A system with greater organizational diversity has a higher probability of having in hand some form that does a reasonably satisfactory job of dealin… - Michael T. Hannan

The concept of "niche," initially borrowed by biologists from early social science, plays a central role in ecological theory... The niche... consists of all those combinations of resource levels at which the population can survive and reproduce itself.

The existing literature usually stresses the capacity of organizations to learn about and adapt to uncertain, changing environments. We think this emphasis is misplaced. The most important issues about the applicability of evolutionary-ecological theories to organizations concern the timing of changes. Learning and adjusting structure enhance the chance of survival only if the speed of response is commensurate with the temporal patterns of relevant environments.

[In the early 1900s, ecologists Alfred Lotka and ] independently proposed models of populations dynamics that incorporate effects of competition between populations.