of their technology (Hansenfeld, 1972; Benson et al., 1973). Thus, the study of rela tions between Employment Service offices and social service organizations provides an ideal context for an examination of the power of the resource-dependence perspective. From a public policy viewpoint, this study provides more empirical evidence for the importance of organization-level versus system-level variables in accounting for coordination among social service organization (Zald, 1969; Warren, 1973).
The environment of organizations is important because of its effects on organizational structures and decisions. Progress in the study of organizations derives from focusing on substantive problems rather than from the elaboration of conce ptual schemes. Models of environmental selection are useful only as they enrich our understanding of stability and change in organizational forms, or, as Hannan & Freeman (1974:10) ask, "Why are there so many kinds of organizations?" The natural selec tion model answers this question by examining the nature and distribution of resources in the environment, while the resource dependence model focuses on the decisions and power and influence relationships that affect organizational actions and strategies that seek to manage the environment.
The interorganization system to be examined is the network of relations between local employment service offices and members of their organization set. Manpower programs have traditionally focused on providing or upgrading the work-related skills of individuals and/or on instilling or improving attitudes and beliefs presumed to make individuals employable. Local employment service offices stand at the center of an ad hoc and evolving system of manpower programs and associated organizations created over the past decade. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 was designed to bring order into the system, but its effects are still to be felt, and my study was completed before any of the new legislation was implemented.
The issue of organization design is approached indirectly in my analysis, as I am investigating networks of organizations that reflect the cumulative effect of conscious system design criteria by manpower planners and the unplanned evoluti on of the system in response to environmental contingencies, and constraints (Aldrich, 1971). Almost all the variables in the analysis are potentially subject to manipulation by authorities somewhere in the system. Agreement formalization, the intensity o f a relationship, whether it is standardized or unstandardized and reciprocated or unreciprocated, the size of the staff, and so forth, are all parameters subject to change at the discretion of authorities, provided that they understand the necessary ante cedents and consequences of each manipulation. The purpose of my analysis is to make clear the causal relations among the variables of interest to designers.
Two methods of dealing with the 'environment' may be discerned in current theorizing and research on relations between organizations and theit environments. One approach, exemplified by Dill (1958), Weick (1969), and Duncan (1972) takes an informational perspective on the environment, treating variation in information about the environment as perceived by organization members as the major factor in explaining organizational structure. The other approach, exemplified by Emerson (1962), Pfef fer (1972a; 1972b), and Aiken and Hage (1968), adopts a resource perspective on the environment, arguing that the level of resources and the terms on which they are available in the organization's environment is the critical factor; the process through wh ich information about the environment is apprehended by decision-makers is not given much attention. In this chapter we review both methods of dealing with the 'environment', and suggest that closer attention ought to be paid to the difference between the m. This distinction, we will show, has both theoretical and methodological implications for the study of organization-environment interaction.
The evolutionary model of interorganizational network evolution is useful insofar as it shows us that theorists on opposite sides of the loose-coupling-tight-coupling issue are making different assumptions about the complexity of the envir onment, the definition of relevant subsystems of organizations, the attention to be paid to dominant organizations, and perhaps the information-processing capacity of administrators in linking-pin organizations. Perhaps most critical of all are the assump tions made about the proper role of the state in the control of organizations' and individuals' life chances. Some of the arguments in this paper pose questions such as the proper balance between freedom and equality, and by definition do not lend themsel ves to other than a political solution. Rather than try to resolve the arguments posed for and against tight coupling in interorganizational networks, on conjunction with the evolutionary model presented.
The study of organizations has moved beyond focusing on single organizations to an examination of populations of organizations relating to their environments (Aldrich, 1979), but the development of concepts and data gathering methods appro priate to this level has been remarkably slow. Anthropologists, sociologists studying community structure, and political sociologists and economists studying power relations have shifted their foci, with the putative unit of analysis becoming a network ra ther than individual elements of a network (Mitchell, 1972; Perrucci and Pilisuk, 1970; Sheingold, 1973). Most studies of organization-environment interaction still focus on isolated organizations relating to their environments, with a few exceptions (Lev ine, 1972; Van de Ven et al., 1974). Network concepts, if used at all, are treated a metaphors rather than analytical tools. In this chapter it is argued that models and methods are available to designers and investigators of organizational behavior that rescue the concept of interorganizational networks from a purely metaphorical use.
Boundaries are a defining characteristic of organizations, and boundary roles are the link between the environment and the organization. The creation, elaboration, and the functions of boundary spanning roles are examined, with attention t o environmental and technological sources of variation in the structure of boundary roles. Eleven hypotheses integrate the material reviewed and are amenable to empirical test. Future research should overcome problems created when organizations are treate d as "wholes" or single entities.
There are three questions which a theory of supranational organization must answer if it is to have explanatory power: (1) What are the components of the supranational network? (2) What is the nature of the linkages binding the components into a network? (3) What are the causal processes which brought the network into existence and which link its components at any given historical point? Wolfe fully answers only the first of these questions, arguing that the components of the emergent netw ork are states, corporations, persons, and institutions joined by a plexus of ties which are interlocking and predominantly non-hierarchical in form. He claims to follow Steward's evolutionary perspective, but does not present a clear theoretical model. I nstead, the article is comprised of a series of empirical generalizations on the emergence of forms, focused primarily on the multinational corporation as a new for. The lack of a clear causal argument leaves readers with the impression that the supranati onal system is a result of the unfolding of change immanent in corporations "invented centuries ago" and states "invented a few thousand years ago."
I will review the centralization versus decentralization issue from the perspective of organizational as well as client needs. All human service delivery systems are products of compromises between centralizing and decentralizing forces, a nd I emphasize the contradictions structured into systems because of the irresolvable nature of the arguments. Examples are taken from a comparative field study of manpower organizations in New York State communities, as well as from the literature on soc ial service organizations.
Relations between organization shave become a common topic for social research. The dominant theoretical perspective in the area of interorganizational relations posits that linkages between organizations serve as lifelines through which t he resources necessary to implement an organization's core technology are received (Yuchtman and Seashore, 1967). Despite the fact that the instrumental value of an organization's net work of linkages has been repeatedly stressed (cf. Aiken and Hage, 1968 ; Aldrich, 1979; Turk, 1973; Benson, 1975; and Whetten, 1977), we have a meager understanding of the organizational and contextual factors which influence the establishment of these relationship. Consequently, the purpose of this study of 69 manpower orga nizations is to investigate the organizational and environmental factors which determine the size and composition of a social service agency's set of interorganizational linkages. People-processing organizations which utilize a mediating technology were s tudied because the importance of establishing interorganizational relations is clearly evident in this case. This is evidenced by the fact that interagency coordination is a central feature of most social service delivery systems.
A comprehensive explanation of the conditions under which ethnic or racial minorities enter small shopkeeping in large numbers requires the consideration of four factors: (a) demographic changes in the size and distribution of the minority and majority group populations; (b) changes in a society's industrial and occupational structure; (c) the employment opportunity structure for the minority population; and (d) the organizing capacity of the minority population.
The second factor is subsumed in theories of industrialization and societal growth and is not examined in this chapter. Taken together, the other three factors comprise two strands of theorizing and research that have traditionally been tr eated separately: models of ecological succession, accounting for the process by which minority groups replace majority group residents of a residential area; and models of 'middleman minorities', accounting for the tendency of certain ethni c minorities to enter small shopkeeping in societies to which they have emigrated. The literature on residential ecological succession in the United States has previously been reviewed (Aldrich, 1975), and space does not permit a summary here. This chapte r focuses on the middleman minority model, after a brief review of the results from a test of two hypotheses from the ecological succession model. Hypotheses were tested on two samples of small businesses and shopkeepers in Wandsworth - one of the borough s of Greater London. Comparisons are made between findings from research in the United States and England.
Albert Hirschman's contribution in Exit, voice and loyalty provided a framework within which investigators could simultaneously examine people's responses to deteriorating organizational performance and administrators' responses to members' or customers' responses. Traditional analyses focused on exits - people ceasing to buy a firm's products of leaving the organization - and on competition between organizations as remedies for declining performance. Hirschman added the concept of voice - people expressing dissatisfaction through some form of overt protest. Underlying his model was an implicit assumption of administrators' responsiveness to exit and voice, whereas we posit that there are many conditions under which manager and lead ers are highly unresponsive. these conditions are highlighted in nonmarket economies, and we draw illustrative material from Poland to support our arguments.
This chapter examines the organizational-level consequences of mergers, focusing on the role that industrial relations issues play in the merger process. After reviewing the changing pattern of mergers during the past 75 years, we examine the legal and organizational context within which mergers occur. Industrial relations problem areas that might have been identified by previous investigators are discussed. These speculations are examined more closely through examining results obtained fr om a pilot survey of corporations involved in mergers in 1975 and 1976. To anticipate our major findings, we show that mergers have had surprisingly little impact on industrial relations departments and other aspects of the collective bargaining process.< /FONT>
The population perspective explains organizational change by focusing on the distribution of resources in environments and the terms on which they are available. Variation within and between organizations provides the occasion for selectio n criteria to make their presence felt, and the retention mechanisms preserve the selected variations. In this paper, we examine changes in environmental selection criteria from the early nineteenth century until the present, relating changes in these cri teria to changes in organizational forms. Forms are defined along three dimensions: technology, coordination, and control. We show that systematic change in organizational forms has been associated with a number of long term evolutionary changes in the so cial, political, and economic environment of the United States.
Theorists have implicitly recognized that the capitalist class in the United States is internally differentiated along economic, ideological, and political lines, but this recognition has had little effect on empirical research. A particularly importan t but neglected source of differentiation is the amount of economic resources controlled by a capitalist. Between 11% and 14% of the economically active population in the United States are self-employed. Those persons in this category who own their own me ans of production are eligible for inclusion in the capitalist class, but the category includes a wide range of persons, from those with only a few thousand dollars in assets and no employees to persons with millions of dollars in assets and thousands of employees (Aldrich, 1979: 40-4). Presenting evidence from a study of differences in workforce size and income within the capitalist class, we argue that the inclusion of an indicator of resources controlled - workforce size - is an essential factor in stu dies focusing on classes and class differences.
England's emergence as a dominant power in the nineteenth-century capitalist world economy went hand in hand with the growth of a colonial empire. The South Asian subcontinent, the West Indies, and East Africa were incorporated into Britai n's empire as sources of raw materials and as markets for finished goods. Population movement was from Great Britain to the colonies, but that pattern began to change after World War II. As the colonial system broke up, newly independent nation-states fou nd themselves on the periphery of the world economy, cast into a subordinate role by their decades of economic and political dependence. Attracted by opportunities in Great Britain and frustrated by conditions at home, thousands of "colored" migrants pour ed into England's cities and towns. The jobs they found were primarily those that native whites had abandoned as they shifted vertically into better-paying jobs and horizontally into newly developed industries (Nowikowski, 1980). In short, workers found t hey had moved from countries on the periphery of the world economy to peripheral jobs on the fringe of the British economy.
"Economies" are defined territorially by exchange relations and the division of labor, whereas "polities" are defined by authoritative control within the boundaries of a politically-defined area. Economic actors, whether they are entrepren eurs or corporations, seek the free flow of capital and commodities without regard to arbitrary boundaries, whereas political actors intervene in such flows by virtue of their authoritative control over all actions within their boundaries. Most orthodox a pproaches appear to assume the congruence of political and economic systems at the nation-state level, with national governments playing important roles in creating the legal and political infrastructures supporting national economies. Regional and local political units, however, do not enjoy such an unchallenged status, and their proper economic role is rather undefined.
Our review of the literature on absentee owned firms has led us to posit a fundamental contradiction between actors desiring the free flow of economic capital and actors attempting to defend the integrity of local political boundaries. Loc al communities establish public policies facilitating or constraining the movement of capital, but their limited size prevents them from exercising the coercive powers of the federal government. Large corporations accept the facilitating acts of local gov ernments but view constraints as a nuisance, inhibiting the efficient allocation of resources.
Business development is often treated as an indicator of the economic and social standing of an ethnic or racial minority. If business success is truly a catalyst for social advancement then the Asian communities of Britain appear to posse ss enormous potential for upward mobility. In the paper we examine the validity of the minority business - social development hypothesis and its applicability to Asians in England. Information for our investigation was obtained from business censuses and questionnaire surveys in three urban areas - Bradford, Leicester, and Ealing (London). We find evidence in commercial vitality within the Asian community, but also an indication that development has turned inward. Asians have developed self-contained stru ctures heavily insulated from external pressures. As long as this reliance upon segregated markets continues, commercial self-employment will fail to provide the ladder necessary for Asians to achieve economic and social equality in Britain.
Social network concepts are very useful for describing existing social structures. Most social theories, by contrast, are concerned with change and the conditions under which it occurs. Five papers are examined, using the population ecolog y perspective and the transactions cost approach to selection, against a criterion of how well they account for the origins and persistence of network structures.
The recent emergence of Asian business activity in Britain may seem as simply the latest event in a fairly long history of commercial involvement by Asian exiles. During the last century or so of British imperial history, Indian communitie s took root in may British colonies; being particularly strongly represented in East and Southern Africa, Burma and the Carribean. Although the bulk of the migrants traveled as indentured laborers, they proved to be a socially mobile group who, on becomin g established in their adopted countries, transformed themselves into a business, professional and clerical class: "...wherever, under the umbrella of imperialism, there were commercial opportunities to exploit, Indian traders took them" (Rex and Tomlinso n, 1979).
In this chapter we consider the intersection of the social category of small business ownership with that of ethnicity. We are particularly concerned with ethnic and racial minorities in the United States, mainly Asians and blacks, while d rawing on information about majority-group (white) business owners in Britain and other Western societies for comparative purposes. Our discussion is organized around the theme of the vulnerability of small business, a topic for which some evidence has al ready been advanced (see chapter 2). We focus on the ways in which particular ethnic groups have responded to economic vulnerability in societies where small businesses face the greatest difficulties.
This paper proposes that organizational science could be applied more widely if the field were more concerned with the conditions under which research findings are valid. Papers in the field generalize about organizations as if they were a ll alike, or refrain from generalizing at all, as if they were all unique. The population perspective presented re-emphasizes the all-alike and all-unique approaches, placing emphasis instead on research methods that improve the description and classifica tion of organizational forms, define more homogeneous groupings, and specify the limited conditions under which predictions may be expected to hold true. The principles of the population perspective are reviewed, and an outline is presented for developing a classification of organizational forms. Suggestions are then made on how to use the perspective increase and improve the application of organizational research.
In this paper we examine the available historical evidence on the creation of producers' cooperatives from 1835 to 1935. The study included an exhaustive search of historical records, and despite sketchy records in some instances, we are c onfident that we have captured the general trends in cooperative formation. We first document the small number of cooperatives created during the century we examined, and then focus upon the question of why cooperatives did not appear more frequently. Thr ee interrelated factors are included in the discussion: changes in economic structure, changes in incentives within the economic and political system, and the availability of resources for founding cooperatives.
Observing, describing, codifying, and understanding managerial behaviors are important activities with a rich methodological heritage. These activities are important both because understanding what managers do aids in enhancing performance , satisfaction, and effectiveness, and because managing is the fundament of organizational design, change, planning, development, and production. The rich set of methods used to study managers, settings, and behaviors is impressive.
Mintzberg's work directly challenges many commonly held assumptions about managerial behavior. Because this challenge rests upon structured observational methods which have not been validated, a replication would lend more credibility to M intzberg's findings. That is, a replication should diminish arguments of observer bias and enhance our confidence in the study's external validity.
We present the results of our research in four tables, giving Mintzberg's composite findings for comparison. We suggest some empirical generalizations about the context for managerial behavior, based on the comparison of our results wit Mintzberg's.
The purpose of this chapter, then, is to explain the developmental features of the trade association population in the United States. The stability and noncompetitiveness of trade associations we observe today are not automatic but rather the outcome of an historical development marked with irregularities and organizational trials and errors, as business adjusted to an evolving economic and political environment. In outlining the organizational development of American trade associations, w e cite examples from the German experiences, as it provides an excellent comparative illustration of state intervention in the economic processes.
We argue that the reorganization of organizational science around a carefully defined concept of organizational form will enhance the fruitfulness of our labor. The first part of this paper is definitional, followed by a consideration of current practice regarding organizational forms. Finally, we comment on what should be done if our position is taken seriously.
The populations perspective on organizational change downplays the consequences of managerial action and focuses on populations rather than on single organizations as evolving units. The population perspective is useful in suggesting broad classes of design strategies. Using this perspective, we argue that models of organizational change must accurately represent the diversity of units studies, be based on tests of alternative explanations, and explicitly incorporate organizational dynamic s. Moreover, designs must take account of five empirical generalizations about organizations: individuals' intentions are not a good guide to organizational outcomes, environments are difficult to describe with typologies of a few attributes, designs are a joint product of organizational forms and environmental characteristics, population effects are as important as individual intentions, and environmental trends are increasingly short-lived. We present a simple classification of four categories of macro environments and draw inferences about the kinds of design strategies appropriate in each. We conclude with a strategy of design strategies: questions and issues to consider before beginning detailed planning.
The concept of a protected consumer market has been used to refer to the special, culturally based tastes of ethnic minorities that can only be served by co-ethnic businesses. We argue that residentially segregated ethnic enclaves are anot her form of protected market which arises under historically determined conjunctures of immigration patterns and urban economic development. Using 571 survey interviews with Asian and white shopkeepers and population data from three British cities, we tes t six hypotheses regarding the determinants of a shopkeeper's proportion of ethnic minority (Asian) customers. Taken together, residential concentration and social distance factors account for 53 percent of the variation in customer composition, as the pr oportion of Asians residing in an area and the ethnicity of a shopkeeper are found to have strong and independent effects on customer mix.
I want to emphasize a point that Hannan and Freeman have made about the paradigm shift their work represents. In 1974, at the International Sociological Association meetings in Toronto, Hannan and Freeman presented a paper called "The Popu lation Ecology of Organizations." Things haven't been the same since that time! They pointed out the very high death rate of organizations, compared to what the literature in the 1960s would have led us to expect. For a representative cross section of org anizations, the death rate is about one in ten per year, and for new organizations it is over on in two per year. Such high rates are a substantial challenge to the traditional way of conceptualizing organizations, which treats them as lasting forever
Organizational change can be conceptualized as three interrelated processes: variation, selection, and retention (Aldrich, 1979). First, to produce change in any living system, variation is required, whatever its source -- purposive change , creativity, luck, chance, errors, mistakes, or sabotage. Second, selection processes choose among the variations that have been generated. Third, directed change is impossible unless there is also a mechanism for retaining the selected variations. Hanna n and Freeman describe the latter as organizational inertia.
This paper links the organizational ecology and business strategy literatures by focusing on liabilities of age and size and their strategic implications. The first section discusses external and internal liabilities associated with age an d size. we argue that the strengths of large, old organizations are often the weaknesses of small, new organizations and vice versa. The second section of the paper considers population-level and organizational-level strategic implications of liabilities of age and size. Loose coupling strategies such as subcontracting, and franchising and emulation strategies such as corporate entrepreneurship are examined. At the population level, these strategies create new forms which may improve the viability of whol e populations of organizations. At the organizational level these strategies may help larger, older organizations and newer, smaller organizations compensate for their weaknesses.
Organizations -- producing goods, delivering services, maintaining order, challenging the established order -- are the fundamental building blocks of modern societies, the basic vehicles through which collective action is undertaken. The p rominence of organizations in contemporary society is apparent when we consider some consequences of their actions.
Research on ethnic enterprise emerged in the United States as an attempt to explain the historical differences in business between blacks and other minorities. In Beyond the Melting Pot, Glazer and Moynihan argued that 'the small sh opkeeper, small manufacturer or small entrepreneur of any kind played such an important role in the rise of immigrant groups in America that its absence from the Negro community warrants at least some discussion (1963: 30)'. Glazer and Moynihan offered se veral brief, possible explanations, but it was Ivan Light, in his now classic Ethnic Enterprise in America (1972), who gave the subject its first extended treatment. Light's was an ingenious comparison of Blacks, not with Jews, Italians, or Irish, but will immigrants - Japanese, Chinese, West Indians - whose racial characteristics made them equally distinctive; the argument was an imaginative variant of the Weber thesis, showing that it was ethnic solidarism, not individualism, that gave these immi grants an 'elective affinity' with the requirements of small business.
With the recent growth of new ethnic populations in Europe as well as the U.S., ethnic business is no longer a matter of strictly historical interest, nor is it any longer a parochial American concern. Because the new ethnic populations ha ve grown at a time when western economies are in a phase of slow growth and massive technological change, ethnic adaptation and mobility is a principal issue in ethnic research. hence the question raised by Glazer and Moynihan twenty years ago - does smal l business contribute to ethnic social mobility, and, if so, why? - dominates the research agenda for scholars working on ethnic enterprise. This paper offers a trend report on currents research activities and findings, with a special emphasis on the impl ications of ethnic business for occupational mobility in advanced industrial societies.
The formation of new businesses can be conceptualized as a function of opportunity structures and motivated entrepreneurs with access to resources. On the demand side, opportunity structures contain the environmental resources that can be exploited by new businesses as they seek to carve our niches for themselves. On the supply side, motivated entrepreneurs need access to capital and other resources so that they can take advantage of perceived opportunities. A cursory examination of this f ormulation reveals two essential issues that research on entrepreneurship must address: (1) entrepreneurship is a process and must be viewed in dynamic terms rather than in cross-sectional snapshots; and (19) entrepreneurship requires linkages or relation s between key components of the process.
Since World War II, the flow of immigrant labor to the industrial societies of the west has been linked to the emergence of labor shortages at the bottom of the job hierarchy. Initially, the orientations of the immigrants and the character istics of the jobs appeared congruent, because the immigrants first came as temporary migrants and the jobs were so simple they were easily filled by a succession of unskilled sojourners. Over time, however, the immigrant population settled down; with per manence, the liabilities connected to the initial entry-level positions became more severe. Entry-level positions are often disconnected from the main lines of structured mobility within the primary sector of the labor market, where jobs are rationed on t he basis of licenses or exams (See Boehning, 1974, and Pior, 1979 for elaborations of this argument). Immigrants have difficulty entering such positions because of poor language facility and inappropriate or inadequate skills.
Ethnic enterprises often depend heavily on the patronage of co-ethnics, at least in the early years of settlement. The explanation usually advanced for dependence on fellow ethnics as customers is the social distance between ethnic minorities and dominant groups: shopkeepers from the dominant group find it distasteful or demeaning to do business with ethnic minorities, and they lack the knowledge necessary to serve minorities effectively. Light (1972) used the term protected mark et to describe the special, culturally-based tastes of ethnic minorities that can only be served by co-ethnic businesses. In the three urban areas we studied - Bradford, Leicester, and Ealing - the extent of Asian shopkeepers' dependence on co-ethnic trade was certainly high: Asian shop owners served on average 72 percent of Asian customers, compared with only 14 percent for white shop owners.
Part of this difference in the ethnic origins of customers served is undoubtedly due to social distance factors, but there is another factor to consider - residential segregation. Residential segregation, which restricts shopping opportuni ties for some minority group members because of the distance that they must travel to shop, may also provide minority business owners with a protected market to co-ethnics.
The social distance approach implies that shopkeepers will serve disproportionate numbers of customers of their own ethnic background,, regardless of the location, whereas the residential concentration approach implies that customer mix va ries with an area's residential composition, regardless of a shopkeeper's ethnicity. After reviewing the literature from the two approaches, we examine the issue empirically.
We replicated Bechhofer and Elliott's (1978) study of Edinburgh shopkeepers to answer two important questions. First, have political attitudes and behavior changed since 1969-1970 when Bechhofer and Elliott collected their data? Second, ar e the Bechhofer and Elliott findings applicable only to the one city where their study was conducted? We collected our data in 1978 from the cities of Bradford and Leicester and the borough of Ealing, in greater London. Our replication supports Bechhofer and Elliott's findings in three of the four areas investigated. First, small shopkeepers are consistent Conservatives, although they are not terribly enthusiastic in their support. Second, shopkeepers are recruited from a wide range of social origi ns, especially from the lower non-manual strata and skilled manual workers. Third, small shopkeepers are highly individualistic politically, being strongly anti-big government and anti-union. Fourth, although Bechhofer and Elliott found that shopkeepers' optimistic beliefs in the possibilities of social promotion were apparently fulfilled in Edinburgh,, such was not the case in Bradford, Ealing, or Leicester. The difference between our results and theirs may stem from differences in city economic structur es.
Labor market studies which focus on dichotomous categories such as employed and unemployed miss a variety of marginal employment situations. This article addresses the recent proliferation of jobs created by democratically controlled alter native organizations.
We argue, from a population ecology perspective, that the economic potential of small alternative organizations is limited. Although current environmental conditions favor small specialist organizations, the salience of non-materiel incent ives prevents alternative organizations from fully exploiting emerging opportunities. Alternative employment is best considered an instance of underemployment with strong tendencies toward impoverishment and self-exploitation.
This paper evaluates the two views of Asian retailing, the optimistic and the pessimistic, drawing on surveys of Asian and white retailer in Bradford, Leicester and the London Borough of Ealing over the period 1978-1984. The 1978 survey wa s financed by the Economic and Social Research Council (McEvoy, Aldrich, Cater and Jones, 1979). The three study areas were chosen a major centres of Asian immigration in the North, Midlands and South of England, A two-year interval between the surveys wa s chosen to match that in a similar study conducted previously in the United States by Aldrich and Reiss (1976). In the summers of 1978, 1980, 1982, and 1984 580 business sites were visited, divided approximately equally between the cities and the ethnic groups as of the starting date in 1978. Subsequent changes resulted in greater proportions of Asian owners at later dates. Extensive interviews were conducted with the owner or manager of each business in 1978, covering operating practices, employees, cus tomers, and the personal and family background of the owner. In 1980, 1982, and 1984, interviews were restricted to identifying which establishments survived and to obtaining basic details concerning replacement businesses, such as the ethnicity and backg round of new owners.
Three complementary models are reviewed as possible explanations for changes in the population of trade associations. First, theories of increasing social differentiation in industrial societies imply a general increase in organizing activ ity in all societal sectors. Experience in organizing is spread via major institutions, and imitation leads to the diffusion theory and competitive isomorphism imply that increasing economic differentiation should lead to newly emerging industries creatin g their own trade association and to trade associations limiting themselves to industries where members are most easily recruited. Third, theories of government intervention in the economy imply that association formation and survival are partially a resp onse to political problems faced by business and that association activity should increase (or decrease) in parallel with government activity. After reviewing the general characteristics of trade associations in the United States, we will outline each mod el and then discuss their empirical implications.
Some observers write about organizational paradigms as if the competition between theories takes place at the level of ideas, with 'good ideas' battling with 'bad ideas' in some sort of ideational arena (Astley and van de Ven 1983). Others write of competing theoretical paradigms as if the contest at the idea level were epephenomenal, with the real struggle occurring at the level of vested economic and political interests (Clegg and Dunkerlyey 1980). Still other view the competition as dri ven by hypothesis testing, replications or failures to replicate, and the accumulation of empirical research findings and their application to the solving of real-world problems.
Donaldson's defense of what he labels 'Organization Theory' is thus based on the assumption that the relevant arguments are not and should not be at the ideas level nor at the level of vested interests, but rather should be joined at the e mpirical level. He argues that organizational design should be based upon well-grounded empirical generalizations, honed in the fire of long-term research programs. He takes attacks from the critics seriously and writes as though he and the critics ultima tely share a common frame of reference for their debates.
I admire Donaldson's spirited defense of the Aston Group and contingency theory and support many of his evaluative remarks concerning the 'critics'. However, I think his assumptions about the field of organization studies are too optimisti c. In place of a unitary, mainstream 'Organizational Theory' there are many theory groups today, each with its own paradigm, pursuing agendas which will not be integrated via the 'normal science' rout. As for the 'critics' he discusses, it is questionable whether their challenges have had any effect on the research programs of the theory groups dominating mainstream organization journals today. Their criticisms have had little effect on the paradigms supported by major theory groups, but they have enriche d paradigmatic controversy among people applying organization theory to problems in education, social welfare, planning, and other fields.
Shopkeepers have social networks composed of ties to many others: family, friends, customers, suppliers, employees, and moneylenders. We examine how ties to family and friends affect three aspects of entrepreneurship for Asian and white sh op owners in four English cities: business foundings, business success, and business turnover. Social ties are important for all three processes in both groups. An implication of our research is that the comparative study of immigrant and native groups sh ifts the focus from group differences to group similarities. Studies examining only immigrants may find apparently distinctive characteristics, but, in fact, many traits are common to all small-business owners, given the turbulent environment they face.
In a Boston suburb, a young physician quietly drops his dream of starting his own practice and goes to work for a large health maintenance organization (HMO). After a stormy board of directors meeting, a small private hospital in western N orth Carolina decides to sell out to a large investor-owned chain. And, in a small college town in the Southwest, a university-owned hospital ends four decades of complete independence by joining a multihospital federation. Taken singly, these events may have been extremely significant, even traumatic, for the persons involved. From a population perspective, however, such events are interesting only insofar as they tell us something about shifts in the distribution of health services organizational forms. As the five articles in this special issue demonstrate, such events often mirror life cycle changes in organizational populations. rather than being isolated occurrences, changes in health services organizations often are indicators of larger, societal-l evel forces at work.
In this article, I review some of the central themes and key issues in the population perspective on organizational change. Robert Hurley and Arnold Laluzny note that population ecology, up to now, has flourished more as a competitor than as a complement to existing theories. Population ecology, however, is only one element in the population perspective (McKelvey and Aldrich 1983), and, taken as a whole, population thinking has a great deal to contribute to existing theories. The populatio n perspective, when applied to traditional approaches, often illuminates hidden assumptions and biased conceptions. The articles in this special issue provide numerous examples of the new perspective's usefulness.
Research suggests that residential population succession and ethnic segregation increase representation of ethnic minorities in businesses as boundaries of residentially segregated areas expand. We test three hypotheses using a four-wave p anel study of 571 small shops in three British cities, following the design used by Aldrich and Reiss (1976) in research on residential and black small business succession in three U.S. cities. Beginning in 1978 with a sample of native white and South Asi an small shopkeepers in Bradford, Leicester, and London, we observed patterns of population and business turnover in 1978-80, 1980-82, and 1982-84. Our results replicate the U.S. research, supporting the proposition that ecological succession in residenti al and business populations of inner-city areas is one factor in the growth of ethnic enclaves.
This paper describes a longitudinal study conducted with one hundred and sixty-five active and prospective entrepreneurs over a nine-month period. The study's purpose was to examine and explore the importance of social network characterist ics, such as size, accessibility, and diversity to business founding and business profitability. results show that network accessibility is a significant variable in predicting business foundings. Different variables were found to predict profitability in old and newly founded businesses.
The population perspective explains organizational change by focusing on the distribution of resources in environments and the terms on which they are available. Variation within and between organizations provides opportunities for differe ntial selection by environmental forces, and retention mechanisms preserve the selected variations. In this paper we examine changes in environmental selection criteria over the past 150 years or so, relating changes in these criteria to changes in the fo rm of employment relationships. we focus on strategies of labor control, relating them to long-term evolutionary changes in the social, political, and economic environment of the United States.
The increased uncertainty and instability of business environments have forced corporate managers to search for organizational forms capable of responding swiftly to fluctuating market conditions. We critique conventional models of human r esource management from an ecological perspective, emphasizing the dynamic inter-relationship between generalist and specialist organizational forms at the level of business populations.
Research on entrepreneurship encompasses all stages in the life cycle of businesses, with the period around the initial founding arguably the most important. Decisions made in the crucial early days regarding products, markets, funding, an d personnel substantially shape the subsequent course of the business. Despite the obvious importance of this period, there are few studies based on representative samples of new forming businesses. Our project sought to fill this gap in entrepreneurship research by identifying large representative samples of new businesses from three potential sampling sources. Our results document the advantages and disadvantages of each source and suggest that more attentions should be paid to the direct enumeration me thod for the most up-to-date information on dew businesses.
We used the Dun's Market Indicator file, the North Carolina Employment Security Commission's ES202 file, and the direct enumeration in the field by trained interviewers to collect data on the total business populations of Durham County, No rth Carolina. Supplemental information was collected in telephone interviews with owners and managers.
In 1985 women constituted 45.6 percent of the wage and salaried labor force, but only 33.4 percent of the self-employed. About 9 percent of employed men were self-employed compared to only 5.6 percent of employed women. The average male-ow ned business was about seven times as large as the average female-owned business, based on average annual dollar receipts (Small Business Administration 1986). Although women entrepreneurs are now increasing their share of the business population rapidly, and therefore increasing their share of business receipts, a sizable gap remains.
A substantial portion of the difference between men and women entrepreneurs' achievements can be traced to the opportunities open to each and the constraints on each. In particular, women entrepreneurs are embedded indifferent personal and social networks than men, with far-reaching consequences for their rates of business formation, survival, and growth.
Trade associations are organizations created to represent business interests within specific domains, mobilizing firms within their domain so that collective action can be taken on common problems. Political economists are beginning to pay more systematic attention to business interest groups (Schmitter & Streeck, 1981), and recent research has focused on interest mobilization and interest group foundings (Schmitter & Brand, 1979: Walker, 1983). Surprisingly, however, virtually no information is available on the organizational stability of trade associations and the conditions under which associations sustain member support.
We examine various approaches to explaining ethnic enterprise, using a framework based on three dimensions: an ethnic group's access to opportunities, the characteristics of a group, and emergent strategies. A common theme pervades researc h on ethnic business: Ethnic groups adapt to the resources made available by their environments, which vary substantially across societies and over time. Four issues emerge as requiring greater attention: the reciprocal relation between ethnicity and entr epreneurship, more careful use of ethnic labels and categories in research, a need for more multigroup, comparative research, and more process-oriented research designs.
The literature on work, marriage and the family, and organized social life implies that women are embedded in different personal networks than men, with potential consequences for their rates of business formation, survival, and growth. We tested this implication by studying the personal networks of potential and active entrepreneurs in the Research Triangle Area, North Carolina and Milan, Italy. Instead of substantial differences in the networks of men and women, we were surprised by the degree of similarity we discovered, within and between countries. Networking activity is very similar within each country, as is network density. However, the sex composition of networks differs dramatically by sex in both countries. In some respects, the gap between the male and female worlds appears to have closed substantially, but the personal networks of women in both countries still include few men.
Moving away from a "traits" approach to a "rates" approach, using an ecological perspective, highlights the salience of organizations as the key component of environments. Foundings of new organizations are highly dependent upon the experi ences of already existing organizations, both in a particular population and in the larger community of populations. Intra-population processes -- prior foundings, dissolutions, density, and factors associated with density -- structure the environment int o which foundings are born. Inter-population processes-- the nature of relations between population, whether competing or cooperating, and actions by dominant organizations -- affect the distribution of resources in the environment and the terms on which they are available to entrepreneurs. Institutional factors -- government policies, political events, cultural norms, and so on -- shape the macro-context within which other processes occur.
We compare and contrast five generally available and commonly used organizational sampling frames: direct enumeration, Unemployment Insurance forms, Dun and Bradstreet's Market Identifier files, the White Pages of the telephone directory, and Chamber of Commerce membership directories. All five approaches were used to identify a population of business organizations in Durham County, North Carolina. Our comparisons focus on the generalizability, practicality and cost of sampling using these sources. Direct enumeration is an attractive approach for locating young organizations, but is expensive to implement and likely to miss establishments in construction. Unemployment Insurance records and the DMI files are quite practical since they are m achine-readable and contain substantial auxiliary information about each unit. Neither is available on a timely basis, however, and they therefore tend to include somewhat older establishments. The coverage of the Chamber of Commerce Directory is poor, an d it contains a strong bias toward larger businesses and a modest one toward older businesses. White Pages of the telephone book give the broadest coverage and the least overall bias, but are cumbersome to work with because they are not machine readable a nd contain numerous duplicate and ineligible entries. Using any of the five approaches would yield a more representative sample of businesses than is typical in organizational research. On balance, however, the DMI and UI files are probably the most usefu l sampling frames among those we studied.
In this chapter, I review two fairly new approaches to the understanding of organizational change -- ecological and institutional -- as well as a third approach which is enjoying continued vitality -- an interpretive approach. I do not cla im to synthesize the three; rather, I examine the extent to which they differ because they make different assumptions about the nature of social and organizational reality. I also examine the extent to which they are complementary, because they treat simi lar problems at a different level of analysis, or invoke in am implicit way principles that are explicit in another perspective. I build on the work of others who have noted the mutual contributions, as well as the conflicts, characterizing the three.
Organizations, as a class, are socially constructed innovations, deliberately designed as solutions to problems. Although some forms of organization, such as churches and armies, have been around for centuries, only since the Industrial Re volution have complex organizations assumed the form people take for granted today. Because they are shaped by the contexts or environments in which they are established, contemporary organizations reflect the impact of their historical origins in societi es characterized by growing affluence and conflicts over the control and distribution of wealth. Organizations come in a bewildering variety of forms because they have been explicitly designed to deal with a wide range of problems and because they have em erged under widely varying environmental conditions.
Entrepreneurs are seen as embedded in a social network. Brokers, people who act as go-betweens or intermediaries, expand the entrepreneur's reach by initiating contacts with persons who are not directly connected. Data were obtained in a s urvey of potential and active entrepreneurs in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina and in Milan, Italy. Many of our results are consistent with research on personal networks. People who emerged as brokers were similar to business people in genera l: middle aged and male. Lower status respondents, younger egos and women, utilized higher status individuals, older egos and men, to initiate relationships and were much more likely to use strong ties for brokers.
We review some key concepts that help managers and planners understand the characteristics of networks and how people's access to information is affected by their position in them. We emphasize the difference between direct ties and indire ct ties, showing how indirect ties and their strength affect the number of persons we can reach and the diversity in our networks. Networking is heavily influenced by uncertainty, competition, and the social boundaries within which behavior occurs. After discussing how these factors may constrain networking, we examine some strategies for overcoming such barriers. We focus on planning and monitoring network activities and on strategies for increasing network diversity. Our review examines strategies at th e individual, organizational, and public policy levels.
Entrepreneurship involves mobilizing resources in pursuit of opportunities, resulting in the founding of a new business. Some researchers have looked at the personal attributes of founders, asking what makes then different from other peopl e. We call this the "traits" approach. Other researchers have taken a different path, focusing on the environmental conditions -- social, economic, and political -- generating variations in the number of foundings over time. we call this the "rates" appro ach. The approaches are complementary, as each draws on different research traditions in the social sciences. The traits approach implies a micro-level of analysis, whereas the rates approach involves a macro-evolutionary approach. In this paper, we conce ntrate on the rates approach, taking an ecological perspective.
Ecologists work at three levels of analysis -- organization, population, community -- and take a longer-term view than is typical of the social-psychological perspective behind the traits approach. After outlining the principles of an ecol ogical approach, we consider in more detail three processes affecting founding rates: intra-population, inter-population, and institutional. This paper is written for two audiences. First, for people interest in entrepreneurship, we show that some interes ting research hypotheses follow from adopting an ecological approach. Second, for people interested in ecology, we show that a systematic application of ecological models to entrepreneurship reveals significant gaps where further research and modeling are needed.
From a practitioner's viewpoint, networking is a useful tool for entrepreneurs who wish to enlarge their span of action and save time. Admonitions to "network," however, may not be enough. "Networking" may result in a time consuming and fr uitless effort, and leave potential partners highly frustrated (Turati, 1988). From a theoretical point of view, it thus become necessary to specify the conditions under which networking contributes to business effectiveness, and to link it to the conting encies facing firms.
In this paper, we propose a way of generating networking strategies for entrepreneurs. First, we introduce general network concepts by considering personal networks; thus, we take the role set of individual entrepreneurs as the unit of ana lysis. Second, we discuss the aggregation of personal networks into extended networks, which in turn can be analyzed within firms (intra-firm relations) or between firms (inter-firm relations).
People who study entrepreneurship exhibit a certain sort of madness in their passion for the subject. This zest for the substance of entrepreneurship is what makes the field so attractive to many of us who are refugees from other, more bor ing fields. It also, however, occasionally draws stares of disbelief from adherents of older, more established fields, who are suspicious of anyone who is excited about an academic subject. Outsiders scrutinize our research closely, looking for flaws that will confirm their worst suspicions that our madness is certifiable.
In earlier reviews of the state of the art in entrepreneurship research, several authors have confronted this negative stereotype. They have asked, implicitly, is there method in our madness? Are researchers using methods of investigation that enrich our knowledge of entrepreneurship? Have we made progress since the days when no self-respecting business school even offered a course in entrepreneurship, and starting a business was something you did when you failed to make a career out of ma nagement? Is this even a fair question to ask?
In this chapter, I first review what authors have said about entrepreneurship research in two previous reviews of the literature, and then assess the state of the art since 1985. Insofar as possible, I have maintained continuity in the methods of inves tigating the trends in entrepreneurship research by following the lead of my predecessors.
Human resource management policies and entrepreneurship are linked. New businesses in the high technology sector are competing for employees in a tougher labor market than most businesses face. Like all businesses, they must attract, recru it, and keep skilled workers. They must also find ways of motivating these workers throughout their careers in a highly competitive and quickly changing market. We propose two perspectives on organizational change--a developmental and an evolutionary--to aid our investigation of the following questions: Do new firms start with effective HRM policies? If not, why not? If yes, how do owners learn about effective policies? If firms don't start with effective policies, do or can they eventually develop or ado pt them? How quickly do effective HRM systems arise? We review the literature and suggest four sets of factors that might be used in answering these questions: characteristics of founding teams, a firm's initial workforce composition, the structure of an organization, and a firm's institutional context.
American trade associations, as minimalist organizations, have grown into a mature population in an environment characterized by intra-population norms supporting mutualistic behavior, lack of significant inter-population competition, and an institutional environment that was usually strongly supportive of capitalist structures. Research on two other evolving populations in the United States -- state bar associations and national trade unions -- illustrates two alternative fates that trade associations might have experienced. State bar associations, after decades of experimentation with alternative forms, finally settled on an organizational form that gave them monopoly control over the admission of lawyers to the bar in all 50 states. The bar associations' stunning achievement was solidified because they successfully mobilized to win state support. Trade unions, by contrast, struggled to achieve legitimacy against a hostile business community and a state that was antagonistic or indiffere nt until the 1930s. Even after achieving national legal standing, trade unions (like trade associations) stood outside the formal structure of the state, and (unlike trade associations) have gradually seen their gains eroded over the past three decades.
We bring together our research on the foundings, mergers and transformations, and disbandings of American trade associations to tell the story of a population that escaped, at least up to now, the unhappy fate of its companion population - - trade unions -- but that has never achieved the iron-clad legitimacy of another population with similar collective goals -- state bar associations. As minimalist organizations, these populations differ in some important respects from private, profit-ori ented businesses that are the subject of most evolutionary analyses. As organizations with a political agenda, they also differ from many of the non-profit oriented organizations that evolutionary researchers have studied.
Empirical research in population ecology has arrived at the point where much has been learned about the conditions driving change over time in founding and dissolution rates in particular organizational populations, considered one at a tim e. The preliminary evidence suggests that fundamental processes, such as density-dependent dynamics, may be common to all kinds of populations. Such universal processes, however, are not sufficient to produce identical outcomes for different populations, or even similar populations, such as trade associations, trade unions, and state bar associations. Instead, investigators must examine the unique historical trajectory of each population to understand how and why it evolved.
After spelling out the features of trade associations as minimalist organizations, and outlining the pressures -- unique to trade associations -- which drive organizational and population change, we describe our study design, and then disc uss the key factors affecting trade associations at the institutional/sociopolitical, inter-population, and intra-population levels of analysis.
U.S. and Japanese public policy toward inter-organizational arrangements for R & D between competitors has changed over the past few decades, and different national approaches to industrial policy have produced different R & D arra ngements in each nation. We focus on Technology Research Associations (TRAs) in Japan that were registered under the 1961 Act on Mining and Manufacturing Industry and R & D consortia in the U.S. that were registered under the 1984 National Cooperative Research Act. The same questionnaire was administered to 39 consortium managers in the U.S. and 54 in Japan, focusing on issues of governance and administration. We show that consortia in Japan and the U.S. have made very different choices about how they will conduct research. Almost nine out of 10 Japanese consortia conduct research in member firms, compared to a little more than four in 10 U.S. consortia. Japanese consortia focus on a narrower range of R & D activities than do U.S. consortia, with Japanese consortia completely avoiding university-based R & D. Japanese consortia depend heavily on government funds for their support, whereas U.S. consortia depend mostly on member dues. Unlike the U.S., national institutional support appears to pro vide a strong central source for the diffusion of knowlege about effect consortia forms throughout Japan.
The first organization of its kind faces a different set of challenges than one which simply carries on a tradition pioneered by thousands of predecessors in the same industry. Given the conditions facing pioneering founders, are different strategies needed for them than for imitators and borrowers? Focusing on the period during which a new form emerges is a crucial theoretical issue, because the struggle to carve out a niche for a new population involves such strong forces that the events of that period may be forever imprinted on the form that persists (Boeker, 1988; Stinchcombe, 1965). Defeat of opposing populations and co-optation of institutional actors, in particular, may cement a form in place that is resistant to change.
Focusing on the early phases of a population's life also reminds us that many promising populations never realize their potential, because they fail to develop an infrastructure, are unable to defeat or come to terms with opposing populati ons, and never win institutional support. Ecological studies have made salient the high disbanding rate within most organizational populations, but theorists have overlooked the logical corollary of low rates of population formation. Astley (1985) implici tly raised this issue, but investigators have not followed it up. Accordingly, identifying what strategies might be effective for founders of new forms helps us understand the forces contributing to increasing or decreasing variety in organizational commu nities.
Entrepreneurs confront two issues of legitimacy in crafting their strategies during the initial period of a population's life. First, key actors in the new population's environment lack knowledge about the novel organizational form, and th is lack of information and understanding means the form begins with low cognitive legitimacy. Second, key actors -- especially cultural and political elites -- may withhold approval until a form has proven itself, thus producing an early deficit of sociop olitical legitimacy. Entrepreneurs initially must work with the resources their environments make available, and so organization-centered strategies are a logical first choice. However, population survival ultimately depends on unified action by organizat ions, and so entrepreneurs search for effective routes to collection action.
In this paper, I examine the social processes surrounding the creation of a new population of organizational forms. After reviewing three empirical generalizations about foundings, based on ecological and institutional studies, I discuss t wo kinds of legitimation problems facing entrepreneurs: low cognitive and low sociopolitical legitimacy. Both types of legitimacy are affected by the institutional, interpopulation, and intrapopulation processes affecting the growth of a new population. I discuss the strategies that founders might pursue under these conditions, focusing on trust-building activities and behaviors fostering cooperative relations.
Firms are no longer relying solely on their own R&D efforts (Contractor and Lorange, 1988), and they have increasingly turned to collaborative and cooperative interorganizational ties for R&D. Interorganizational arrangements, deli berately structured to promote the collective benefits of research and development, can give firms access to R&D that they could not manage on their own: joint ventures, technology licensing, subcontracting of research to private or university laborat ories, and other arrangements (Auster, 1990). As Osborn and Baughn (Chapter 4 in this volume) noted, "The exchange and development of knowledge through alliances may allow firms to quickly, effectively, and creatively integrate previously separate knowled ge areas." Firms that use joint and cooperative R&D processes can reap economies of scale and scope beyond the reach of a single firm, if they can find effective mechanisms for sharing the jointly developed knowledge (Link and Bauer, 1989).
We focus on one form of interfirm cooperation in R&D activities in the United States and Japan: consortia formed as alliances between potential competitors in the same industry. We focus on engineering research associations (ERAs) in J apan, registered under a 1961 law, and R&D consortia in the United States, registered under the 1984 National Cooperative Research Act. R&D consortia and ERAs are different from joint ventures and other forms of collaborative research because they involve direct competitors that pool their resources to pursue basic and applied research on long-term projects.
The goals of consortia are roughly the same in the two nations, whereas their governance structures differ in some respects, and thus we believe something can be learned about different national approaches to industrial policy by comparing the arrangements in each nation (Bolton, 1991). We present a comparison of the characteristics of consortia in the two nations, based on a questionnaire administered to samples of consortium managers in the United States and in Japan.
Do entrepreneurial networks make any difference in the actual performance of businesses? In our current research we test the link between networking and performance, using panel data from new and recently founded businesses in the Research Triangle Area of North Carolina. We found no evidence, using three fairly standard measures of networking activity, that the size of an entrepreneur's personal network or the amount of time invested in developing and maintaining a network, affect busines s survival or performance. However, our analysis of more micro-level measures of network ties and performance outcomes indicates that networking deserves further study.
New organizations are always vulnerable to the liabilities of newness, but such pressures are especially severe when an industry is in its formative years. We focus on one set of constraints facing entrepreneurs in emerging industries -- their relative lack of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. We examine the strategies that founders can pursue, suggesting how their successful pursuit of legitimacy may evolve from innovative ventures to broader contexts, collectively reshaping industry and instit utional environments.
What do we owe the past? If we owe anything, how should we acknowledge our debts to the writers on whose works we build, and should we be concerned about the writers whose works we ignore? Journals play a key role today as outlets for soci al science writing, and we view the founding of this journal as an occasion for taking stock of current practices regarding our ties with predecessors. Organization, a journal unencumbered by historical legacies of its own, can perpetuated the trad itions established by others, or else break with the past and set off on a different course. What should it do? And why?
New businesses are founded when motivated entrepreneurs gain access to resources and find niches in opportunity structures. Networking allows founding entrepreneurs to enlarge their span of action, save time, and gain access to resources a nd opportunities otherwise unavailable. But are networks also important in the on-going operations of a business? Perhaps the demands of running a business in modern capitalist societies are so high that differences in networking generate little advantage for an owner, net of skill, experience, and resources controlled. Few observers are likely to accept such a claim, and we certainly would seem like the last investigators to put forward such an argument!
Nonetheless, almost all claims about the importance of networking rest on inferences made from cross-sectional data, obtained from active and potential entrepreneurs at only one point in time (Aldrich, 1991). Cross-sectional studies have a llowed us to paint a fairly complete picture of the basic structure of entrepreneurs' personal networks and to document the amount of time and effort entrepreneurs put into expanding their circle of strong and weak ties to others. By comparing entrepreneu rs who are at different points in their careers and at different points in the life cycle of their businesses, investigators have been able to make pseudo-dynamic analyses of networking from cross-sectional studies. Some interesting and provocative argume nts have been drawn from such analyses, but they are no substitute for actual longitudinal studies of entrepreneurs in action.
We set out, in 1990, to design a study that would allow us to test hypotheses about business networking with data collected over time on the same owners and their businesses.
Families and businesses constitute two institutional orders. Sociologists often describe them a two of the five main pillars of society, the other three being religion, politics, and education. As different institutional orders, they opera te under different logics or fundamental assumptions. Families have traditionally followed a logic of mutual cooperation and support, bound and motivated by loyalties and characterized by unity. In contrast, businesses have traditionally followed a logic of competition and market-mediated relationships, organized to achieve goals, driven by tasks, and characterized by competitiveness. Fritz (1992: 45) put it this way: "To have both a successful business and a happy family is somewhat like playing Doctor J ekyll and Mister Hyde. On order to establish and maintain a sound, well-adjusted family, one must be patient, understanding, forgiving and generous (Doctor Jekyll). In order to operate s successful business, one must be self-directed, demanding, and somet imes even relentless (Mister Hyde)."
Early decisions about which people to hire, and how to structure their jobs, can have lasting consequences for new firms. We examine idiosyncratic jobs among the early hires of entrepreneurial firms, positing that discontinuities perceived by entrepreneurs in their firms' life cycles influence the shape of early employment. Entrepreneurs tend to hire very senior and very junior employees, creating a demographic gap in their firms. This gap has consequences for different ways in which idios yncratic jobs emerge at junior and senior levels.
Japanese business has attracted a great deal of attention from social scientists, but almost all of it has been directed toward big firms, keiretsu, and cooperative alliances. Little attention has been paid to small firms, even thou gh they are critical to the Japanese economy. In Japan, a much higher proportion of firms is in the under 100 and under 20 employee size categories than in the United States or most Western European nations. Using a very generous definition of "small," Ta kaoka (1989) argued that 99.4 percent of all Japanese businesses are small, employing about 60 percent of the workforce. Miwa (1993) also noted that the proportion of establishments in the private sector (not including agriculture and fisheries) that are small has remained very stable over the past 30 or 40 years. Sato (1995) and Kazumi (1995) have recently written reports on the situation of small and medium size enterprises in Japan, noting that they face different problems than large firms.
I remember the moment quite clearly. The emotional impact of that concluding sentence in my urban sociology class is as vivid today as it was back in the fall of 1969. I had just finished another hour of straight lecturing -- which meant m ore or less reading out to the students the notes I had laboriously compiled the night before -- when I turned to them and said "But what does it all mean?" I shrugged my shoulders: "Who knows?" Momentarily stunned by this rather foolish revelation, the s tudents did not respond, and I turned and walked out of the room. I knew something was wrong, but what? I wish I could say that I came up with a solution before the next class session, but alas, more than a decade passed before I finally came to my senses .
I want to tell you a story about my career as a teacher, using a simple life-course model. I've titled the three sections of the paper "Promise," "Failure," and "Redemption," because, looking back, these periods in my life are so clearly d emarcated. At the time I lived through them, however, I was almost completely unaware of the transformation I was undergoing. Thus, this paper is an opportunity for me to make sense out of those changes and to make a few more general observations about te aching and its place in academic careers. The editors asked me about the link between my teaching and research interests, but for much of my career, the two have had a tenuous connection. Some signs of change are apparent, however.
In American society, work is an important context for the expression and further development of both identity and knowledge. The temporal organization is embedded in peoples' work histories, which are generically labeled "careers" (Arthur, 1994: 297), and in this chapter, we use concepts from the life-course perspective to examine recent historical changes in career patterns. The life-course perspective has developed among a variety of social and behavioral sciences during the 1980s and 19 90s , and "refers to the social patterning of events and roles over the life-span, a process ever subject to the interaction of individual behavior with a changing society" (Elder and Caspi, 1990). This perspective directs our attention to historical infl uences that affect processes of identity formation and expression within careers, and how knowledge is accumulated and put to use.
Following Granovetter (1985), we propose a social embeddedness model of business relations to explain how the personal networks of business owners are constructed. Using questionnaire survey data on 261 business owners in Atlantic Canada a nd the Research Triangle area in North Carolina, we examine two issues: What are the characteristics of business owners' personal networks, and to what extent does social networking behavior vary across regions with different business environments? Our em pirical results are consistent with the embeddedness model. In both regions, friends and family are at the center of owners' networks, the networks are of long duration, and the owners make moderate use of brokers in assembling network members.
In this paper, we examine the impact that gender-based differences in networking behavior have on the ability of men and women entrepreneurs to mobilize the support and resources they need for the survival and growth of new businesses. We believe that business networking is critical to the success of new ventures, and thus we present a framework for understanding network relations between owners and key resource providers. Within the context of this framework, we review some current research and its im plications for the success of women-owned businesses. We ask why some of the findings from past research do not correspond to current data describing the actual survival chances of women-owned businesses. After presenting our findings, we consider their i mplications for policies and programs designed to meet the needs of new business owners.
At the first two state of the art conferences on entrepreneurship, authors were highly critical of entrepreneurship research, faulting it for sloppy thinking and shoddy methods. At the third conference, Aldrich (1990) noted that the field had expanded its repertoire of research designs and analytic techniques, but he concluded his review on an ambiguous note. rather than directly answering the question of whether entrepreneurship research had made progress, Aldrich (1990) argued that the a nswer depended upon one's assumptions about the scientific and normative structure of the field. He posed three viewpoints: a unitary, normal science view; a multiple paradigm view; and a totally pragmatic view.
New business are founded as a result of motivated entrepreneurs gaining access to resources and finding niches in opportunity structures. From the beginning, social networks are crucial assets for business owners struggling to make a place for them selves in competitive markets. Entrepreneurs try to build successful business by maximizing the opportunities they find and minimizing the obstacles they confront. Networking allows entrepreneurs to enlarge their span of action, gain access to r esources and opportunities otherwise unavailable, and avoid obstacles.
In this chapter, we propose a framework for thinking about networks in a more systematic fashion. We offer an expanded vocabulary for describing your networks, emphasizing subtle but important distinctions between types of network relation ships. By understanding the difference between types of ties, you will be better prepared to choose a networking strategy that fits your particular circumstances.
We examine institutional and organizational influences upon information exchange and governance structures within R&D consortia in the United States and Japan. We hypothesized that national differences in institutional environments wou ld lead to less active governance and information-exchange activities within Japanese R&D consortia, relative to their U.S. counterparts. At the consortium level, we expected that internal consortium diversity would increase information exchange and g overnance requirements, and that structures stabilizing relations between consortium members would reduce information exchange and governance requirements.
We tested these hypotheses on 39 U.S. and 54 Japanese multi-firm R&D consortia, involving, respectively, 1,801 U.S. member organizations and 1,647 Japanese member organizations. Controlling for organizational age, size, and strategic f ocus, we found that internal diversity and inter-organizational relations are both associated with information exchange and governance mechanisms. Our model has much greater explanatory power for the U.S. than for Japan.
We examine a paradox: gains in women's business ownership in the U.S. have been extraordinary, whereas popular press coverage has actually declined, and academic articles on women owners are also exceedingly rare. We offer three simple exp lanations: (1) the media no longer consider women's business "news"; (2) scholars are not interested in women's firms because they are mostly small and relatively unimportant; and (3) documented differences between men and women owners are few and thus re porters and scholars no longer look for them. Two dissenting voices, however, complicate the picture: small but significant gender differences have been found in studies of social behavior and leadership; and, advocacy groups have strongly asserted that w omen owners possess unique advantages. Why haven't these voices been heard? We argue that androcentrism has clouded our perceptions of gender differences and blinded journalists and academics in two ways: (1) women's distinctive contributions have been mu ted as they have adapted to institutions of business which were already gendered, and (2) the search for distinctive contributions by women owners has been thwarted by assumptions that traditional ways of doing business are "natural."
We examined the argument that a "property barrier" explains the high degree of self-employed inheritance between propertied families and their children. Our study used data on 229 self-employed business owners in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada, obtained in 1995 via face to face interviews. We found little evidence for the property barrier hypothesis, as physical and financial capital had very little impact on business start-ups, through either inheritance of the bus iness or transfer of wealth. We then tested the hypothesis that entrepreneurial capital -- including childhood exposure, work in a family business, and jobs with managerial responsibility -- is a resource differentiating children of self-employed parents from others. Our results were again negative, because we found no direct evidence that business owners with self-employed parents gained any more entrepreneurial capital than other owners. Notwithstanding our negative findings, we speculated that entrepre neurial capital is a resource needed for starting a business, and proposed further research to examine how entrepreneurial capital is obtained.
We begin with a paradox: over the past several decades, many calls have been issued for better teaching at the research-university level, but little sign of real system-wide change is evident on most campuses. Instead, students complain, f aculty strain, administrators vacillate, and tradition rules. Research universities are touted as centers of teaching and learning, where instructors are free to innovate, behind the protective walls of the university system. Thus, one might think that th e special atmosphere of universities would promote the ready adoption of innovative approaches, such as cooperative and team-based learning, but change has come quite slowly. Indeed, the most innovative teaching practices tend to be found on smaller colle ge campuses, particularly in the community college system. For example, the Network for Cooperative Learning in Higher Education originated and is run from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a glance through their Directory of practitioners shows that most are based at community colleges and small private and state institutions.
Why is there such a disjuncture between our image of universities as innovative places and the actual teaching practices found on most of them? We believe faculty members are caught at the intersection of two conflicting logics: a logic of control and a logic of discovery. A logic of control governs most administrative behaviors, permeating administrator's relationships with their faculties, whereas a logic of discovery characterizes the behavior of faculty on the frontier of new teaching practices, engaging in practices that fit uneasily into the logic of control. Neither of these logics is "higher" or "lower" in the scheme of things. They both represent coherent ways of looking at the goals and practices of universities, with market-base d and resource dependence-based pressures usually leading toward the subordination of the logic of discovery to the logic of control.
In a paper I wrote a few years ago about my teaching career, I described myself as passing through three stages: promise, failure, and redemption (Aldrich, 1996). I used the term "promise" to describe my successes in high school and colleg e at playing the academic game -- being dazzled by my instructors, getting high grades, and taking pleasure from the learning experience. Graduate school was more of the same, causing me to look forward with anticipation to my first job, even thought I ha d very little teaching experience as a graduate student. I used the term "failure" in describing my teaching performance as an assistant professor, because I failed to live up to the role models I had seen as a college student. My ignorance of the fundame ntals of good teaching was compounded by my total absorption in the publishing game, and my colleagues didn't help much. Intellectual arrogance, lack of a support system, and a reward system focused on research and publication rather than teaching nearly confined me forever to the ranks of poor teachers. Fortunately, I was able to use a third label, "redemption," to describe what happened next. Dealing with renewal and promotion decisions, designing new courses, and, moving to a new university finally bro ught me up to the standard that I had originally imagined for myself. Indeed, I improved to the point where I am currently in charge of the teaching seminar that all of our graduate students must take. So, my story had a happy ending.
We tested the applicability of a life cycle model of startup and growth to human resource practices in small and medium sized firms. We expected recruiting and human resource management practices to become more formalized and impersonal as businesses grew and aged. Data for our investigation are from a survey study of 229 businesses in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada. Almost half the firms began with no employees, and from the beginning, family members were only a small part of the workforce. Thus, from the outset, founders were in the market for employees. Contrary to our expectations, the level of informal hiring practices was high throughout the entire business life cycle, as older firms were about as likely to use them as younger firms. By contrast, formal hiring practices were strongly associated with growth in workforce size. We found inconsistent evidence regarding the association of formal human resource management practices with business age, as recruiting practices became more formalized with age but not other personnel policies. Founders' desires to protect the "family business", as part of their firm inhibited the adoption of formalized practices.
New organizations are founded every day. This paper explores the phenomenon of organizational emergence using the framework, language, and ideas found in Donald Campbell's work on evolutionary epistemology. Using Campbell's blind-variation-selective-retention (BVSR) model, coupled with his writings on creativity, experimentation, playfulness, clique selfishness, and altruism, we create two "Campbellian antinomies" (apparent contradictions) to explain why most organizational foundings are simple reproductions of existing forms rather than innovative creations.
I first review the debate about cross-national differences that has raged in the organization theory field for over two decades. Many of the issues raised in that debate have striking parallels in the debates over research methods in entrepreneurship. Next, I examine four similarities in entrepreneurship research carried out in North America and Europe. The first similarity is that research on entrepreneurship and research on organizations developed in partial isolation from one another in both regions. Second, North American and European researchers have also been united by a strong normative and prescriptive orientation underlying their research. Accordingly, they have kept in close touch with practitioners and policy makers. Third, entrepreneurship research in both regions has focused more on description than hypothesis testing, although forces of diffusion and borrowing are now raising the salience of causal model building in the field. Fourth, researchers in both regions have focused mainly on established organizations, rather than on founding processes among startups. The four similarities between the regions have been strengthened by a strong set of forces promoting diffusion and borrowing among researchers. I next review three differences that characterize the field. First, in contrast to their European colleagues, North American scholars have traditionally assumed that their findings are universal as opposed to being nation-specific. Second, European researchers have relied more on qualitative fieldwork methods than on the survey research designs favored by North Americans. Finally, the level of government and foundation support for entrepreneurship research is substantially larger in Europe than in North America. Having surveyed similarities and differences, in the final section of the paper I consider some forces that might narrow international differences. I argue that vitality in the field of entrepreneurship studies depends upon maintaining diversity in research approaches. We have much to learn from one another, and many channels have opened through which we can carry on fruitful conversations about research and methods.
New populations of organizations seem relatively rare. Where do they come from? Pioneering entrepreneurs face constraints of learning and legitimacy that reduce the likelihood that their efforts will result in the emergence of new industries. Their likelihood of survival increases to the extent that entrepreneurs master two types of strategies: cognitive and sociopolitical. Both strategies build from the organizational level, to the population, inter-population, and community levels. We illustrate our arguments with examples drawn from the emerging organizational field of Internet commerce, and suggest fertile grounds for further empirical work.
Organizations, as a class, are socially constructed innovations, deliberately designed as solutions to problems. Although some forms of organization, such as churches and armies, have been around for centuries, only since the Industrial Revolution have complex organizations assumed the form people take for granted today. Because they are shaped by the contexts or environments in which they are established, contemporary organizations reflect the impact of their historical origins in societies characterized by growing affluence and conflicts over the control and distribution of wealth. Organizations come in a bewildering variety of forms because they have been explicitly designed to deal with a wide range of problems and because they have emerged under widely varying environmental conditions.
Using a study of technology-intensive start-ups, we develop and test the hypothesis that employment practices are shaped by the ways in which entrepreneurs respond to experiences of dependence on early indispensable employees. We find strong evidence that the experience of dependence on employees influences the types of employees hired, recruitment and retention strategies, the timing of adds-to-staff, and whether incumbent employees believe they are treated fairly. We draw several implications for entrepreneurial practice and entrepreneurship education.
Classroom-based exercises, when used regularly and appropriately, foster many valuable skills. However, few academic teaching journals and newsletters provide systematic general material on how best to conduct and evaluate them. Building on excellent advice scattered across various articles, as well as our own classroom experiences, in this paper we offer some general guidelines for designing and running effective classroom exercises. We organize our suggestions according to the temporal flow of an exercise. In the first section we discuss issues related to planning. We follow this with sections on maintaining a constructive flow of energy during an exercise, bringing them to an effective close, and evaluating and improving them for future use. Finally, we discuss some common problems instructors encounter when using exercises. We focus on the issues of overcoming student resistance, minimizing inter-student frustration, and reducing the burden of designing and running effective exercises. We hope this article will help instructors avoid some of the major pitfalls and discover the joy of teaching classes with effective exercises.
More than a decade ago, Low and MacMillan identified three elements indispensable to an understanding of entrepreneurial success: process, context, and outcomes. Since their critique, three important advances include (a) a shift in theoretical emphasis from the characteristics of entrepreneurs as individuals to the consequences of their actions, (b) a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurs use knowledge, networks, and resources to construct firms, and (c) a more sophisticated taxonomy of environmental forces at different levels of analysis (population, community, and society) that affect entrepreneurship. Although our knowledge of entrepreneurial activities has increased dramatically, we still have much to learn about how process and context interact to shape the outcome of entrepreneurial efforts. From an evolutionary approach, process and context (strategy and environment) interact in a recursive continuous process, driving the fate of entrepreneurial efforts. Thus, integrating context and process into research designs remains a major challenge. Such integration constitutes a necessary step to a more complete evolutionary approach and a better understanding of entrepreneurial success.
In this paper, we
explore several factors that may have an effect on business startups, focusing
on possible gender differences. We conceptualize social capital as inhering
in people's relations with others and examine the association between
men's and women's social capital and their likelihood of starting a
business. Two aspects of respondents' social capital are highlighted:
the extent to which their business discussion networks are heterogeneous
and contain a high proportion of kin. We show that kin composition and
network homogeneity, rather than gender, are critical disadvantages
facing potential small business owners.
TEMPORARY ABSTRACT FOR 118
Heedless of Madonna's warning, Paul Hirsch urged me to use this occasion as an opportunity to "preach" a bit. The Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division gave me a great platform from which to put forward my sense of where we are, what we've accomplished, and where we have fallen short. Having just published my book, Organizations Evolving, I have given some thought to what's missing in OMT, as well as to what it would mean if we took the evolutionary approach seriously. What difference would evolutionary thinking make in the way we think about theoretical issues and design our research? In particular, I want to encourage people to pay more attention to process-oriented theorizing and research. Four questions constitute the organizing themes of my talk. First, how can we build a more realistic OMT? Currently, our theorizing and research seriously misrepresent the actual shape of the organizational landscape. Second, what's wrong with outcome-driven research, and why should we focus more on event-driven research? Many of us fall too easily into the trap of explaining outcomes by working backward in time. Third, does OMT have rhythm? The theme of the 2000 Academy of Management meeting was "time," and timing is everything, I agree. Our theories and research designs often leave the timing and pacing of change imprecise or ambiguous. Fourth, in our research and theorizing, we need to ask ourselves more often, "what happens next?" We need to face the fact that all empirical generalizations are about the past, and begin thinking about building models from our theorizing and research that help us understand what is likely to happen in the future.
"Smaller but not necessarily weaker: How small businesses can overcome barriers to recruitment": Recruiting new employees is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses, and a key component of organizational success. Researchers have mostly ignored the issues faced by small businesses in attracting employees. Utilizing marketing and sociological theories, we argue that small businesses face barriers in the recruitment process that limit their recruitment success, relative to large organizations. Specifically, we suggest that small businesses may have limited recruitment success because job seekers have low levels of knowledge about small businesses and perceive small firms as having less organizational legitimacy than large ones. Brand-marketing practices, strategic isomorphism, and the development of interorganizational ties are recommended as strategies small businesses can utilize to overcome these barriers and enhance their recruitment success. We pay particular attention to the interactive and potentially conflicting affects that these strategies may have on small business recruitment efforts and discuss how the concept of strategic balance point may be helpful in resolving this tension.