For wide classes of organizations there are very strong inertial pressures on structure arising from both internal arrangements (for example, interna… - Michael T. Hannan
" "For wide classes of organizations there are very strong inertial pressures on structure arising from both internal arrangements (for example, internal politics) and from the environment (for example, public legitimation of organizational activity). To claim otherwise is to ignore the most obvious feature of organizational life. Failing churches do not become retail stores nor do firms transform themselves into churches.
About Michael T. Hannan
Michael Thomas Hannan (born July 14, 1943) is an American sociologist and business theorist, The StrataCom Professor of Management and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at , known for his work on organizational ecology.
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Additional quotes by Michael T. Hannan
Legitimacy constraints also emanate from the environment. Any legitimacy an organization has been able to generate constitutes an asset in manipulating the environment. To the extent that adaptation (e.g., eliminating undergraduate instruction in public universities) violates the legitimacy claims, it incurs considerable costs. So external legitimacy considerations also tend to limit adaptation.
A population ecology perspective on organization-environment relations is proposed as an alternative to the dominant adaptation perspective. The strength of inertial pressures on organizational structure suggests the application of models that depend on competition and selection in populations of organizations. Several such models, as well as issues arising in attempts to apply them to the organization-environment problem, are discussed.
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We argue that in order to deal with the various inertial pressures the adaptation perspective must be supplemented with a selection orientation. We consider first two broad issues that are preliminary to ecological modelling. The first concerns appropriate units of analysis. Typical analyses of the relation of organizations to environments take the point of view of a single organization facing an environment.