The Ecology of Organizational Size Distribution
{'Code': '04050200', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'SBE', 'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'SES', 'LongName': 'Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Shelton White', 'PO_EMAI': 'swhite@nsf.gov', 'PO_PHON': '7032920000'}
Population ecology of organizations is a recent research                        perspective on how ecological dynamics interact with                            organizational growth in the evolution of organizational                        populations.  This approach focuses on the relationships                        between changes in social structures and changes in populations                 of organizations.  Thus it is especially well-suited for                        developing connections between theory and research on                           organizations and broad macrosociological concerns.  The full                   dynamics of populations of organizations involve vital rates                    (of founding and mortality) as well as growth and decline of                    individual organizations.  However, in the interest of                          analyzing data on diverse populations over long periods, recent                 research in organizational ecology has emphasized vital rates                   and has slighted issues of growth and contraction at the                        organizational level.  The present research seeks to redress                    the balance by building models of organizational ecologies in                   which individual organizations grow and contract.  That is, it                  explores the implications of adding growth at the                               organizational level to models of organizational ecology.                       Incorporating growth into existing population-ecology models                    encounters two kinds of complications.  The first concerns the                  absence of appropriate data.  Existing data sets do not provide                 time-paths of fluctuations in sizes of organizations in                         complete populations, which are needed to estimate growth                       models.  Efforts to estimate models of growth using only data                   for large organizations, for which records on size can often be                 found, face serious problems of sample-selection bias.  The                     second difficulty concerns the complexity of models that                        incorporate microdynamics into ecological models.  Given the                    present state of knowledge, there is no serious prospect for                    analytic characterizations of the dynamics of organizational                    populations.  Although we have begun to understand various                      aspects of the dynamics, we do not yet know how to integrate                    these aspects analytically.  Given the paucity of appropriate                   empirical data and the analytic complexity of the problem, this                 research will rely on a combination of microsimulation and                      empirical analyis.  Microsimulation will be the main tool for                   learning about the effects of various growth mechanisms and                     ecological constraints for the evolution of organizational                      populations.  The proposed empirical analyses use sequences of                  size distributions on selected populations in order to learn                    whether the models developed in the simulations fit empirical                   situations.  In particular, these analyses will explore whether                 the models can explain observed change over time in sequences                   of empirical cross-sectional distributions.  The findings of                    the research will (1) demonstrate whether ecological processes                  are sensitive to assumptions about processes of growth and                      decline at the organizational level, and (2) show how size                      distributions affect processes of competition and legitimation                  within organizational populations.
{'FirstName': 'Michael', 'LastName': 'Hannan', 'PI_MID_INIT': 'T', 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Michael T Hannan', 'EmailAddress': 'fhannan@gsb-lira.stanford.edu', 'NSF_ID': '000176529', 'StartDate': '08/15/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
{'Name': 'Cornell University', 'CityName': 'Ithaca', 'ZipCode': '148502820', 'PhoneNumber': '6072555014', 'StreetAddress': '373 Pine Tree Road', 'StreetAddress2': None, 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'New York', 'StateCode': 'NY', 'CONGRESSDISTRICT': '23', 'CONGRESS_DISTRICT_ORG': 'NY23', 'ORG_DUNS_NUM': '872612445', 'ORG_LGL_BUS_NAME': 'CORNELL UNIVERSITY', 'ORG_PRNT_DUNS_NUM': '002254837'}
{'Name': None, 'CityName': None, 'StateCode': None, 'ZipCode': None, 'StreetAddress': None, 'CountryCode': None, 'CountryName': None, 'StateName': None, 'CountryFlag': None, 'CONGRESSDISTRICT': None, 'CONGRESS_DISTRICT_PERF': '""'}
{'Code': '1331', 'Text': 'Sociology'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1988&All=true', 'xml': '8809006.xml'}