Species of American Food Hubs: Development of an Organizational Species Concept and Its Application to an Emerging Organizational Form

Abstract

Systematic classification has played a pivotal role in the development of evolutionary thought, where groupings are hierarchical orderings such that membership has predictive capabilities at some given level as well as explains origins or relations among kinds. (Bailey, 1994; Carper & Snizek, 1980; McKelvey, 1982; Rich, 1992) Early works in evolutionary approaches to organizations employ allegories to biological concepts but often do so without first employing a systematic method for delimiting the population being studied. In this paper we integrate the concept of natural kinds taken from philosophy of science with allegory to the ecological niche (see Cattani, Porac, & Thomas, 2017; Popielarz & Neal, 2007; Astley, 1985; Astley & Van de Ven, 1983) to formulate an Organizational Species Concept which can accommodate an array of social sciences concerned with organizational forms and making inferences about the structures, behaviors, resource allocation decisions, and other characteristics of firms. We operationalize this conceptual framework through the use of cluster analysis and an abductive process of exploratory scientific discovery. Here this is applied to a unique national data set covering an emergent organizational form in food systems, the “food hub”, as a proof of concept. This application carries policy import for goals that center food hubs within initiatives to scale up local and regional food systems. Based on findings from our empirical work, we propose six species of American food hub organizations.