Abstract
The application of ecological concepts and principles to the study of organization design and system development is now commonplace. Population ecology is one biological perspective that has been especially influential within the organization design literature. In the current study, we illustrate for the first time how this framework can be used to reveal when and in what ways intervention is warranted within a system that, like a biological population in nature, has emerged with little to no purposeful design. Specifically, we use 20 years of data on 1,074 Arizona charter schools to illustrate how population analysis can be used to uncover the characteristics of individual organizations that have the highest ability to survive over time within systems that have been allowed to emerge with little to no purposeful design. Our findings lead us to argue how pre-intervention population analysis at the system level can influence organization-level design choices in a way that enables dynamic fit and thereby enhances the likelihood of organization survivorship and innovation over time.
Highlights
The application of ecological concepts and principles to the study of organization design and system development is commonplace
Mission does not appear to have a marked influence on school survivorship. We draw on these three trends to argue how preintervention population analysis can influence design choices in ways that enhance the likelihood of organization survival, as well as innovation at the both the organization and system levels
The resulting literature treats with relevant depth how design choices are made relevant to a wide range of endogenous and exogenous factors, which are often referred to as environmental contingencies (Donaldson 2001; Miles and Snow 1984)
Summary
The application of ecological concepts and principles to the study of organization design and system development is commonplace. There are a growing number of instances in which the study of organization design and system development incorporates principles from ecology, the field of biology that studies the interaction between species and their environment (e.g., Acs et al 2017; Baldwin 2012; Brown and Mason 2017; Jacobides et al 2018; Kapoor 2018; McMullen 2018; Shaw and Allen 2018) This is appealing, as ecological systems in nature are made up of hierarchies of units that grow, shrink, network, and change function over time. In conjunction with vague and shifting State oversight, has allowed the ACSS to develop fairly organically, rather than according to a proactive design This lack of design has resulted in the ACSS evolving without strategic mechanisms (e.g., diversity in school mission and models, geographic distribution) that impose top-down influence. The ACSS offered us the opportunity to examine how the founding conditions and characteristics of systems that emerge and evolve with relatively little planning affect the designs and survivorship of organizations within
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