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For whom the bell tolls: ecological perspectives on industrial decline and resurgence

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  • Martin Ruef

Abstract

Over the last twenty-five years, research in organizational ecology has given rise to a proliferation of mechanisms that seek to explain processes of decline and resurgence in mature industries. In this article, I consider four of these mechanisms--including arguments concerning competitive intensity, temporal heterogeneity, population inertia, and community ecology--and apply them to explain the evolution of US medical schools between 1765 and 1999. For this population, mechanisms relying on organizational variation in competitive intensity--especially, mass dependence accounts--perform poorly in terms of theoretical and empirical adequacy. Models that incorporate temporal heterogeneity in industrial competition and legitimation explain more variation in patterns of growth and decline, but are sensitive to right-censoring and model specification. Ecological mechanisms that explicitly analyze population inertia or community ecology seem to be the most promising in terms of theoretical and empirical consistency. Ironically, this finding seems to vindicate the model of population growth advanced in Hannan and Freeman's seminal article, which has sometimes been discounted as failing to represent the evolution of mature industries in a realistic manner. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Ruef, 2004. "For whom the bell tolls: ecological perspectives on industrial decline and resurgence," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(1), pages 61-89, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:13:y:2004:i:1:p:61-89
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    Cited by:

    1. ZHOU, Chaohong & VAN WITTELOOSTUIJN, Arjen, 2009. "Evolutionary game theory and organizational ecology: The case of resource-partitioning theory," Working Papers 2009002, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    2. Xu, Jin & Peng, Biyu & Cornelissen, Joep, 2021. "Modelling the network economy: A population ecology perspective on network dynamics," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    3. Gavin M. Schwarz & Kuo-Pin Yang & Christine Chou & Yu-Jen Chiu, 2020. "A classification of structural inertia: Variations in structural response," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 33-63, March.
    4. Alessandro Lomi & Erik R. Larsen & Filippo Carlo Wezel, 2010. "Getting There: Exploring the Role of Expectations and Preproduction Delays in Processes of Organizational Founding," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 132-149, February.
    5. Luciana Lazzeretti & Francesco Capone, 2017. "The transformation of the Prato industrial district: an organisational ecology analysis of the co-evolution of Italian and Chinese firms," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(1), pages 135-158, January.
    6. Abatecola, Gianpaolo & Breslin, Dermot & Kask, Johan, 2020. "Do organizations really co-evolve? Problematizing co-evolutionary change in management and organization studies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    7. Xiaoqing Wang & Brian S. Butler & Yuqing Ren, 2013. "The Impact of Membership Overlap on Growth: An Ecological Competition View of Online Groups," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 414-431, April.
    8. Alessandro Lomi & Erik R. Larsen & John H. Freeman, 2005. "Things Change: Dynamic Resource Constraints and System-Dependent Selection in the Evolution of Organizational Populations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(6), pages 882-903, June.
    9. ZHOU, Chaohong & VAN WITTELOOSTUIJN, Arjen, 2009. "Evolutionary game theory and organizational ecology: The case of resource-partitioning theory," ACED Working Papers 2009001, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.

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